Detail from an untitled study, by Trish Lyell

Schick Art Gallery season opener

September 10, 2012

The Schick Art Gallery at Skidmore College begins its 2012-13 season with the Selected Art Faculty Exhibition, opening with a public reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13.

Lyell’s graphite and wax drawings investigate surfaces, layers, and edges, both visually and metaphorically. Palermo’s translucent rubber sculptures resemble quirky hybrids of architectural models and Modernist painting. Formal aspects of line and color drive Morris’s paintings, while Wilt’s ceramic sculptures synthesize the human with the manmade, resulting in pieces that are both humorous and unsettling.

An artists’ talk about the works in the exhibition begins at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, in the gallery. Admission to the opening exhibition and the talk are free and open to the public.

The Schick Art Gallery at Skidmore College is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, and from noon to 4 p.m. weekends. Admission is free.

Background on the artists

Trish Lyell graduated from Skidmore College in 1981 and received her master’s in fine art degree from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1984. She has taught at Skidmore since 1990 and has been a visiting assistant professor since 1999. Lyell’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at regional and national venues, including the Lake George Arts Project, the Blue Mountain Gallery and the Cooperstown Art Gallery, all in New York State; and Hera Gallery in Providence, R.I. Her works are held in collection at the Hoyt Institute of Fine Art in Pennsylvania, the Adirondack Trust Company, and other public and corporate venues.

Deborah Morris has taught drawing and painting at Skidmore as a visiting assistant professor since 1986. She received her MFA degree from California State University in 1982. She has shown her work extensively, including a solo exhibition of drawings at the Fulton Street Gallery in Troy, N.Y., in 2008 and a three-person exhibit at the Southern Vermont Art Center in November 2009. Morris’s works are in the collections of Arizona State University in Tempe and Southern Oregon State College in Ashland.

Victoria Palermo received her undergraduate degree from Skidmore and her MFA degree from Bennington College. She is a visiting assistant professor at Skidmore and has taught sculpture there and at SUNY Adirondack since 1998. Palermo has had numerous solo exhibitions at John Davis Gallery in Hudson, N.Y., most recently in 2011. Her public art piece “Bus Stand” is on permanent display in North Adams, Mass., and her works have been shown in many group exhibitions, including “The Jewel Thief” at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. Palermo is the recipient of an artist fellowship grant from New York Foundation for the Arts, and her work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including a 2011 New York Times article by Holland Cotter titled “New Sparkle for an Abstract Ensemble.”

Matthew Wilt joins the Skidmore Studio Art Department this fall. He received his MFA degree from Ohio University at Athens, in 1995, and has been teaching since 1996; from 2006 to 2012 he was associate professor of art at Southern Illinois University. Wilt’s ceramics have been included in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States, including the 2012 National Ceramics Invitational in Paducah, Kentucky, and a solo exhibition at the Craft Alliance in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2010. Wilt is a 2006 recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Award, and his work is held in collection by the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, California, the Ceramics Research Center at Arizona State University, and many other institutions.