This spring, the Nesto Gallery showcased the considerable and varied talents of visual arts faculty members, spanning five decades. This year has been significant in the program’s history: as longtime teachers retire, new and energized educators have joined the scene, advancing Milton’s tradition of excellence in art education. This coming year also marks the first time in recent history that all visual arts classrooms are housed in one building: the renovated Art and Media Center. Thirteen artist-educators shared a spectrum of media used in contemporary art. The exhibition highlighted colleagues committed to innovation, exploration, conceptual rigor, and technical acuity. The show is a celebration of art and its makers.
Sandra Butler
Bridge Musings, hand-printed collages on wooden panels, 11 inches by 14 inches, 2013
The inspiration for these works came from photographs I took several years ago of a monumental bridge I crossed regularly while visiting my in-laws in Washington State; the photographs resurfaced when I was experiencing a transition in my life. The bridge climbs high over the mouth of the Columbia River, descends midway, and then skims over the water for a total of nearly five miles. I found the bridge to be majestic and awe-inspiring, and I focused on the intersecting lines of the metalwork with the dramatic, sweeping open spaces in-between.
Gordon Chase
Guilty Party, painted plywood, 36 inches by 36 inches, 1998
I try to pose dilemmas for the viewer to solve. I ask, “Can you believe that this happens?” and dare the bystander to come up with an answer. My “art with a social conscience” begins with “Who am I?” and aims to answer “Who are we?” Each moment of human interaction, simple and intimate, catastrophic or miraculous, puts our belief in the sacredness of life to the test. Each moment is a kind of ecstatic dance, a chance to feel something, to love something, to celebrate life in all its colors.
Bryan Cheney
Frozen Pegasus Inferno
archival inkjet print, 23 inches x 52 inches, 2014
My time outside of teaching and family is devoted to energizing pursuits of photography, architectural design, hybridizing daylilies, carpentry, traveling, and collecting antique curiosities — all manifestations of my fascination with the natural world and the creative ingenuity of humankind. Photography, in particular, has fed my unquenchable desire to explore and witness the beauty revealed in both the organic and inorganic. I aim to capture the ever-shifting transformations in the fleeting interaction of light, water, fire and matter.
Shane Fuller
Jump, bronze/marble, 8 inches by 8 inches by 18 inches, 1996
Bananas, acrylic on canvas, 36 inches by 24 inches, 1998
I have always thought of myself as an artist, from childhood sketches and cartooning; to studio painting, sculpting and ceramics; to theater set and lighting design, directing, and writing; to screenwriting and filmmaking. I have played around with most media, and I am always open to experimenting with new forms. I see art as choice and selection. Whether taking a picture, writing a story or representing a form in any media, the artist makes a choice, makes a selection, and by doing so creates art.
Paul Menneg
Inside Out, clay, 2014
The strangeness of the world interests me — its surprises and mysteries, the impossibility of explaining. I don’t go along with science when it looks for ironclad explanations of phenomena.
Jennifer Hughes
Hybrid Reptile I and II, lithography, 11 inches by 15 inches, 2014
As a printmaker, I am attracted to surfaces, methods and collections. I enjoy the tactile quality of my work, working in series, and having that series come from multiple sources . . . This series of images emanated from photocopies from a book of illustrations. I wasn’t interested in the animals themselves, per se, but more in the texture and shape of the surfaces.
Anne Neely
Squall, oil on linen, 60 inches by 80 inches, 2012
In 2004, I was imagining what an aquifer looked like, which led me to a decade-long search for ways to paint issues related to water, as well as expressing the fleeting, lost stillness of place in landscape. Since then, I have paid homage to water sources: oceans, aquifers and lakes. My paintings linger between beauty and foreboding, addressing water issues environmentally, ecologically and culturally in our time.
Larry Pollans
Peter, ceramic, 16 inches by 13 inches by 12 inches, 2012
Bill, pastel on slate, 55 inches by 45 inches, 2012
One by one, as our campus was renovated and renewed, the old sheets of slate blackboard were removed. Our old friend Bill Moore, who spent much of his teaching career at Milton, used those boards. His tracings were legendary. What better material for a Moore drawing than slate. As a Vermonter, Bill has a flinty, practical nature, but he is also driven by more exotic voices. His Ph.D. in French literature attests to that. From the stony to the ephemeral, from the practical to the romantic, from stone to pastel, the materials suggested themselves for the Bill Moore portrait. The imperative is to find a path, both formal and expressive. That was also the process I went through with Peter Haines’s ceramic portrait.
Maggie Stark
Word Play, neon, 10 inches by 36 inches by 4 inches, 2012
In 2009, I received a cultural fellowship from the Goethe Institute to study in Berlin, which coincided with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. My observations of the public events and historical discourse surrounding the anniversary provided the catalyst for the two videos, Wall-Play and Still-Time. These films use playground play to examine the implications and associations of the wall before and after its fall.
Emilie Stark-Menneg ’02
American Baby, oil and mixed media on canvas, 80 inches by 48 inches, 2014
I paint on both 2-D and 3-D surfaces. I roam the streets collecting discarded objects: sinks, baby carriages, chalkboards, tents. I incorporate these elements into my paintings. I also enjoy painting from life, especially in conversation with abstraction. Endlessly impulsive, I throw paint, slap on tape, and model the surface to create vibrant juxtapositions. I am interested in being “wrong” — cutting up American flags, placing something highly rendered next to something shoddy. I also create images that conjure multiple readings.
Ian Torney ’82
At the Horizon series, oil on board, 2014
I am interested in exploring the dichotomy between the social constructs of painting and humanity’s understanding of nature. The importance of thick, impasto paint in the manifestation of the energetic mark has endured. Increasingly, as I experiment with a tension between realism and abstraction, I have abandoned the conventional horizontal landscape format in favor of the iconic square, with even the distinct horizon-line fading, as I attempt to create paintings with greater atmospheric ambiguity, paintings about the intrinsic impermanence of nature and the sublime.
Julia von Metzsch ’03
Alarm Sensors, oil on board, 31.5 inches by 62.5 inches, 2013
My ocean-scape paintings are both spiritual and practical. Verging on the abstract, they come from a dark fantasy world filled with curiosity. They provide the opportunity to record a specific narrative revolving around themes of love, death and hallucination. My inspirations come from beach walks, or childish fears having to do with the forces of nature. When I allow the water to take over, a significant story becomes a reality in paint.
Pamela Walker
Atlantis Teapot, low fire ceramic, 2012
I first discovered ceramic sculpture during my undergraduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, and I have worked with clay on and off over the years. I am drawn to the non-functional vessel (primarily the teapot) as my vehicle to create a narrative or homage to people and places that are meaningful to me. I have traveled extensively in Mexico and Central and South America. These cultures and environments have been particularly inspirational.