UMass art department: nifty at 50

By Bonnie Wells
Staff Writer

Published on October 03, 2008

John Townsend remembers the day in 1960 when he got the first glimpse of his teaching quarters in the fledgling art department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

"Paul Norton took me over to the basement of French Hall, and there were two inches of water on the studio floor," he said. "[Norton] said, 'Don't you worry; we're going to have a new space in three years.' "

In fact it would be 14 years before the Fine Arts Center opened in 1974. Still, Townsend went on to teach sculpture at UMass for 40 years.

"To be here when the department had only four faculty members, and to be here when there were 35 - to watch it grow - was very exciting," he said last week at the opening of an exhibit at Herter Art Gallery celebrating the 50th anniversary of the studio art program.

Townsend is one of 38 present and former faculty members and students who have contributed works to the retrospective, which will be on view at the gallery in Herter Hall through Oct. 31. Standing sentry on a pedestal in the gallery's foyer is his three-foot-tall bronze model for the nine-foot-tall cast bronze sculpture "The Minuteman," which is on permanent display near the Campus Pond and library.

In his essay for the show's catalog, Herter Gallery Director Trevor Richardson corrals the highlights of the department's history and its relationship to the larger art world, starting in 1958, "in the immediate aftermath of abstract expressionism's heyday."

Paul Norton, then a professor of architectural history at UMass, was the first chair of the department, serving for a baker's dozen years. Though he died in 2007, he was on hand for the October, 2006, ground-breaking for the department's latest addition, the new Studio Arts Building, at the corner of North Pleasant Street and Infirmary Way, close to the Fine Arts Center. A picnic and tours of the building were included in the anniversary celebration on Sept. 20.

"The new building really recenters UMass for preeminence in the region for the study and practice of art," said Bill Oedel, who is just rounding his first year as chair of the department.

"Students have been scattered all over campus," he explained, "but now you can walk down the hallway, and on one side there are faculty studios, the other side student studios. There can be a lot of cross-fertilization, interdisciplinary work and talking together. It's wonderful."

"For faculty it's the greatest thing that ever happened," echoed Nancy LaPointe, a 24-year faculty member. "When you come and go, you stop and talk."

Still, she says there was something special about the old quarters. "The entire Marshall Building was sculpture," she said. It was funky, but we were never shabby. We were gritty, and there was a powerful amount of studio outpouring."

LaPointe has contributed two 4-foot-tall mixed-media chess pieces to the show, part of her monumental project-in-progress that will feature 64 pieces and a video of a match in progress. She expects to mount the show in the atrium of the new building this winter.

"The idea of games has always intrigued me," she said. "If you want to go to war, but you don't want to get hurt, games are [it]."

LaPlante's close colleague Pat Lasch is represented in the show by "Wedding Tower," a mixed-media piece from 1978 suggestive of a wedding cake with feathered accents. Other works by current faculty range from a colorful and whimsical porcelain "Teapot" by Frank Ozereko to Michael Coblyn's "Strange Fruit Revisited," a charcoal, watercolor and pigment print triptych, depicting powerful images drawn from the most heinous chapter of American history.

Celebrated watercolorist Richard Yarde is showing "Kismet #2," a large enigmatic piece with a dominant patchwork design, punctuated by ladders, organic forms and snakes. He said it's part of a new series based on folk tales and games, growing out of his experience with tai chi, "with the snakes as stand-ins for body movement."

The decade of the 1960s, which saw a rapid expansion in the size of the art department and the studio art program, is represented by works by Leonel Gongorra, John Grillo, John Roy, James Hendricks, printmaker Fred Becker and Paul Berube, among others, and the painter Chuck Close, who taught in the department from 1965-67.

Perhaps the most seasoned contributor to the show, and in contention for most humorous, is Walter Kamys, who, at "a kick-ass 91 - you can quote me on that," says he's discovering a whole new world in his daily painting, by working in a limited palette of black and white these days. Kamys' 24-year career on faculty included 10 years as head of acquisitions. He's represented in the show by "The Seasons (Spring)" an intriguing abstract acrylic on canvas.

"I think this exhibition is quite terrific," said George Wardlaw, who began his 17-year tenure as chair of the department in 1971. "It echoes one of the strengths of this department, and that is the variety of faculty and the variety of work. The exhibit is a perfect example of that."

"Nowhere Else But Here: Studio Arts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1958-2008" is on view at Herter Art Gallery at 125a Herter Hall, west of the Fine Arts Center at UMass through Oct. 31. Gallery hours are Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sun: 1-4 p.m. For more information, call the gallery at (413) 545-0976.