st. lawrence university: fine arts alumni

I am recently married (hence the -Ingrim). I live in scenic De Kalb Junction, NY and work for the head coach of SLU’s varsity riding team as her stable manager in Canton. I do not have as much time for art as I would like to, but I am able to have a small studio in my house where I mostly paint. Basically, for the moment, art is more of something fun to do when I can than it is a marketable talent but I enjoy making art and will go back to school someday soon, hopefully within the next 3 years.

I am currently living in Hoboken, NJ and spend most of the time at the barn with my horse and with my friends in NYC. We often reminisce about art classes at SLU and how fun they were. I am so glad I was able to find the pics of Amy, Ryan, and I, from the Snow Sculpture competition. That was quite possibly the hardest physical thing I have ever done. Hopefully SLU will continue to have a team there.

Here are some pictures of me. This is Beth Moore and I in Cozumel. My horse, Moonraker, my kitty Bunny, a dolphin…. and a photoshopped  this pic of Moonraker.

SLU Fine Arts for life!!!

I am living in San Francisco right now, working for a company called DINE (dinemarketing.com). It is an advertising, marketing, and branding company right in the city. We work specifically with food and beverage. An interesting project that we just finished was creating a website for Le Tourment Vert (an absinthe company). It’s a cool website, if you have any time to check it out: letourmentvertabsinthe.com.

Anyway, thats about what I have been up to. I did a big landscape painting this summer after I got home from New Zealand, but unfortunately it is back in Maine. I need to get back into creating. I really miss it.

Hope all is well! I think so fondly of SLU, you, and all the fun that is that place!

Alexa Unser writes from Purdue University where she is a first year MFA candidate in art/printmaking

Its fall in Indiana, which is not nearly as fun as fall in the north country; the leaves aren’t as bright, and its still like 65 degrees here. Regardless, I manage to forget about all I miss about canton because grad school is a blast (if you are super nerdy and love to talk/do/make/be immersed in art all day.)

My days usually start  at 5:30 am, when i wake up, rustle through my closet for the same thing i wear everyday… art jeans and art shirt, and grab a pop tart and get out of the house so that i can score a parking spot right in front of my building. I teach two sections of basic drawing, the first starting at 7:30. I love teaching! Its super fun, and my students are great. I do get a little Deja Vu everyday when i get to repeat the same thing for my 9:30 class, but hey… this teaching business is fantastic. We are doing perspective starting next week which is a little intimidating, but my students are so fantastic, I’m sure they’ll be just fine.

After teaching I head over to my studio which is roughly the size of a closet (in fact it is smaller than my actual closet), and is fully equipped with a hammock. i had a really nice huge one at the beginning of the semester, but there was a leak and it flooded! This is the time during the day when i get to make my work (as of now its birdcages… kind of) So i draw or paint or play with various other materials until 7 p.m.. which is class time.

I am taking Critical Theory, Grad Printmaking, and a TA meeting which we discuss teaching stuff. My classes are great, its amazing to be some place where everyone is so excited and invested in art. We have a lot of amazing discussions, and i have been learning a ton.

All in all, I’m having a great time, making a bunch of work, and learning tons! I am however looking forward to thanksgiving break when i will have a much needed few days off!

I just moved back east from living out in Jackson, WY where I have been living for the past two years along with several other St. Lawrence Alumni (including Tom Howland, Stephanie Adams, Will Timbers, Becca, AJ Puccia, Jane Affleck, and several others). I did everything from working in a yarn shop, being a nanny, pretending to be a stock manager in a clothing store (but really just learning how to swear in Russian from my co-workers). I then took a little hiatus from Wyoming and lived in Colorado for the winter and worked for a program called the High Mountain Institute that takes highschool students for a semester and does wilderness expeditions. So I spent the winter telemark skiing and camping in snow caves, backpacking in Arizona and Utah and learning about non-profit administration back on campus (in Leadville, which is one of the highest towns in the US at 10,500 ft). I went back to Jackson in the spring and went back to work at the yarn shop and did some catering for fancy affairs on the side (where I ran into another alum, Brendan Levine!). Around the middle of July, Nate (Twichell, another alum, my boyfriend and Chris Kimball’s cousin all in one) came back from Sea (where he had been all spring) and we packed up and moved back east. It was very sad to say goodbye to the tetons and the huge amounts of snow and the amazing skiing…but sometimes Life just asks you to change and you have no choice but to abide. So we drove back across our great big country through all kinds of small towns to a new small town in Maine. Hebron Academy is the only thing in Hebron, ME and is what brought us to this small town. Nate has begun teaching biology and I am teaching drawing. Yup, they hired me to be an art teacher! The reason that I am intertwining this update with Nate’s is that we (another piece of update information that makes that all clear) just got engaged! So now, not only are we starting all over in a new town, meeting new people and learning how to be teachers, we are also planning a wedding! Oh, and on top of that, I have decided to go back to school and so am in an independent study program at Lesley University designing a degree about how creative arts (including all types of creative endevors), yoga and meditation can be mechanisms for experiential learning and I am going to study how they can be developed into educational curriculum. So, that is keeping me pretty busy! I am also coaching Mountain biking, and living in the dorms as dorm faculty (I’m on duty right now….) and teaching yoga here and there to various groups. So BIG transitions in small amount of time.
I very much miss living in Jackson’s free-spirited, outdoorsy wildness…but teaching and working with highschoolers is a total trip. I feel like I am learning more teaching then I did as a student, it is so eye opening! But I love my kids and I am taking Chris Kimball’s advice and winging it and just enjoying it and trying to make them feel like they are allowed to be creative (hard thing to move into when you spend the rest of your day in the cookie cutter that is often our educational system).It is possible that they think I am a little crazy, but I’d rather be the crazy teacher, then a mean boring one, so I’ll take the title and wear it with honor. And New England is showing me it’s love with the beautiful foliage and days that can be both moody and gentle and perfect all in one, so it is good to be back.

After I graduated, I was able to get a job teaching middle school art at a small coed boarding school in Southborough, MA, called the Fay School.  I am now starting my third year here teaching everything from general studio art for grades 5 and 7, to advanced courses in ceramics, drawing, sculpture and painting for grades 8 and 9.  I have to say that teaching art has been all that I have expected it to be and I am having the time of my life watching these young students create and find talents that they might not have know they had.

In addition to my professional art life, I have also been able to stay current with my own personal art life.  For the past couple of years, I have been working in a wide range of media based around a central theme of portriture (more or less).  I have done a number of pieces in cut paper and starting last year, started painting again.  Many of the portraits that I have done have been linked to members of the music industry: songwriters, singers musicians, rockers…in short, I like to say that my current work is adding nothing to the art world, but it relaxes me, settles me, excites me keeps me feeling creative.

wrote to amy:

“As for me, I just graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May, with my M.A. in Arts Administration.  I did my thesis on interpreting historic artists’ homes & studios for people who are blind/visually impaired.  It was a great experience, and really got me looking at both art and architecture from a different perspective!  I’ve attached a photo of me looking slightly sleep-deprived after graduation.

Now I’m back in Michigan, madly hunting for that real museum job and working the rest of the time at the same jewelry store I was at after I left SLU (Design Works Custom Jewelry Studio) with side forays selling jewelry at horse shows around the country…if people want to buy some awesome jewelry, we’re working on an e-commerce website that will be up by the end of the month at theclassichorse.com. ”

Jenny
angellster@gmail.com

wrote to amy:

“Hey Amy! Life at the National Gallery is good, I got to catalog Richard Diebenkorn’s art supplies that he donated to the gallery and some of his doodles. As well as Romare Bearden, we have an ton of his doodles. It has been interesting, as I didn’t study Modern art and I research modern art materials; but I have learned so much and get to play with really old pencils.”