This past school year, Katherine Sullivan of the art faculty was so impressed by the final projects produced by her course’s 10 students that she believed that they merited additional attention, so she contacted the highly respected Lafontsee Gallery of Grand Rapids, Michigan, about exhibiting at least some of the pieces. The result was an exhibition at Lafontsee in May, complete with a formal opening reception.
“I’m really proud of the work that the students did,” said Sullivan, a professor of art — and herself an acclaimed painter — who has taught at Hope since 2003. “I’ve never pitched student work to a private gallery because that’s not what they do, but these works were so strong. They wrote back and said, ‘We’ll take all of them.’ That’s not a guarantee, ever.”
The Department of Art and Art History has long offered its own high-visibility opportunities for students who produce outstanding art to show their work in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center — such as the fall Juried Student Art Show that is open to everyone, and the spring Senior Art Show for graduating studio-art and art-history majors. That provides valuable experience, as do the variety of internships and other pre-professional placements students can pursue, but the Painting 2 students have had an entrée to the art world and its expectations that Sullivan noted that many young artists don’t receive.
“When you graduate in the visual arts, it’s very hard to get a studio and oftentimes that first professional achievement on the resumé post-graduation,” she said. “They’ve had the experience of having their work in a professional gallery, having to price it, writing an artist statement — all of them, with the exception of one, before their senior year.”
Rising senior Lily Leman of Oak Park, Illinois, who was one of the Painting 2 students, is looking forward to the career that she will pursue with her studio-art major after she graduates next year, and she’s making the most of her time at Hope to explore what that might become and to prepare. This summer, for example, she’s working as a gallery manager in Saugatuck, Michigan. She appreciates that she can include a professional exhibition credit among her accomplishments — and that Hope provided the chance for it.
“Having my work exhibited in a professional gallery was truly an honor, and an unexpected one,” Leman said. “I didn’t think I would have my work exhibited in a gallery not affiliated with Hope until later in my career. The experience serves as a reminder to me of how many incredible opportunities Hope will give you if you put in the work.”
Untitled
4 ft x 3 ft, oil on canvas
The Painting 2 assignment that led to the exhibition was a unique experience of its own. Dubbed “The Reduction Project,” it required each student to select a painting from early in the semester and deconstruct it through several subsequent iterations — zeroing in on one aspect of the work for one stage, for example, and even selecting a different medium for what would eventually become the second-to-last stage.
“For the final project, I asked them to go to that last piece and now make a two-dimensional, large-scale painting based on it,” Sullivan said. “It gets them to look critically at their work and to think conceptually about what’s essential to that painting. For example, the figure in a figurative painting may have become less important to the painting than the texture or the color.”
It was, to be sure, a challenging process, but it was also an effective one, since all 10 of the authentic essences that resulted earned a place in the Lafontsee show.
“The project threw me for a loop — in a good way, I would say,” Leman said. “It was really fascinating to see how with each stage of reduction it became more obvious what the painting’s focus was.”