What Do Art Professors Do When They’re Not Teaching?

Ten Ithaca College faculty members will display their work in The Other Side of Us, an exhibition that will open in Ithaca College’s Handwerker Gallery September 2 and run through October 8.

"My colleagues are educators by profession, but artists by vocation," says Harry McCue, chairman of the Department of Art. "Although we work together in teaching, we draw, paint, print, and sculpt alone, so it is always a delight for us to see what’s new and exciting from our colleagues. The Other Side of Us is an invitation to the general public to share that excitement."

There will be an opening reception at the gallery on Thursday, September 2, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The event, like the exhibit itself, is free and open to the public.

The Handwerker Gallery is located on the ground floor of the Caroline Werner Gannett Center on the Ithaca College campus. Hours during exhibitions are Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. (Thursday until 9:00 p.m.); Saturday, 10:00 a.m.– 2:00 p.m.; and Sunday, 2:00–6:00 p.m.

The Other Side of Us offers exposure to several media, including sculpture, sound and video installation, performance works, silk screen on wood and plaster, and charcoal drawings on paper. What the works have in common, though, is discovering the far-reaching implications in so-called everyday things.

Preserves, for example, a sculpture by lecturer Bill Hastings, is more than the presentation of milkweed seedpods and galvanized steel wire.

"I incorporate common agricultural materials into forms inspired by stories concerning the transformation of the small-scale family farm over the last century," Hastings says. "I’m intrigued by the increasing unfamiliarity with our country’s founding industry and developing misconceptions. Currently, my interest is in my perception and how it changes based on readings from early agrarian ephemera."

The work of adjunct assistant professor Rob Licht examines the influences of landscape on perception and culture.

"My sculptures address the power of certain landscape features to evoke memory, emotion, and anthropomorphic physicality," Licht says. "Landscape Nostalgia, for example, a steel sculpture that’s displayed in this exhibit, arose out of a longing the hills between my home and Utica evoked in me. The steeply rolling hills and weathered clapboard houses stirred memories of growing up in a place that is both blessed with the beauty of its rural geography and cursed with an economic downslide that has rural isolation at its core."

In addition to McCue, Hastings, and Licht, The Other Side of Us features work by Joy Adams, David Estes, Raymond Ghirardo, Bruce North, Scott Smith, Susan Weisend, and Megan Roberts of the Department of Television-Radio.

For more information call the gallery at 274-3018 or contact Jelena Stojanovic, gallery director and assistant professor of art history, at 274-3548.