Carleen Sheehan's Calypso Series works in gouache and enamel are
brilliantly colored, tiny, jewel-like images that bring to mind
kaleidoscopes or air bubbles trapped in layers of ice. They are a
distinct change from her previous work, which tended to involve
large-scale, black-and-white drawings. She is one of six art faculty
members whose recent work is currently on display at the Art
Museum.
Professors get to look at student work all the time. A new exhibition at the MHC Art Museum turns the tables by putting faculty members' artwork on display. Recent work by six MHC studio art professors will be in Colleagues: The Mount Holyoke College Art Faculty through March 12.
The range of styles and media used by the six artists is considerable, from Sheehan's small, jewel-like enamel works and Miller's painterly oils of horses to Campbell and Kuhr's abstract rhythms, Margalit's use of encaustic, and Smith's ironic sculptural juxtapositions of clear, fragile glass with solid metal and wood.
Marion Miller's latest oil paintings focus on horses and their riders. Because she paints them in indoor settings, the works are as interesting for their formal structure as for their equestrian content. She has previously focused on the figure, still life, and landscapes, and her portraits have brought critical acclaim and international commissions.
Carleen Sheehan creates in a variety of media. The ten small-format gouache and enamel paintings in this show represent a significant departure from her earlier, larger, charcoal drawings and paintings. These densely layered, jewel-like maelstroms of pattern recall Persian miniatures, fractals, spirographs, and microscopic imagery.
Nancy Campbell's prints were among those featured in the exhibition A Graphic Muse, which traveled across the country from MHC. Throughout her career, Campbell has concentrated on printmaking, inspired in part by Japanese imagery. National Gallery curator Ruth Fine noted that in Campbell's work, "We see a quest for unity between the logical and measured, the intuitive and spontaneous."
Elegance, subtlety, and poise characterize Joe Smith's recent sculpture. Using a range of materials including glass, wire, and wood, he juxtaposes stability with precariousness, solidity with fragility, opaqueness with transparency.
Alexis Kuhr, a visiting artist at MHC from 1992 to 1998, now teaches at the University of Minnesota. Six small-scale works feature repeating graphite dots and lines on pale green panels, arranged in energetic abstract patterns reminiscent of everything from computer circuit boards to Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie.
Nathan Margalit's works were created using the unusual technique of encaustic, in which pigment is mixed with melted wax and resin and then applied to a surface. As a result, Margalit's multilayered images take on an ancient, almost archaeological, feel.
The artists will speak about their work in a series of Thursday afternoon gallery talks.
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