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Gallery 51 Showcases Artwork by MCLA FacultyBy Lyndsay DeBord - September 29, 2008
Special to iBerkshires
NORTH ADAMS — Gallery 51 was filled with students, professors, administrators and art supporters on Thursday for an opening reception featuring the work of faculty from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
The exhibition, "Faculties of Art: Work by MCLA Art Major Professors," featured a variety of artwork — including photography, painting, cartooning, woodworking, fashion, and digital art — by nine instructors.
The college-run gallery, located at 51 Main St., also celebrated MCLA's new bachelor's degree program in arts. Courses in drawing, cartooning, graphic design and painting are being taught for the current fall semester.
Before each show, the artists explain their artwork to the gallery's attendants, who are made up of MCLA students. At the reception, crowd members who arrived early joined the group and had the opportunity to hear the artists talk about their work.
Junior Tom Jorgensen, an English major, liked that there were various types of art represented and said he also enjoyed getting a chance to see how professors express themselves.
The opening reception also served to welcome Gallery 51's new manager Katherine Casey. With her fiance, who also works in the arts, Casey relocated to North Adams from New York, where she graduated from Long Island University with a master of fine arts degree.
The new manager had previously worked at Hillwood Art Museum in Long Island. Casey also has her own work, a porcelain wall installation titled "Memoriae," on display at the gallery.
 "It's not often students get to see the professor has a life outside class," said Casey and added that there wasn't necessarily a correlation between a professor's art and what the faculty member taught.
While most of the faculty who displayed their work teach art at the college, they also represented the English, theater, and computer science departments.
English professor Michael Birch, who has worked with photography for roughly 32 years, presented three of his photographs at the gallery. Part of a large collection, the shots were taken during "a long photographic trip." During the extensive 2 1/2 year journey, Birch traveled throughout New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal and India.
"Opium Smoker, Golden Triangle" one of Birch's photographs on display, was taken in part of the Golden Triangle, known for its opium production, in northern Thailand. His other photographs were taken at 15,000 feet above sea level in Nepal.
Senior English major Ryan Scutt said he enjoyed getting to see some of the places Birch had visited.
"It's good to see what our professors are doing," said Scutt.
College President Mary K. Grant said the faculty's art was "very inspiring."
"It's wonderful to see this kind of work in one place," said Grant.
Visiting professor Laura Christensen works combine photographs with woodworking. Her sculptures, "Pull" and "Slide," were interactive, with gallery visitors moving the parts to reveal different photos. Christensen also showed patrons a "secret door," her access point to the art if she needed to fix anything. "Still" was on display at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art's Kidspace exhibit last year.
English professor Michael Birch is exhibiting three photographs taken during a lengthy trip through parts of south Asia and Australia |
Professor William Spezeski of the computer science department showed his printed works and art professor Gregory Scheckler displayed 10 separate landscape paintings that came together to make one larger work. The artwork of Howard Cruse, Gillian Jones, Melanie Mowinski, Lauren O'Neil and Dawn Shamburger are also on display at the gallery.
Colleen Williams, who has a studio in the Beaver Mill, was at the reception to show support for her fellow members of the North Adams Artists' Co-Op Gallery, Melanie Mowinski and Laura Christensen.
The gallery also debuted its new wood flooring for Thursday's opening reception. Sophomore Jessica Sweeney, who worked on a project at the gallery last year, said she "wasn't expecting the gallery to be so nice."
Jonathan D. Secor, director of special programs for the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center, a collaboration between MCLA, Mass MoCA and the city of North Adams, said artists had complained about the old carpeting and added that people seemed happy with the new floor.
Gallery 51 opened on Main Street in 2005. Steven Green, vice president for academic affairs, said he had been to a number of events at the gallery during the past three years.
"It's just been one great event after another," said Green.
The faculty's work will be on display through Oct. 26. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 to 6, and Sunday 11 to 4. |
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