The Faculty Art Exhibition this year is a respectable showcase of the institution’s artist-professors. The show includes the work of three adjunct as well as the two full-time faculty. The mix is, -as one would hope, eclectic and energetic and offers a wide array of ability, approach, medium and technique. That being said, the show is largely a three-person show; Ann Stoddard, Mark Anderson and Ralph Paquin. While the work of both Margie Howiler and Allen Stoddard demonstrate their professional ability, there is a clear delineation between the artists and fine artists. The self-imposed assignment of the show was for each of its participants to continue to build the exhibition. In concept it was to be an evolving spectacle of sorts; where we, the audience got to see artistic ideas flushed out and the works made more fully realized as the semester went on.
In fairness this was a doomed proposition, both in general as well as specific terms. The reality of most college/university professors’ workload makes such an endeavor next to impossible, and this proved to be the case here as well. It was both an interesting idea and a noble concept, but an unlikely and somewhat empty promise from the outset.
The second issue is that no one artist has enough cohesiveness in the body of work they present here to warrant the rather emphatic curatorial choice of dividing them into separate, single-artist environments. Everyone has good work, but the work is often unrelated and lacks any dialogue with its siblings.
Ann Stoddard, various works in organza
Ann Stoddard shows us tremendous tenderness and sophistication with her works in organza. The single most cohesive environment of the show, the artist installed a rustic wooden table with an eclectic array of objects spread out on it, which seem like archeological specimens from childhood and dreams. This is set in front of a wall with the glass-encased organza works hung in groupings. “Here Now”, “Flight” and “An Extension of Light in Pink” push the anthropological references even further. We see delicate pieces of dressmaking fabric that exude history, sensuality, and worldliness. Daughterhood, motherhood and womanhood are all present without an ounce of sentimentality, and with a rare and refreshing vulnerability and conceptual vigor. It feels a bit like a traveling natural science museum, comfortably dodging sideshow references while embracing the artist's childlike fascination with oddity and wonder. These pieces are intimate, powerful, and delicate, like memory itself; songs of both innocence and experience. One feels they are seeing deeply personal bits of Ms. Stoddard’s family history while being fully aware of the work as art and thereby deliberate and directed.
Stoddard’s works on canvas, -while engaging and ephemeral, have absolutely no dialogue with the rest of the environment. These works are luscious in color and hue, and the absence of a stretcher frame makes them appear to be drifting away like clouds.
They are, in a word: lovely.
Yet there is little relevance to the works on organza. We are seeing the vitality and breadth of Stoddard’s ability, but we are not seeing focus. Had these works been broken up and interspersed in the show, they would be stronger for it.
Ralph Paquin, Kneeling Figure in Yellow, ink on paper
Ralph Paquin similarly has three distinct bodies of work from which he assembles this show. Would that he had spared us variety in favor of a depth of exploration. The virtuosic, large-scale drawings like “Reveal-ation” demonstrate the artist’s sure hand as well as his formidable technical abilities, but these seem utterly without context sandwiched between his mural “Gene Wall” and the dynamic triad of ink on paper paintings like “Kneeling Figure in Yellow,” and “Wonder-Figure in Pink and Yellow.” Though Paquin primarily embraces drawing and sculpture, these three works are clearly and definitively paintings, and rich ones at that. The colorfields against which his figures contort and pose are heraldic and flag-like; they raise questions of identity, self-adopted or externally imposed. The works reference medical illustration as well as erotic fetishism, though the latter is seemingly in spite of itself rather than obvious. Hopefully, Mr. Paquin will push farther and continue to build this body of work, as it appears to expose the artist in a way unique in his oeuvre.
The remaining wall of his gene-inspired work has strength, but in a very different manner. These works are humorous, bright, activated figure-forms against washes of flat color. They are irreverent, engaging and charged, but their power is diminished by their direct placement across from the figurative paintings.
When works are placed opposite one another in an exhibition, it implies a symbolic conversation between them. This environment simply does not work for Paquin, but he is not alone. The fault, in his case, does not lie in the work. There is a missed curatorial opportunity here, and that is our collective loss.
Mark Anderson is painter of tremendous musculature and vigor with terabytes of art history knowledge from which to draw source material. At his best, he plunges into deeply personal and often nightmarish visions of apocalyptic and emotional unraveling that careen towards surrealism but manage to side step it. Sadly, this show is not the artist at his best.
Anderson is the only artist who wrote an artist’s statement for his portion of the show, and posted it on the wall like a manifesto. Unlike a manifesto however, the writing is obtuse, meandering and seemingly evokes spontaneity and the claim of free association as justifications for lack of focus or a clearly flushed-out personal mythology. He presents them as explorations, but what we have instead are 5 large-scale, fully unrealized works-in-progress
Mark Raymond Anderson, Hope Rules Anyway, acrylic on paper
The standout piece is “Hope Rules Anyway,” a Jungian circus of sex, spirituality and symbolism. Though clearly unfinished, the work is farther along than the others. They are all good starts. One hopes we get to see the finished paintings at some point in the future.
This is a good show, yet somehow less than the sum of its parts. The curatorial choices do nothing to help it; the artists’ work should have been mingled together rather than isolated into environments. The show, like any faculty exhibition, is intended to showcase faculty work, not a career retrospective for each artist. It could (and arguably should) have been smaller, if in editing a more unifying narrative emerged.
I can think of no stronger recruiting tool for potential art students than a faculty exhibition. The unfortunate reality of these kinds of exhibitions is that professors often adopt the very same excuses their students use when submitting incomplete work or unrealized concepts. The artist-professor has a unique challenge in academia because that which they submit for public and peer review cannot be wholly experienced with intellect, or even marginally understood with a purely academic mindset. Spiritually and professionally, it is also their charge to rise to the occasion.
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