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Art Gallery Bids Farewell to Student Assistants

New Academic Year Schedule for Art Gallery

Purchase Prize for Senior Art Exhibition Awarded to Jessica Wood

Art Gallery Bids Farewell to Student Assistants

Mariah Sawyer wore many hats during her four years with the Art Gallery as a curatorial assistant. She graduated in May with a BA in Printmaking. After working in her hometown of Ithaca, New York this summer Mariah headed to the Southwest US and is now working at Pentimento, an art gallery/antique shop in Bisbee, Arizona.

Becca Baird was the Art Gallery’s webmaster last year, and as part of her senior thesis, she curated the main gallery exhibition Informing the Eye: Approaches to Abstract Art. Becca graduated in May with a BA in Integrative Studies. After a European tour this summer she began working as an Assistant to the Finance Manager at Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

During the Fall Semester 1999 two other student curatorial assistants are participating in the College’s study abroad programs. Katie Perry is in London and Alicia Grogan Brown is taking part in the Guadalahara program.

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New Academic Year Schedule for Art Gallery

The position of director and curator of Guilford College Art Gallery was recently increased from part time 12 months to full time for the academic year. The gallery’s office and main gallery will be closed during the summers from mid-May until the first week in August. Atrium galleries and vitrines will continue to display selections from the permanent collection through the summer months and will be open during Hege Library hours, which will vary weekly depending on summer school sessions. Those needing assistance with the Gallery during the summer are asked to contact the Academic Dean’s Office.

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Purchase Prize for Senior Art Exhibition Awarded to Jessica Wood

The Guilford College Senior Thesis Purchase Award, established in 1998 by an anonymous donor in honor of the art department faculty, has been awarded this year to Jessica Wood. At the donor's request, the selection of the award-winning work was made by Theresa Hammond, director & curator of the Art Gallery, and Roy Nydorf, chair of the art department. The award is presented for an outstanding work of art in the exhibition, which then becomes part of the permanent collection of the Art Gallery.

Wood, who is from Arlington,Virginia, received the 1999 award for her painting titled, "The Waiting Room." An oil on wood panel, the painting is a surrealistic vision of a faceless woman seated on a staircase in a dim tunnel with empty bottles near her feet. Another work by Wood, an etching completed as part of the 1997 Etching Class Portfolio, is already in the Gallery’s permanent collection. Jessica majored in Art with a concentration in painting, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the college this spring. She is now living and working in California.

"It is always difficult to select only one award-winning piece because the quality of works in the exhibition is so high," said Hammond. "There were many fine works that I’d be honored to have in the Gallery’s collection. I am grateful we have this opportunity to recognize the excellence of our own students' accomplishments."

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Recent Acquistions

Guilford College Art Gallery has added more than one–hundred works of art to its permanent collection through the generosity of fifteen donors. The new acquisitions include prints by 20th century masters such as Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Alex Katz, Jack Levine, Joan Miro, Karel Appel, Paul Jacoulet, and Georges Rouault; photographs by David Spear of Madison, North Carolina, and by the late Merry Moor Winnett of Greensboro; and a massive contemporary sculpture, carved from the trunk of a mudnazi tree, by South African artist Noria Mabasa. Artist May Stevens, who visited Guilford College in December 1998 in conjunction with the Crossing the Threshold exhibition, has given the College one of her recent limited edition color lithographs titled, “Waiting.” Two etchings by Harold Altman, created while he was artist-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the sixties, were also contributed by another donor.

In addition to Spear and Winnett, other artists with ties to North Carolina whose work has been given to the College include Elliott Daingerfield, Bruce Carter, Ann Carter Pollard, Maud Gatewood, Don Sexauer, Michael Voors, Cary Wilson, Tom Grubbs, Herb Jackson, Brett Mullinix, Frank Faulkner, Jack Berkman, Austin Brown, Edgar Buonagurio and Julius J. Lankes.

Gifts of art were contributed by artists, former faculty members, alumni, and Friends of the Gallery. Selections from these recent acquisitions are now on display in the vitrines and atrium galleries of Guilford College Art Gallery.

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