Category Archive

Our dear friend Tenzin Yignyen is on Facebook!  He came to St. Lawrence three times in the past decade to create intricate Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas.  This reminds me of a time in Kathmandu when a few SLU faculty who were studying there were granted an audience with the Venerable Chokyi Nyima, and he stopped midway through his teaching to take a call on his cell phone.

Tenzin has been teaching at Hobart for several years, and every time I talk with Hobart students and faculty, they value his work very much there.  Tenzin teaches courses on the meaning and signifiance of sand mandalas and other sacred arts.

The Gallery will bring Rockpool Candy to SLU this fall.  Carole and I met her and her husband Mytarpit by chance at the Pictoplasma Conference in Berlin last March and have stayed in touch ever since.  The Gallery will be putting together a posse of fiber activists to work with her to create public installations around campus and in the community in late October.  Stay tuned!

Check out this series of her fiber reef sculptures made from recycled materials.

Pilot project #3: West African textile collection

This project has been the most complex of the three pilot projects we’ve initiated in the last 18 months.  Some of the steps included professional photography and on-site interviews, and the next step will be to incorporate this digital online collection into various courses at SLU, including fine arts and those in African Studies.

Step #1

For two days in June 2008, Matt Bogosian ‘02 and his crew came to campus to photograph the West African textiles, assisted by Jose’ Domingo ‘09, Tsewang Lama ‘11, and Kevin Carvill ‘11.  The gallery was turned into a photo studio, and we borrowed John Larrance’s genie lift to have the textiles photographed from above.

Step #2

In July 2008, Stanzi McGlynn ‘10 met with Christopher Roy to discuss the history and meaning of the textiles.  The interview was recorded and later transcribed.  After Stanzi’s study abroad in Kenya in the spring of 2009, she will work this summer to add sections of the transcription to the CONTENTdm digital collection.  We plan to include portions of the interview to the online collection in the form of sound files.

Step #3

During the academic year 2008-09, Gallery ninjas Arline Wolfe and Carole Mathey have been cataloging and properly housing the textiles.

Step #4 and beyond

The textiles will be presented in an exhibition at the Gallery in the fall of 2009.  In the meantime, faculty and students can use the digital collection as a starting point to conduct their research.  Writing assignments will be designed to include short essays for exhibition text panels and as longer research papers.  From here on, Obiora Udechukwu in Fine Arts will be our primary source of expertise.

April 9 – 22, 2009

Thursday, April 9 at 7:00 p.m.
Artist’s lecture by David Beck, juror
Opening reception to follow

For this year’s juried exhibition, students were asked to create up to four works that explored the concept of be(com)ing.

David Beck teaches digital art at Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY, and has shown his work extensively throughout the United States.  His artwork is featured in the book GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (John & Levi, 2006), the first volume entirely dedicated to game art.

The department of fine arts presents the student exhibitions with assistance from the Jeanne Scribner Cashin Endowment Fund and the gallery’s Barnes Endowment Fund.

Carole and I are working on a new CONTENTdm collection that will document our rotating exhibitions, educational programs, and projects related to SLU’s Permanent Collection.  We’ll have a link on the Gallery’s Web site soon.

Check it out.

David will be speaking on November 19, at 7:00 p.m. in Griffiths 123.  This guy is brilliant.  Mark your calendars now, and more info about the author/illustrator and lecture will be provided in the next few days.  David says this will be GYWO’s post-election post-mortem.

Check out his Web site and most recent publication Get Your War on, The Definitive Guide to the War on Terror, 2001-2008.

Chris Sperandio of the Kartoon Kings had to do some fancy footwork to get out of the North Country today.

Here is Noli Chew at the beginning of the project.

Scores of SLU students from Jenny MacGregor and Relani Prudhomme’s FYP Sprague College and Kasarian Dane’s painting class participated in a community-based site-specific installation using designs painted by the Kartoon Kings based on the work of Canton-born Frederic Femington,  We also had the pleasure of working with Dianne Drayse-Alonso’s students from Ogdensburg Free Academy and Ray Whalen’s students from Parishville Central School.

We hope you can all come to the lecture and reception to follow.

What an amazing weekend with the artists from the Combat Paper Project. To find out more about the visiting artists who were here for the past three days, visit the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery website for background information, the Combat Paper Project at Green Door Studio (Burlington), and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Here are some pictures from Amy Hauber: