COLLECTION NAME:
University Art Galleries (UMassD)
Record
exhibition_title:
To Make Glorious the Artisanry: Faculty Celebrates Americana
exhibition_dates:
September 27 - October 23, 1993
exhibition_year:
1993
exhibition_location:
University Art Gallery (UMass Dartmouth Galleries)
exhibition_note:
An exhibition displaying works in clay, metal, wood and fiber by Karon Doherty, Barbara Eckhardt, Barbara Goldberg, Chris Gusten, Susan Hamlet, Marjorie Durko Puryear, Alan Burton Thompson, and Stephen Whittlesey. Americana lent by The Chrildren's Museum, Boston; Fall River Historical Society; The Whaling Museum, New Bedford; Heritage Plantation, Sandwich and Private Collections.
exhibition_genre:
clay
exhibition_genre:
fiber art
exhibition_genre:
metals
exhibition_genre:
wood
resourceID:
13009_022_0001
resource_type:
ephemera - invitation
copyright notice:
COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION: Under the direction of the Visual Resource Center digital collections are made available to the UMass Dartmouth campus community for the sole purpose of classroom instruction and study in accordance U.S. Copyright Laws . All other uses are prohibited and are subject to copyright infringements.
credit line:
UMass Dartmouth Art Galleries
artist name:
Stephen Whittlesey
artist_biographical note:
Part woodworker, part farmer, with a good dose of thinker, writer, beekeeper, and artist added in, Steve Whittlesey doesn't fit any labels. He owns 1,200 blueberry bushes on his West Barnstable farm, which he opens every year for a pick-your-own operation. "It's important to me to stay connected to the land," he says. But for 40 years, his furniture and sculpture art have been constants. "I am a woodworker making sculptural furniture," says Whittlesey. Whittlesey has been creating with wood since the late 1960s. Trained as a painter, he fell into carpentry to make money for his young children. "It wasn't a planned thing," he says. "I made a stab at a living as a painter, but then we had kids and that wasn't working. I started as a carpenter, restoring old houses. I'd take out old wood and just started making furniture." By the mid-1980s, he was exhibiting in New York, which led to national exposure, boosting his career as both an artist and furniture maker. Up until 2010, he ran the wood/furniture design program at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Of teaching, he says, "It was good for me to balance the solitary work of being a studio artist—which I needed. I like to do my work in peace, but then I like to hang out with friends." Whittlesey first came to Cape Cod when he was young and returned when he married and built a house in West Barnstable. "West Barnstable was the boondocks in the 1960s," he says. "In 1971, Richard Kiusalas and I started West Barnstable Tables, which continues today." Whittlesey bought two and a half acres of Barnstable Brick Company land, which he carved out for blueberries. He has kept bees ever since the beginning. Painstakingly handmade and beautifully crafted, his furniture pieces are stunning attention grabbers. "I like something with personality," says Whittlesey, "pieces that move a little bit when you touch them so they have a life of their own." He is on a mission to create pieces that must be reckoned with—as he describes it, something that gives the user a little "bump," a surprise. "I'm horrified that most furniture is generally disregarded unless it's a museum piece or an antique," he says. "People don't really have rapport with their furniture." He is satisfied that his pieces generally command the attention of a room and often become a centerpiece. Play is a big word for Whittlesey. By pairing master craftsmanship with whimsy, he mixes up the language of woodworking. "I like to play with architectural forms and organic forms with a function of some kind, like a drawer or a secret place to put things, and have those functions be a surprise," Whittlesey says. Whittlesey uses any kind of material, from pieces of old boats and houses to driftwood. "The work takes advantage of the materials' history and the marks of time, but I don't use those things to be nostalgic. I use them to make the viewer speculate on my work," he says. His penchant for the old is a testament to his upbringing as a New England farm boy. "It was ingrained in me—sort of make do with what you have. If you needed to fix something, you looked around for a piece of wood and fixed it."
artist name:
Alan Burton Thompson
artist_nationality:
American
artist_vital dates:
1956 -
artist_biographical note:
Alan Burton Thompson received his Bachelor of Science degree from the State University College at Buffalo and his Master of Fine Arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is an Associate Professor of Jewelry/Metals in the Artisanry program at UMass Dartmouth. Thompson is the recipient of a 1991 Massachusetts Arts Council Individual Fellowship. He has shown his work in numerous galleries and exhibitions, and has taught many workshops throughout the country. He has been published in American Craft in June 1992, and in the Spring 1993 issue of Metalsmith. In October 1995, he was invited to lecture at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery of American Craft. He is currently represented by Jewelers' Werk Galerie in Washington D.C., Susan Cummins Gallery in Mill Valley, California, Sybaris Gallery in Royal Oak Michigan, and Mobilia Gallery in Boston. His work can be seen in ARTnews April 1995, Metalsmith Winter 1996 (Exhibition Review), American Craft Magazine: June/July 1992 (Portfolio) and Metalsmith: Spring 1993 and Summer 1990.
artist name:
Marjorie Durko Puryear
artist_nationality:
American
artist_biographical note:
I am a fiber artist, formally trained, with both BFA and MFA degrees. I construct textile compositions that are unpretentious stories. Typically small-scale, they are easy-to-live-with pieces, often quirky, and very enjoyable. This work is defined by a passion for collecting cast-offs: delicate handkerchiefs and monogrammed linens; handwritten notes and letters from another era; and odd photos. I identify with the history each item carries and am obsessed with assembling found parts into a new whole, inventing a new message for the appropriated materials. My work is meticulously conceived and honors fine craftsmanship. Most pieces are small-scale, single unit/single element compositions, formally framed. Other work is in traditional quilt form – both art quilt and functional. My work has been exhibited in hundreds of group and solo shows, recently: the ARC Gallery, Chicago IL; Fuller Museum of Craft, Brockton MA; Carnegie Center, New Albany IN; Turchin Center, Boone NC; Prescott College/Sam Hill Gallery, AZ; Craft Alliance Gallery, St Louis MO; Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Riga LATVIA; and soon, Selden Gallery, Norfolk VA. My work is sold through exhibitions and now by direct contact through my blog.
artist name:
Susan Hamlet
artist_biographical note:
Susan Hamlet received a BA from Mount Holyoke College and MFA degree from Rochester Institute of Technology. Prior to teaching at UMass Dartmouth, she taught at Oklahoma State University, Skidmore College and Swain School of Design. Susan teaches Jewelry/Metals in Artisanry in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and presently serves as Graduate Program Director for the Artisanry Department. Susan received two Craftsman's Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979 and 1988, and the Society of Arts and Crafts Biennial Award in 1994. She's produced large scale metal commissions for AT&T in Washington DC, Bank One Center in Cleveland OH, and for David and Lynn Burkett of Monroe, Louisiana. Along with participating in national invitational exhibitions, Hamlet's work has been shown in group international exhibitions: Musee des Arts Decoratifs/Paris, Linzer Instut fur Gestaltung/Austria, Kulturhuset, Stockholm/Sweden, Museum Bellerive Zurich/Switzerland, Art Gallery of Western Australia/Perth, University of Central England Birmingham/UK, Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts/Canada, and International Craft Fair '07 Seoul/Korea. Her work is in the following selected private collections: Ronald Abramson, Washington DC, Malcolm and Sue Knapp NYC, Robert Pfannebecker Lancaster, PA, Gail Brown Philadelphia, PA, Karen Johnson Boyd Racine, WI, and Jeffrey Brown/Kathy Corwin Milton, MA. Pieces within public collections include: Coopers Lybrant Corp. Columbus, OH, Wichita Museum of Art Wichita, KS, Monmouth Art Museum Lincroft, NJ, Fuller Craft Museum Brockton, MA, Museum of Art and Design New York, Daphne Farago Collection/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Helen Williams Drutt Collection/Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and National Museum of Modern Art - Kyoto, Japan.
artist name:
Chris Gusten
artist_nationality:
American
artist_vital dates:
1952 -
artist_biographical note:
Born in 1952 in Chicago, Illinois, I grew up in Los Angeles, California, where I was surrounded by ceramics from an early age. My family were part owners of several commercial whiteware ceramic manufacturing companies. Spending my childhood around ceramic factories, it was an obvious choice for me to go into the family business. After taking a pottery class at a local clay studio in Venice Beach while in high school, I went to the University of California, Irvine in 1970, where I studied biology and sociology. Because of my interest in clay, I also took an introductory studio ceramic course with John Mason. After a semester of college, I took a summer job at one of my father's factories, located in Pasadena, California. I decided that I wanted to continue working in the family business, so in the fall of 1970, when I was 18 years old, I quit school and became the factory foreman and manager at Wildwood Ceramics, which I ran until 1972. Two years of running a small commercial ceramics factory was an apprenticeship that has since proved invaluable in my career. During my time at Wildwood, I was still making wheel thrown pottery. Having decided that the studio side of ceramics was of greater interest to me, I left the factory in 1972 to attend the Kansas City Art Institute, from which I received my BFA in ceramics in 1975. I then went on to graduate school at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where I received my MFA in 1977. I established my first clay studio in 1977 in Guilford, Connecticut, with my sister-in-law Jane Gustin. We both shared the studio together for five years, where we each produced functional and sculptural pottery. During this time, I was invited to teach at Parson's School of Design in New York, where I was an instructor in the Crafts Department from 1978 to 1980. In 1980, I began teaching at the Program in Artisanry at Boston University, where I was Assistant Professor of Ceramics. In 1985, the Program in Artisanry moved to the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where I became Associate Professor of Ceramics and head of the ceramics program. Swain School subsequently merged in 1988 with Southeastern Massachusetts University, now the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. It was during my tenure at Boston University, in 1982, that I moved my studio from Connecticut to South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where I purchased and renovated an 8000 square foot building that was an old chicken farm. This building became both my studio and my living space. In 1986, I became involved with a small group of artists interested in saving and preserving an old brick factory in southeast Maine. With Peg Griggs' generous donation of the property, she, George Mason, Lynn Duryea and myself founded the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, in Newcastle, Maine. Watershed is now thriving, offering summer and winter residencies to artists from around the world. I became interested in the production of tile in 1994, when my wife and I began to design our new home. I made all of the tile for the new house, and out of that experience I started Gustin Ceramics Tile Production in 1996. The tile company offered me another way to work with ceramics, and has grown significantly in the last couple of years. The tile is represented nationally by architects, designers and tile showrooms. I was Associate Professor of Ceramics and the senior faculty of the ceramics program during my ten year tenure at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. After twenty years of teaching and working with hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, I retired from academia in the summer of 1999 to devote my full time and energies to my studio work and my tile production company.
artist name:
Barbara Goldberg
artist_nationality:
American
artist name:
Barbara Eckhardt
artist_nationality:
American
artist_vital dates:
1955 - 1996
artist_biographical note:
NEW BEDFORD -- Barbara Ann Eckhardt, 40, died at home Saturday, May 18, 1996. She was the daughter of Dr. Richard D. and Catherine (Shevchuk) Eckhardt of Iowa City, Iowa, and Rhinelander, Wis. Born in Iowa City, she attended the University of Iowa and received a bachelor of fine arts from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a masters of fine art from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She was an associate professor of textile design/fiber arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMass Dartmouth. She had previously taught at the Swain School of Design and Boston University. In 1984, she was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She taught workshops at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tenn.; the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, N.C.; the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine; and at universities and conferences throughout the United States. Ms. Eckhardt's fiber art has been featured in American Craft, Fiberarts Magazine, Art New England, Weavers Magazine, and The Boston Globe. She exhibited her work in Chicago; Portland, Ore.; the University of Colorado; Texas Women's University; Idaho State University; the University of Wisconsin; and other colleges and art museums in the United States. Her textiles are included in the collections of Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts; Spencer Museum of Art; University of Kansas at Lawrence; Kaiser Permanente, Denver; the U.S. Department of State; Robert Pfennebecker, Lancaster, Pa.; the University of Iowa; I.B.M., Boca Raton, Fla.; and in private collections. Ms. Eckhardt was a member of the American Craft Council, Surface Design Association, Textile Society of America and the Handweavers Guild of America. Survivors include her parents; three sisters, Dale Eva Eckhardt of Casper, Wyo., Catherine Bartholow of Elmhurst, Ill., and Jane McMullen of Bethesda, Md.; two nieces and four nephews. Arrangements were by Dartmouth Funeral Home, 230 Russells Mills Road, Dartmouth.
artist name:
Karon Doherty
artist_vital dates:
1941 - 1999
date_of_ record:
10/15/13
name_cataloger:
jtrinh