Schick Art Gallery to feature work by selected faculty

The Schick Art Gallery begins the 2014–15 year with the Selected Art Faculty Exhibition, opening with a public reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 11. This year, the exhibition features new work by Kate Leavitt (paintings and an artist’s book), Sarah Sweeney (photographs and digital media), Janet Sorensen, and Joanne Vella (both presenting paintings). The artists will participate in a gallery talk from 4 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30. The public is welcome at the reception and gallery talk; admission is free.

The exhibition will be on view until Oct. 19.

Sarah Sweeney is a new Skidmore faculty member in the field of digital media and interactive design. She earned a master of fine arts degree at Columbia University School of the Arts in 2003, and taught at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey from 2006 to 2013. Sweeney’s work is concerned with the relationship between technological duplication—like photographs and videos—and human memory. In one recent piece, an iPhone application called The Forgetting Machine, users take a photo using the phone’s camera, and then each time they view the photo or press the refresh button, the image becomes slightly more obscured. Through the user's actions, the original becomes inaccessible, and is gradually replaced by an entirely new image. Sweeney has shown her work extensively in the Northeast, as well in California and Germany.

Janet Sorensen’s most recent work is based upon encounters with a wild rose bush near the Spring Run Trail in Saratoga Springs starting in 2013 and continuing throughout the course of a year, in all weather and all seasons. She said, “Returning sometimes three times in a day, I noted how the exact same spot in the landscape revealed distinctly different aspects every time I looked at it…. I remain entranced by how fully the interplay of light and form defines each encounter. These paintings reflect the cumulative process I experienced over the past year.”

Sorensen holds an MFA degree from the University of Iowa and has shown her work in group and solo exhibitions throughout the region. She has been teaching painting and drawing at Skidmore College since 1986, and was the lead art faculty member with the SACI (Studio Art Centers International) program in Florence, Italy, in 1988 and 1996.

Kate Leavitt’s recent pieces deal with obsessive painting, beauty, and addiction. She states, “I admit to being preoccupied, preyed upon, possessed, haunted, and consumed by my obsessions. It is also the way I paint.” After earning the status of master printer at Tamarind Institute in 1981, Leavitt received an MFA from the University at Albany, State University of New York in 1984. She has taught printmaking at Skidmore since 1987, and served as department chair from 2005 to 2011. From 2009 to 2013 she was the college’s Robert Davidson chair in art, an honor reserved for a distinguished artist and teacher who has had profound impact on students. Leavitt has shown her work throughout the United States, in Europe, and in China, and it is held in numerous collections, including the Albany Institute of History and Art.

Joanne Vella received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1982 and in 1988, came to Skidmore, where she teaches painting and drawing. The subject of water has been an essential part of her work for almost 30 years; Vella uses it as an “intangible, elusive, ideal symbol,” and as the stage for her implied narratives. The painting process itself is critical to the formation of her art. Vella states, “The act of building a painting through layers of revisions, deletions and further additions is the most challenging and satisfying part of my work.” Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the country.

All Schick Art Gallery events are free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday–Thursday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday; and noon to 4 p.m. week-ends. The gallery is located in the Saisselin Art Building. For more information, call 580-5049 or visit www/skidmore.edu/schick.