"What prepared me at MCLA for my internship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and graduate school was the rigor of my physics classes. I would credit Dr. Adrienne Wootters in particular with teaching us to work hard and she was always willing to make time to work on problems with us when we couldn’t get them."
Kristy Moore ’05 Graduate Student, University of Rhode Island
Press Release
Sept. 19, 2008 NORTH ADAMS, MA – In celebration of the new art major at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, MCLA Gallery 51 will present “Faculties of Art: Work by MCLA Art Major Professors,” Sept. 25 through Oct. 26.
An opening reception will be held on Thursday, Sept. 25, 5-7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
“Faculties of Art” will feature the professional work of faculty teaching within MCLA’s Fine and Performing Art Department.
The exhibit will include works of art by nationally and internationally recognized artists Michael Birch, Katherine Casey, Laura Christensen, Howard Cruse, Gillian Jones, Melanie Mowinski, Lauren O’Neal, Gregory Scheckler, Dawn Shamburger and William Spezeski.
An array of media; including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, book-making, video and comic art, represents the diversity of talent at MCLA.
The opening reception also will serve to welcome MCLA Gallery 51’s new manager, Katherine Casey.
Casey said, “Due to the broad range of media and works, I am particularly excited by the opportunity that ‘Faculties of Art’ affords MCLA students. While we all know faculty members pursue endeavors outside of classroom walls, it is not often we are granted this glimpse into the private lives of our mentors. What we learn here is how lucky we are to have access to these acclaimed artists and how fortunate our students are for this opportunity to study with such accomplished and skilled instructors.”
While this will be a premier opportunity for a few of the participating artists, many are well-known exhibitors.
Birch, an established photojournalist, will show selections from a recent trip to Nepal. Casey, a mutil-media artist, will offer a procelain installation. Christensen will exhibit, among other pieces, a work titled “Still,” which previously was part of MASS MoCA’s Kidspace exhibit, “Boxed Set,” in 2007. Cruse, a well-known cartoonist whose work has been published in multiple newspapers and whose most recent book, “Felix’s Friends,” was published this year, will display his drawings. Jones, a photojournalist, will show multiple works.
Mowinski, a nationally recognized artist, will complete an installation in one of the gallery spaces. O’Neal, a well-known artist and recent member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Creative Teaching Partners, will show a few large-scale photographs and sculptural work. Scheckler will exhibit 10 individual paintings, which will create a larger work. Shamburger, participating in her first group show, will display theater works of costumes and the preliminary sketches from which they came. Spezeski, a forerunner of the digital media movement and contributor to many textbooks, will offer a few printed works.
MCLA Gallery 51 is at 51 Main St. in North Adams and is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
