THE 2023 HOLYOKE COMMUNITY COLLEGE 

STUDENT ART EXHIBITION

April 11 - May 4th

GALA RECEPTION: Thurs. April 13th 7 - 9 pm

Awards Announced at 8pm 

-Exhibition continues from the Taber Art Gallery to the Fine and Performing Arts 3rd floor (C)Bldg, and to Media Arts on the 3rd floor Campus Center 

File Image: Detail, a collaborative installation by Felice Caivano’s 3-D Design Students

On display will be a variety of works in a wide range of mediums by students of the HCC Visual Art Department faculty which includes: Lahri Bond, Felice Caivano, John Calhoun, Kelly Clare, Tara Conant, William Devine, Benj Gleeksman, Chris Lizon, and Margie Rothermich

The Taber Art Gallery is open to the public and is 

located through the HCC Library lobby in the Donahue Bldg.

HOURS: Mon. - Thurs. 10am - 5pm,  during regular school sessions

 

Upward & Onward Ends this Friday 3/3/23

Gallery hours will be from 10:00am till 4:00pm with an 

IMPROMPTU GALLERY TALK at 3:00

All are Welcome!

Attending artists, and those who purchased art, may remove their work at 4pm (not mandatory)

 

UPWARD and ONWARD

A Farewell Art Installation 

This is my big goodbye, my love letter, my thank you note to the folks and cosmic forces that swirled around and got me here. It has been an honor and a privilege to be able to manage the HCC gallery programs (which began for me in 1996) and in particular the Taber Gallery from its very beginnings in 1999. For my final exhibition, “Upward and Onward,” I invited friends, family and colleagues to contribute their art or work from their collections and join in this exhibition celebration. I left it pretty open ended as to what they could submit: using any traditional media, old work, new work, and/or work in their personal collections. I sent over 100 email invitations and received about 40 responses. I also brought in works from my personal collection as well as from the college, and tossed in a couple of my own paintings. Once the works were all delivered, I went to work creating an installation with this wide variety of submissions. My goal was to include everything - which was almost accomplished. There is a whole art to the installation process. It’s much like creating a collage. One needs to find a way to bring companionship to dispirit works, to give the entire space a sense of flow, and though quite crowded, give a sense of the individual pieces ability to stand alone as well as talk nicely with each other. The only preplanned part of this installation was requesting the photographs of people kissing to pepper throughout the gallery. Because, well, like I said, this is a love letter. 

xo,

Amy

 

DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE

-two shows by 

Maryanne Benns 

Accessories Sold Separately

and

Curiosities From the Anthropocene and Yonder 

Three Steps to Success, earthenware, porcelain, & found object, 2022, 12 “ x 10 ”

Sept. 26 through Nov. 10, 2022

HELD OVER THROUGH NOV. 30th!!!

Artist Reception Thurs. Oct 6, 4:30 - 6:30PM

With an informal gallery talk at 5:30

HRS: Mon. - Thurs. 10am - 5pm (during regular school sessions) 

Mitosis (detail)  earthenware and encaustic 7” x 4”

Accessories Sold Separately 

If toys are used to instruct children on future expectations, these sculptures- part action figure, part mythologic creature and 100 percent woman- are the dolls I wish I had to be better prepared for the real world. 

 

Curiosities From The Anthropocene And Yonder 

An immersive cabinet of curiosities, some tangible, some fantastical, reflecting my perceptions on what it means to be human, trying to fit in the orderly natural system, within the context of our geologic time and after.

-----------------------------------

 

Known primarily for her surrealist ceramic sculpture Maryanne Benns uses art to represent her personal visions and unique observations of the world.  For nearly two decades she has been studying and exploring the endless creative possibilities of clay, and for the past seven years she has been sharing that knowledge at senior centers, on line and studios around the Pioneer Valley.  Her work has been shown in  galleries, museums and hardware stores east of the Mississippi.   An alumnus of Holyoke Community College She credits her extensive time in the Visual Arts Department as the most transformative and important period in her life.  You can see more of her work on her website at Maryannebenns.com or at her studio at Papercity studios in Holyoke Ma.

 

Call to Artists who Studied with Alix Hegeler 

Photo credit: Lourdes Lebron

The Bat Cave and Beyond

You are invited to participate in “The Bat Cave and Beyond,” an exhibition honoring the memory of beloved artist and teacher Alix Hegeler who passed last October after a brief battle with cancer. The Taber Gallery is accepting your submission of artworks that have been influenced by Alix, and/or created while you studied with her.  

Art works in all media will be accepted. You may submit up to three pieces of art. Art work should be ready to hang. Though we will try to include all submissions, space is limited, so our decisions will ultimately depend on the overall number of artworks received.

EXHIBITION CALENDAR: 

Monday April 4th and Wed, April 6th from 10:00AM to 5:00PM:  DELIVER ARTWORK to the Taber Art Gallery. Enter through the Campus Library in the Donahue Building.  Work must be delivered and picked up in person. 

If you are living out of town and unable to deliver work in person, please email Amy Johnquest ASAP at: ajohnquest@hcc.edu to discuss possible options.

April 18 through May 9th - The exhibition will be open to the public during regular gallery hours.

Thursday April 28 - RECEPTION and celebration of Alix Hegeler.

Tues. May 10 and Wed. May 11, 10am - 5:00pm - PICK UP ARTWORK -All work must be picked up in person. 

HELP! We are trying to reach as many folks as possible. After thirty five years of teaching art at HCC, Alix influenced a countless number of  students.  Please help spread the word and forward this invitation to anyone you may know who worked with Alix over the years. 

 

PAGES

Paintings by 

Frank Cressotti 

Jan. 31st - March 10, 2022

HELD OVER through March 24th!

Gallery talk - Thursday Feb. 17, 9:30am

Hours: Mon - Thurs. 10am-5pm (during regular school sessions)

COVID protocols are in place https://www.hcc.edu/about/covid-19/visitors

Artist’s Statement

Several years ago I was making mostly figurative paintings. A regular feature of the painting process involved the use of newspaper as a blotting agent. The newspaper pages used for blotting were saved and re-used. Over time I found I had several stacks of blotting paper. These pages became interesting in themselves as painted surfaces. I discovered I liked the way the newspaper accepted the paint. I began to work with these pages, expecting that they had possibilities in a painterly direction. I liked the idea that their visual impact resulted purely as a function of the painting process. I tried to keep the structure of the painting simple. The idea was to let the paintings develop on their own as much as possible, with me driving the action. The paint would take care of itself. My responsibilities would be to stay busy with the working process, and pay attention to the moment by moment changes on the painting surface. I selected a few simple formats, without trying to premise specific resolutions. Periodically I would review the many pages that had resulted from this activity. I would occasionally select a page that seemed to have a certain presence. It was almost always a surprise to discover such a page. Since this was a new experience, I felt I was always trying to catch up with the pages. I had to learn a new aesthetic.

The more I handled the pages the more I found myself aware of the material nature of each page. The paper was delicate, flexible, and light weight. I was used to working with larger stretched canvases, or  heavy paper mounted on large drawing boards. Just moving them around was becoming a physical struggle, especially as I was working in a confined space. But, the pages were worked freely, without being stretched. I could proceed from page to page easily. The only practical problem was finding enough flat space for them to dry between applications of paint. I had to use floor space in the house away from the studio.

The flatness of the picture plain was a focal point of studying painting in the sixties. I had taught that principle, and I firmly believed in it. But, with repeated handling of the pages I realized the fact of flatness. I further realized that no matter how much effort I made per page, there was only a skin of paint separating the viewer from the paper surface. Another reality was the newspaper, itself. I never looked for content or narrative in the paintings, but I was constantly engaged with the print copy: news, sports, advertizements, obituaries, recipes, graphics.  I could not escape the fact that my personal reality as a painter was connected in some way with the reality of the news. And, the news was people.

The paintings themselves would always be about the process that produced them. But, I could not ignore my place in the community.

 On Campus at the Taber!

Cosmology of the Body:  

Paintings and Drawings by 

Anna Bayles Arthur

Sept. 20 through Dec. 9, 2021

Current Hours: Mon. - Thurs. 10am - 5pm (during regular school sessions) 

Making art in this historical moment:

    Within the context of a global pandemic, state-sponsored terror, climate catastrophe, corporate coup's, and the looming spectacle of mass destruction, I am perpetually questioning the utility of art. We live in a media-saturated culture, are daily bombarded by images, sounds, symbols, and stories.  Yet somehow, this ancient drive to create remains, the impulse to channel whatever it is, and to reveal it to the world.  Just as our ancestors documented their humanity on the walls of a cave, so we continue, despite these looming questions, to manifest something where once there was nothing.  This reckoning for the artist is life-long and can only be accomplished, I think, by the perpetual embrace of mystery.  Within this reckoning and this embrace, I have found not so much a rational explanation for my pursuit as an artist, but rather a new faith in the calling.  And given the alarming historical context within which I am called as an artist, I can only define this work as the thing in my life that most approximates prayer.   

About the work:

    From the time that my tiny hand could grip a cheap, #2 pencil, I have been compelled to the blank page.  Pieces of cardboard from a discarded package, the back side of the old, green and white striped computer paper, all of it held so much allure.  The blank page was full of possibility, a window through  which the child could invent her world.

    Through a lifetime practice of image-making, a unique visual vocabulary has developed.  The process has always been highly intuitive, a playful tug between figure and ground.  Layers of transparent pigments become the atmosphere through which forms float or sit, emerge or disintegrate.  There is an explicit organicism that is both familiar and unfamiliar: biology, landscape, things mechanical, parts of composite bodies.  These constructed relationships reveal narratives that echo the drama of our human experience and the intricate movements of the natural world.  Each painting is a glimpse into a contained world, a microcosmic surrogate for all of the mystery that is a body, a system, an environment.

    Through a meditative process of delving within, the paintings become landscapes of memory, dream, and invention – a manifestation of all that this body contains:  primordial ocean worlds,  utilitarian objects, symbols of our hands' work: chairs, tables, architecture; suggestions of all manner of biological movements, the ceaseless horizon, the depths of the human eye.  I go back for the child with her tiny hands and fascination with fantasy, terror, things beautiful and other-worldly. Grief and longing can likely be found in each painting, as well as the inescapable tug of one's own mortality.  How does it all relate?  Where do all of these things exist within us; how might we chose to access them?  Are there points of intersection within our individual bodies and between us, both as a species and as an interconnected part of the living pulse of the planet?  It is here that an intimation of the meaning in this image-making ritual is revealed.  All that came before, each isolated event that built us, continues to move within, rippling into the now and the yet-to-come.  

Gallery note:

Though we encourage you to experience this exhibition live, Anna's work may be viewed on line at: 

https://www.taberartgallery-holyokecommunitycollege.com