Assumption College, Emmanuel d'Alzon Library

D'Alzon Arts

Past Art Exhibitions

2000-2001 2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2008-2009
               

2009-2010

 

Lynn Simmons

SIFT
January 11 – February 26, 2010
Opening Reception
Tuesday, January 19, 4:30 p.m.


Carrie Nixon
Follow Your Bliss  (Artists, Art Students, and Artisans at Work)
October 19 – November 20

Opening Reception & Remarks
Tuesday, October 20, 4:30 p.m.

Drawing Outside #2 by Carrie Nixon

Carrie Nixon has been teaching Painting and Drawing at Assumption College in Worcester, MA since 2008.  Previously, she had taught Drawing and Design for 18 years at the University of Cincinnati, OH, as well as at Wayne State University in Detroit,, MI and Raritan Valley College in Somerville, NJ.   She is a native of Detroit, and earned a B.A. in Art from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Drawing from Wayne State University.

An integral part of Carrie’s education was living abroad:  two summers in Colmar, Alsace, France, home of the celebrated Eisenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald; a semester abroad in Rome, Italy; and a year after college in Lima, Peru.

Carrie has exhibited extensively in the Midwest and Northeast, including at Allan Stone Gallery in New York, The Peace Museum in Chicago, and at a number of universities and colleges in New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan.  She has had some unusual art-related jobs besides teaching, such as working as a Courtroom Artist for Channel 7 in Detroit, doing scientific drawings of the dissection of an elephant, and assisting muralist Robert Dafford on large outdoor historical murals in Covington, KY and Vicksburg, MS. 

Carrie’s current series of paintings and drawings explore artists and artisans at work, including muralists, painters, carpenters, and above all, her Assumption College students absorbed in their creative pursuits.  As a lifelong art professor, she has chosen to focus on the arena she knows best:  that of individuals, especially students, caught up in making art.


Artist’s Statement:

 “Write about what interests you—and interests you deeply—and your readers will catch fire at your words." ---Valerie Sherwood (Paraphrase “Paint and draw…”)

“This is the real secret of life - to be completely 'engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.”'  Alan Watts, Work as Play

     I have always explored figuration in my work.  The challenge of drawing/painting the human figure in varied settings attracts me; at the same time, the figure serves as a vehicle to raise psychological, social, and spiritual questions.

     In this series of drawings and paintings, my focus is on artists, art students, and artisans absorbed in their work.  I am intrigued by their poses, by the relationship of the bodies to the spaces around them, and  the mystery surrounding their creations.  My role is part voyeuristic and part co-creator.  As variations on a theme, some works are more “representational,” a.k.a., realistic, while others explore imagined color or implied settings (such as the cut-outs of the muralists). 

     My ongoing interest in recording human activity may well spring from a wish to stop and seize the relentless flow of time, in short, a futile protest against mortality.   Art-making is also a resistance to or even triumph over mortality.  These paintings and drawings are not overtly political, but in highlighting humans who use their hands to make unique works, they do counter the relentless technological dehumanization that is engulfing our planet.

     Technically, the drawings are pastel on paper, and the paintings are either oil paint or paint stick (oil paint in stick form, a bridge between the rich color of oil paint and the directness of drawing).  My inspirations include representational artists such as Velasquez, Lucien Freud, Bill Viola and William Kentridge, as well as non-figurative artists such as Julie Mehretu, Anselm Kiefer, and Joan Mitchell.

 


Richard Paul Hoyer
Photography

August 24 – October 16
Opening Reception & Remarks
Tuesday, September 8, 4:30 p.m.

Flower No. 8Richard Paul Hoyer is a photographer, lecturer, and fine art printer. He works in black and white, with film and digital, producing photographs for exhibition and publication. He teaches photography at the Paier College of Art, Manchester Community College, and the Worcester Art Museum. He currently lives and works in Glastonbury , CT.

Artist's Statement:

Common everyday objects and subjects interest me. Obvious or not. Sometimes it is the shape, form, light, angle, or contrast that interests me and motivates my artistic response to investigate a subject photographically. However, I also work in a spontaneous and intuitive way and sometimes it is simply the moment that inspires me to photograph something. I'm here, a subject is here, a curiosity is initiated, and a visual exploration begins.

The work is black and white and minimalistic in nature reducing the compositions to only the most basic elements that are needed to create the photographic compositions. This is not to say that these concepts or ideas are not expressed without an elegant simple beauty. Common objects, simple everyday in nature: surreal, and minimalistic in approach. Reducing the photograph to my vision of what it  needs to be, and nothing else.Simple, surreal, minimal, formalist, and abstract.

 

LandscapeForestQueen Anne's laceRadiator



D'Alzon Arts Series
Emmanuel d'Alzon Library, 1st Floor
Assumption College
500 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609 508-767-7272
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Page last updated: December 14, 2009