See inside for...
Interview with Rhona Bitner (p. 4) A Look at LIFE (p. 12) Coloring Contest (p. 15) . . . and more!
of contents The CollegeTable Product ...............................................2 An Extension of the Hand .................................4 From the Collection .................................................8 Visual Mixtape ..........................................................10 A Look at LIFE .......................................................12 Wellin Coloring Contest .....................................14 Molding the Arts at Kirkland College ...16 From the Collection ..............................................20 Wellin in the World ..............................................22 Important Dates ......................................................24 Captions ..........................................................................25
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Fall always brings the feeling of new
beginnings. The start of the school year, new commitments, new exhibitions, new projects and hopes for the year to come. Yet, as hot summer nights give way to chilly mornings, sweater weather comes creeping in and days get shorter, fall can often feel nostalgic. Nostalgia slips in sweetly, changing the colors of the leaves to deep ambers and rusty browns, making us feel like cozying up on the couch with a new book or magazine. Here at Collection, we wanted to celebrate that feeling of nostalgia, especially for our 5th edition. And no artistic medium captures nostalgia the way photography does. Inspired by our current exhibition, Rhona Bitner: Resound, a photographic tribute to the art of performance and performance spaces, we wanted to capture the memory saved in a photograph of a physical space. To do this, we looked at previous articles written about Hamilton and Kirkland students in LIFE magazine. We found comfort and joy in the way their experiences mirror our own, seeing the memories they made in a space we currently inhabit. We interviewed Kirkland arts alumnæ, paying homage to their time at Kirkland and learning about how each era brought new changes to our historic school. We looked at objects from the Wellin’s collection that link us to the past, either through ancestral memory or through the persistence of ongoing movements. We reflected on the work of artists in the Wellin’s collection, and researched the artistic innovation they undertook in other pursuits. We listened to music full of memory, including songs that pulled on our heartstrings and some that just made us want to dance. We hope you all enjoy this blast from the past as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Stay warm!
Best, Hannah, Sydney, Miriam, Holly, Celia, and Sae Special thanks to Rhona Bitner, Nadya Bair, Jeremy Katz, and Marjorie Hurley
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THE COLLEGE PRODUCT
Writer
Big Man
Pre-Medical
Sydney Piccoli, 19, of Scarsdale, N.Y., is a staff writer for Collection, the Wellin’s student run magazine. A sophomore – like the one other shown on this page – Piccoli majors in Art History and Literature and is also a Wellin docent. She also writes for the Spectator, plays on the Women’s Club Rugby Team, serves as Chabad Communication Leader, and interns through the COOP Service Program. After a hitch of solo traveling, she hopes to go into writing. “Go find some joy in the world today, bugs!”
As Chief Layout editor of Collection Magazine, Wellin docent, Publicity Chair of Hamilton College’s Campus Activity Board, Jan admit, and sailing extraordinaire, Celia Finn Dorsey, 21, of Dedham, M.A., is acknowledged the biggest man on campus. Majoring in Art History and Studio Art, she is undecided on her future but thinks she may take up a job, then go to graduate school and wind up somewhere abroad.
Miriam (“Mir”) Lerner, 21, of Lancaster, P.A., typical of countless other pre-med students at the college, came to Hamilton specifically to gain a rounded liberal education before going on after graduation to specialized med school work. A Wellin docent, Collection staff writer, and writing center tutor, she is majoring in Art History and is also on the Pre-Med track. After graduation, she hopes to become a pediatrician.
Scholar
Organizer
Activities Man
A member of Board Game Club since freshman year, Holly Mirales of Chalfont, Pa., 19, ranks some unknown place in her class. She is a Geoscience and Hispanic Studies major, a Wellin docent, and has applied herself towards writing for Collection and the Communications and Marketing Office. After getting her bachelors, she intends to go into the field of geology, whose minerals and subduction zones she likes especially.
Sarah Helen (“Sae”) Gleba , 21, of West Roxbury, M.A., standing by a community chalk drawing in the Wellin, has served as a staff writer for Collection magazine since its inception in 2021. Gleba works as a Wellin docent and Student Liaison to the Wellin Museum, responsible for planning on campus events for students and clubs. An Art History and Religious Studies double major, she plans to go into museum education.
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Although academic life at Hamilton makes participation in extracurricular activities difficult, Hannah Elizabeth Dillon, 21, of Basking Ridge, N.J., is an exception to this rule. Along with writing for the Collection Magazine, working as a Wellin docent, and education assistant for the Wellin Museum, Dillon plays on the field hockey team and works at the mail center. A Literature major and Art and Art History minor, Dillon plans to become a teacher.
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Photo by John Bentham
An Extension of the Hand The Photography of Rhona Bitner By Holly Mirales and Sydney Piccoli
Rhona Bitner is a New York City and Paris based photographer who uses film to explore the world of performances and theater. Using compilations of photographs, she dissects the absence and presence of spaces, inviting the audience into the scene. Bitner began photographing at six years old. Even early on, she focused on producing collections of photographs. She recalled, “There were no individual images. Everything had a relationship. And there was always a significant grouping of images.” She produced her first serious body of work as a college student on her first trip to Paris. The city enamored Bitner with its historic heritage and vibrant artistry. The gardens of Versailles, designed by André Le Nôtre, especially enraptured her, drawing her into their hedges and elaborate constructions. “The gardens were structured, they were
linear, they were geometric. There was this sense of direction. It wasn’t nature,” she said. “Unlike a forest it was all sort of choreographed. I’m a city kid. I don’t know much about nature. So, it was nice to be in this pristine structure where I didn’t have to worry about sitting in the grass or climbing a tree.” Enchanted by the Versailles gardens, Bitner delved deeply into the Le Nôtre’s work. She traveled across France on a pilgrimage of sorts to see every one of his gardens, even endeavoring to visit those privately owned. The photographs she made at each garden became a catalog of spaces, the first of its kind in her work — but certainly far from the last. Of the project, Bitner remarked, “It was me peering into these giant, very grand, very elegant, very structured spaces. And I think that’s where my way of seeing started to form.” Upon her return to the United States, Bitner tried to replicate the essence of the Le Nôtre gardens
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collection but with American monuments as the focal spaces. However, she struggled to create the cohesive images she imagined at these places. She explained, “I tried to figure out the choreography that we have around these spaces that we go to with some kind of respect or history or seeking knowledge. And we don’t have that. It’s a shame.” Shortly after, Bitner earned a residency in Wyoming at the Ucross Foundation. Her residency opened up her world to new landscapes utterly unlike to those she had ever seen before. Having spent most of her life in cities, and only venturing westwards to Los Angeles, she had never before conceived of the vastness of the American west. “It kind of blew my mind,” she said. “Those huge spaces. You could see weather coming a day ahead of time. The sky was gigantic. I spent the entire time watching light and learning how light can be represented on film. I was photographing every hour of the day from all around, seeing the relationship between light and dark, and the foreground, the background, and the sky. I was teaching myself how to see dimensions and color.” These photographs, along with the Le Nôtre
series, were a way for Bitner to “build muscle” photographically, strengthening her skills in color, perspective, geometry, and representation. They prepared her for the day she serendipitously stumbled into Ringling Brothers, inspiring her first series focused on the circus and the performing arts — a subject that would become a hallmark of her career. Through the photographs from Circus span multiple circus companies across multiple continents, from the Ringling Brothers to the Shanghai Circus, Bitner reflected specifically on the distinct and special character of the European circus. Unlike the grand “spectacle” of the defunct American circuses, European circuses are viewed and cherished as an artform, allowing them to continue living. She elaborated, “At circuses in Europe, you’re welcomed in, you can see yourself in them, and the same with all the theaters [in the Stage series] that were gracious enough to let me photograph them. It’s just a different approach. I feel more comfortable as an artist there and more validated as an artist by the culture. There’s more official support for being an
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artist in Europe than there is here.” only be achieved because of the silver in the film. A reason for this discrepancy, Bitner posits, is “You can’t do that with digital because the physics of the relative age of European society versus American light on silver is no longer present,” Bitner said. society. She said, “You live differently there. People However, to be a film photographer is to everything down be a practitioner of all the time. It’s a dying art. more respectful of The lab Bitner what came before, collaborated with and that’s a much for twenty years older society. We’re to make her prints very young, and closed due to America is all about COVID. During the youth, right? All middle of her Listen about discovery and series, her film was newness. Whereas discontinued, so in Europe, history she had to switch has more gravitas.” to a new one and Bitner learn its palette and also observed a intricacies. Bitner difference between explained, “My tools the pace of life in are disappearing Paris and New York and the tools are City. The American the extension of my lifestyle is a rat race, hand and eye.” always rushing to Despite the next thing to try her fondness for to get ahead and film, Bitner has saturated with a “go still adapted her get ‘em” mentality. To this outlook, Bitner questions series Pointe, Bitner makes photos of ballerinas’ used “where are we going, and what are we getting?” toe shoes in which every detail is visible, down to the Conversely, her experiences in Paris reflect smallest fibers of fabric. a slower paced mentality, where people are more “I used a digital camera tethered to a likely to stop and take their time to enjoy the simpler computer and needed 70 images at minutely pleasures of life. She said, “You meet somebody, you different focal length in order to make one image.” have a coffee or a glass of wine, and you talk about Bitner said. “So you can imagine what a big leap it ideas.” was for me to go from analog photography — film As Bitner began photographing before the in a camera — to that super-digital set up. But it advent of advanced digital photography, film has allowed me to achieve the image I was hoping to been her medium of choice for most of her career, make. That is what it is all about and not stubbornly first out of necessity but later due to its properties. holding onto technology.” She said, “I like the physicality of film. I like the fact “There is a difference in the print quality that if I make a photograph of you, it’s the light that between the Listen and Stage images, which bounces off of your face that exposes the film in the shimmer and the shoes, which don’t,” Bitner camera and the same film initiates the print.” continued. “But now, they mimic the silk on the shoe “There’s a very different way of seeing pixels itself so the subject matter lends itself.” versus grain,” she continued. “Grain looks like fairy The process of photography, whether film dust.” or digital, includes the faster, instinctual mode of There are also some techniques that only fieldwork and the slower, pensive times of editing. work with film photography. For example, Bitner These of these two opposing modus operandi are creates a metallic shimmer on her prints, which can necessary for sustainable photography, in Bitner’s
7 opinion, as the taking of the photographs provides excitement and the editing a respite. “When I photograph the music venues or the theaters, I’m not alone and in many of those instances I had to hurry. I was given five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Even when I’m on the road going from point A to point B and I’ve got four venues to visit that day, so you’re on always,” Bitner explained. “And then at a certain point you just implode. I’m all alone in the studio and it’s slow and contemplative.” I was given five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Even when I’m on the road going from point A to point B and I’ve got four venues to shoot that day, you’re on,” Bitner explained. “And then at a certain point I’m all alone in the studio and it’s slow and contemplative.” She continued, “But there’s nothing more energizing than waking up at five in the morning
Photo by Heather Ainsworth
to catch a seven o’clock flight to Saint Louis to photograph the stage at Sumner High School where Chuck Berry was a student and then catching the plane to come back or being in Mississippi and driving from point A to point B to point C and meeting new people at each stop nd shaking their hands. It’s like a heightened oxygen level.” The fruits of Bitner’s field work and studio editing are on display in the Wellin as her first solo exhibition Rhona Bitner: Resound. The show is the culmination of thirty years of labor and passion. To young artists, she said, “YYou have to have a reason to want to get up in the morning. Being an artist is hard. Making a living as an artist is hard. If you love it and it’s like breathing to you, go for it. If what you’re doing feeds you, you’re on the right track.”
By Syndey Piccoli
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the feminist movement was divided between those who perceived pornography as an expression of one’s sexuality and those who believed it propelled violence and abuse at the expense of women. Anti-Pornography Demonstration, Times Square, New York City, USA, a gelatin silver print produced by Leonard Freed in 1979 that resides in the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art in Clinton, New York, demonstrates the latter viewpoint. Leonard Freed, who initially wanted to be a painter, discovered a passion for photography in 1953. He spent the next few decades documenting racial violence and social injustices across the globe before joining the notable Magnum Photos agency in 1972. Freed’s photograph depicts the activist group Women Against Pornography (WAP) protesting in New York City’s Times Square on October 20, 1979. Bella Abzug, a political activist, and Andrea Dworkin, a writer, hold a banner that reads “WOMEN AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY / STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN. They are surrounded by women of diverse ages and races, conveying the universal nature of the anti-pornography movement. Their signs assert that pornography is the antonym of love and the synonym of violence, building on the antipornography movement. The Times Square in Freed’s artwork is not the hub of tourists and kitschy stores we now know. Before Mayor Rudolph Giuliani reconstructed Times Square in the 1990s, it was home to numerous strip clubs, erotic merchandise shops, and pornographic theaters. Out of dozens of potential locations, the activists selected Times Square for their protest in order to spark a larger conversation around prostitution, sex work, and the objectification of women. Freed perhaps intentionally includes two billboards, one advertising Oh! Calcutta!, an avantgarde revue that was controversial for integrating nude and sex-related sketches into its performance, and the other advertising Kentucky Fried Chicken. The advertisement for Oh! Calcutta!, establishes the scope of what the women are protesting against. The advertisement also serves as a commentary on the intersection between art and pornography. Is pornography art? What is pornography’s place in mainstream media? Does it even have a place? The Kentucky Fried Chicken ad, which employs racist stereotypes, establishes a more distant relationship from the protest. Is the photographer comparing the KFC advertisement to Oh! Calcutta! advertisement suggesting they are both stitched into the fabric of American society, one no different than the other? Is Freed commenting on how pornography might pose a danger to impressionable children? Is he prompting the audience to question how race plays a role in marketable media, if at all? Freed uses art as a vehicle for exploring controversial topics, like the heavily contested topic of pornography, that still affect society today. By examining Freed’s photograph first through a historical lens, one comes to understand the building blocks for the anti-pornography movement. With a contemporary eye, the viewer is left questioning which elements of the photograph, depicting a past event, have been carried into the present. What has changed and what has stayed the same?
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Photo by Janelle Rodriguez
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By Sae Gleba
Daniel Longwell and Life education editor Oliver Many think that print media is a dying art. When we go to read about the latest celeb gossip or Allen connected with David H. Beetle, Director of the Bureau of Public Relations at Hamilton College on current events, our first impulse is to pull out our the possibility of producing an article on Hamilton, phone or turn on the TV. Yet, print magazines are deeply ingrained in American visual culture, from the which would come to be titled, fittingly, “Pure celebrity gossip articles of People that litter the floors Liberal Arts.” Thanks to meticulous records currently of nail salons, to the editions of National Geographic housed in the College’s archive, we can trace the communication between both parties, and, as Allen that line home libraries, to academic, scientific and journalistic works that inform professionals around wrote to Beetle, “we are quite sure now to do our story on Hamilton some time this fall. We have a very the world. Magazines, as a medium, offer a more definite plan of how to go about it – it will probably permanent record, bridging the gap between the fleeting and constant nature of e-news notifications be extremely subjective and impressionistic and involve very candid photography.” And that it was — and the permanent, resolute nature of books. To here at Collection we have chosen two pages from the modern viewer of an old edition, magazines the April 17, 1953 edition that show that “subjective,” allow for a window into history where the viewer “impressionistic,” and “candid” view of Hamilton can see a snippet of a time past. With the dawn of College in the early 1950s, back when it was still an the halftone, a reprographic technique that allows for photographs to be published in print media, the all men’s college confined to one side of College Hill Road. Check out pages 2 and 13 to get a glimpse! popularity of illustrated magazines skyrocketed in In 1972, Georgina (Georgie) Silk, daughter the late 19th century. Photography became a central feature to American print media, and magazines such of George Silk, photojournalist at Life for 30 years, graduated as a member of the charter class at as Vogue and Life became widespread sources of news, information and entertainment. Life magazine Kirkland College. Both devoted photographers, the duo faithfully captured Kirkland’s 1972 graduation, emerged as the preeminent general interest George making color photographs and Georgina photography-based magazine in the 1930s. It was a making black and white photographs. Graduation highly influential magazine that communicated its in 1972 was a far cry from the way it is today – content, politics, science, fashion, entertainment and more primarily through the use of photographs, celebrated with exclusively student speakers, balloon arches, a renaissance fair, bagpipes, unicorns and allowing the readers then and now a seemingly objective view into the goings-on of the United States red cabbages. It was truly fantastical and celebratory, and thanks to the photographs of the Silks may now and world. be remembered long after the party concluded. In Summer 1952, Life editor and founder
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1. Color and design your own Wellin building below or use the digital version linked in the QR Code. 2. Submit via the form in the QR code. 3. Have a chance to win and have your design turned into a sticker!
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Photos from LIFE Magazine, 1972.
17 existed for only a brief 10 years, its impact has been significant and enduring. Heather Saunders Estes, class of 1974 and ceramics concentrator, shared their stories from their time on the Hill and how the gradeless experimentation of Kirkland’s academics encouraged them to take risks and think independently and creatively. She described Kirkland as “the best of both worlds” where she could take classes at both schools and the Hamilton men did the same. She recalled enjoying literature classes at Hamilton with her nowhusband and having “a heck of a good time.” As a member of one of the beginning classes at Kirkland, Heather was responsible for the direction of her education and building opportunities that didn’t previously exist. To them, “being a group of women early on in Kirkland’s life, that was important. I wanted to come to a school that was trying to figure out what it wanted to do and how it wanted to design itself and be a part of that process.” Heather told us the story of one of their painting classes, in which they had the opportunity to take creative liberties. Heather was primarily a sculptor and found the class to be difficult, so she proposed to her professor that she complete all the assignments by using fabric instead of paint. Their experimentation with fabric and fiber arts began a few semesters prior, during irkland College was chartered in 1965 in Clinton their winter project, a month in January between NY, as an all-women’s undergraduate liberal arts institution. Kirkland opened in 1968 under President semesters dedicated to independent student projects. Heather’s professor, though initially Samuel Babbitt, on its own campus adjacent to Hamilton College. Kirkland was built to complement skeptical, accepted and the project turned out to Hamilton College through its class offerings, student be successful, inspiring her continued exploration of fiber arts within her senior project. body, and arts-based curriculum. It served as a Heather attributes the flexibility of the creative and supportive space that encouraged self-guided curriculum and her development of individual expression for women, while offering advocacy skills to her success in the working world possibilities for artistic discovery to the neighboring after college. Hamilton community. Additionally, Kirkland “I felt in charge of my own education and worked to shape discourse and dialogue between that I was able to design things that I wanted its students, the students of Hamilton College, to learn and be supported by professors and and the overarching communities encompassed experiment with both ideas and different ways in both colleges. We spoke with two Kirkland about going about doing it. They didn’t have a alumnæ, Heather Saunders Estes ’74 (she/they) path to anyone getting art education certification and Carol Friscia ’77 (she/her) who shared with so I had to figure out how to do that. I figured out a us their experiences studying the arts at Kirkland, way to overlap my masters in social work and art and recounted the multiple ways in which Kirkland continues to shape their lives today. Though Kirkland education. Learning how to make a proposal to the
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18 Carol Friscia ’77 described Kirkland as an people with the authority, I used this concept later “innovative, experimental place.” Rather than in life.” focusing on grades and requirements, Kirkland While at Kirkland, Heather volunteered on campus with Planned Parenthood, eventually offered women a chance to discover their passions and explore them. Professors, with whom many becoming a board member of the Utica branch. students held strong relationships, provided After college, they earned their Master’s degrees in social work and administration from Syracuse. regular evaluations with feedback meant to support and encourage each student. Kirkland was built She eventually moved to California with her husband and continued an interest in reproductive intentionally as a place of dialogue. The dorms and sexual health. Starting as Clinic Director and themselves were designed to have seminar rooms, and professors often had apartments in students’ Financial Manager in a Free Youth Clinic, she was hired as Executive Director of what became Planned dorms. These features exemplified the emphasis Kirkland placed on community and conversation, Parenthood: Northern California. After 37 years as a CEO Heather has returned to art, writing and and on learning through and with others. In discussing Kirkland’s atmosphere, Carol declared publishing poetry. Kirkland’s impact and artistic empowerment still resonates with them long after “We were all different. We were each supported in following our own unique paths.” graduation. The lack of grades and quantitative metrics “When I retired from being a healthcare CEO encouraged a community in which women worked I knew what I wanted to do was go back to doing collaboratively, rather than being in competition some art. So I wanted to go back (or forward) to what I was doing at Kirkland and what I did there with each other. Carol was a visual arts concentrator made it possible for me to not feel like an imposter at Kirkland, though she explained that Kirkland offered their students many liberties in their choices and allowed me to say ‘sure! I’ll write a book and we will figure out how to do this’ And also that I felt of classes and in the ways that they defined a concentration. Many students had interdisciplinary comfortable switching art genres to do poetry. I thought about Kirkland a lot as I started to do more art.”
Photos Courtesy of Heather Estes
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concentrations, and students took advantage of the expectations. She realized that “It’s really ok to do open curriculum and “freedom of choice” to study a things and make things. I make paintings and I’m variety of diverse subjects. Within her concentration, making them for myself.” She no longer evaluates Carol focused on figure painting, portraiture, and her own art based on others’ appreciation or printmaking, but she additionally studied Russian approval. Much like at Kirkland, she relies on her art at Hamilton College, taking advantage of the link as an expression of herself and doesn’t implement between the two colleges. Carol explained that confining metrics to her understanding and valuation she chose Kirkland because of the comfort of the of art. conditions it offered. As an all-women’s college, Though Kirkland no longer stands as it provided Carol the opportunity to find her own the all-women, creative hub it used to be, its voice, and gave her the space and time with which to influences on Hamilton’s campus remain. The speak. She had previously “often felt overshadowed emphasis on an open-curriculum, the possibility by some of the students, and a lot of them were boys, to create interdisciplinary majors, and the tightwho did all the talking in class.” At Kirkland, she felt knit community between students and faculty all comfortable, and was encouraged to express herself stem from Kirkland’s creative vision for education. in a multitude of ways, including through her art. Hamilton’s campus is composed of imagery from After graduation, Carol worked for three Kirkland, including the Kirkland arch, McEwen years at the Sotheby’s Auction House in New York, rock swing, and “dark side” Brutalist architecture. particularly engaging with modern and impressionist Kirkland’s presence is seen and felt, and should paintings. She later moved to Doyle Auction House, be brought to light to recognize and celebrate the where she continued working for several years history of what today is Hamilton. until she decided to devote herself completely to her family and her art. In recent years, Carol has continued making, from landscape and figure painting to rag rugs, dinners, and environments. She is also a member of the Wellin Museum’s Advisory Committee. She described the changes in her art making processes mostly as changes to her own
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By Miriam Lerner
Rose B. Simpson, a mixed-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, makes ceramics to heal the damages of “objectification, stereotyping and the disempowering detachment of our creative selves.” (Finkel 2022, 1) She works primarily with clay, a material she feels she inherited from her ancestors, and a material that she feels belongs in her family like a family member. Simpson focuses intently on her process, placing importance on the ways in which she makes art rather than on what her result should look like. Simpson’s Take A Seat explores the ways in which making art can be an exploration of family, ancestry, and home, themes Simpson values in this postmodern and postcolonial time. The title is layered; it questions the representation of marginalized and colonized people in art, while interrogating their role in contemporary socio-political structures. Take A Seat offers the chance for its central figure to rest, a motif uncommon when representing marginalized groups in the United States, who instead are often depicted in laboring roles. Conversely, Take A Seat alludes to Langston Hughes’ concept of notions of “taking a seat at the table,” in which the “seat” grants inclusion and equality in larger socio-political spheres. In Hughes’ poem “I, Too,” he writes “Tomorrow/I’ll be at the table/ When company comes,” a hope that is carried on in Simpson’s work. The clay figure, which she designates an “ancestor,” is a method of recognition and representation of its home. Made from clay taken directly from the Earth, and then molded by hand, this ancestor provokes viewers to consider the question of home, of belonging, and of our relationship to the natural world. This ancestor dons clay earrings, another nod to the significance of clay in the home: food was grown from clay, houses were built in clay, and dinner bowls and plates were molded from clay. The ancestor in Take A Seat is speckled with plus signs and crosses, the former a representation of the cardinal directions, and thus symbolic of a journey, and the latter a sign of protection. Through these marks, Simpson cares for and fortifies her figure, showing her personal connection and the emotion present in her work. Simpson’s figure is meant to encompass multiple aspects of the human experience. Contrasting with the Western ideals of man found in classical sculpture, Simpson centers her depiction on feelings of intimacy and vulnerability. Her ancestor is fragile, both in material and in her entrapment. Take A Seat places value on the many layers that make up a person, such as their family and ancestry, their home, and their modern existence. Each added layer of clay incorporates an additional aspect of identity, ultimately shaping the figure into a complex and truthful representation of humanity.
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Photos Courtesy of Monument Lab
By Sae Gleba
An exploration of some recent endeavors of artists in the Wellin’s collection. Beyond Granite, Pulling Together: New Perspectives on the National Mall This past summer, three Wellin artists, Derrick Adams, Wendy Red Star, and vanessa german were invited as a group of six for an innovative and interactive exhibition by The Monument Lab on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Titled Beyond Granite, Pulling Together: New Perspectives on the National Mall, this exhibition was a collaborative project to tell the stories of the myriad of American identities not reflected on the National Mall, seeking answers to the question “What stories remain untold on the National Mall?”
Derrick Adams America’s Playground Derrick Adams is an American multi media artist working in painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and public installation. His work explores public spaces through the lens of the Black American experience, that of joy and humor while also reflecting the painful history of systemic and institutional racism and discrimination. For Beyond Granite, Pulling Together, Adams constructed America’s Playground, a fully functional playground divided by a billboardsized image of Edgewood Park in Washington DC, taken days after the Supreme Court ruling which declared the segregation of schools, and thus their playgrounds, unconstitutional. Adams desired to create a space of social engagement and tension focused on the idea of play. America’s Playground is works on three levels, one although inherently political it uses the backdrop of young people playing and as such it also becomes also a place of sentimental remembrance and racial injustice reflection for adults.
At the Wellin: Silver Lining, 2022
Wendy Red Star The Soil You See…
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Wendy Red Star is an Apsáalooke (Crow) artist based in Portland, Oregon, working with photography, installations, and sculpture. Her work focuses on her own cultural identity and experience as an Indigenous woman. She confronts depictions of Indigenous culture and peoples in pop culture, and she reexamines cultural artifacts and photographs as a means to rectify the flawed depiction of Indigenous heritage and identity. Red Star encourages the viewers of the The Soil You See… to consider the span of history of the land they live on, reaching beyond the eurocentric narratives surrounding the Colonial era. Her artwork is centered on a large-scale thumbprint, modeled after her own, depicted in red and consisting of the names of chiefs in Red Star’s community, encouraging the viewer to juxtapose these names with those seen on the declaration of independence.
At the Wellin: Accession (porfolio), 2019 Four Generations, 2021 Photo Courtesy of Monument Lab
vanessa german Of Thee We Sing vanessa german is an American artist, activist, and performer, based in Pittsburgh. Her artistic practice seeks to model new means of social healing through confronting historical institutions of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir. german’s artmaking is an act of restorative justice, dismantling the emotional and spiritual weight imposed by the multi-generational oppression of African American communities. Her artistic mission is embodied in her contribution to Beyond Granite, her multimedia construction Of Thee We Sing, a nine foot tall steel, resin, and archival photographs likeness of Marian Anderson at her iconic 1939 Easter Sunday performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The sculpture presents a motif of togetherness and unity through the open palms of the likeness and the flowering hands grasping beneath, yet reflects a painful history – at the time of the 1939 concert, the capital was still racially segregated. As german remarks, “I want to see the figure of a Black woman in sculpture at the Mall…something more joyful than commemoration: an intimation to take up space.” Photo Courtesy of Monument Lab
At the Wellin: i will never smile again, 2016
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Upcoming Events Tuesday, October 17th: Wellin Open Studio, 4:00-6:00 PM Friday, October 20th: Art Yoga, 4:00-5:00 PM Saturday, October 21st: Wellin Kids “Make A Clay Family,” 2:00-3:00 PM Thursday, October 26th: HalloWellin, 7pm - 9pm Friday, October 27th: Art Yoga, 4:00-5:00 PM Friday, November 3rd: First Friday Focus Tour led by Eliza Behrke Friday, November 3rd: Art Yoga, 4:00-5:00 PM Saturday, November 4th: Wellin Open Studio, 2:00-3:30 PM Friday, November 10th:Wellin Kids “Scenic Sponge Painting,” 2:00-3:00 PM Friday, November 10th: Art Yoga, 4:00-5:00 PM 2023-2024 Exhibition Tmeline Rhona Bitner: Resound | September 9 — December 9, 2023 René Treviño: Stab of Guilt | February 17 — June 9, 2024
Captions Page 2 Myron H. Davis, photographer, “Pure Liberal Arts: At Hamilton College Ageless Subjects Open New Minds,” Life, April 27, 1953, page 130. Page 5 KLRU-TV, Austin City Limits, Austin, TX, June 3, 2009, from “Listen,” 2006–18 Chromogenic print 40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist ©Rhona Bitner / ADAGP, Artist’s Rights Society, New York Page 9 Leonard Freed. Anti-Pornography Demonstration, Times Square, New York City, USA, 1979. Gelatin silver print, 9 15/16 × 8 in. (25.2 × 20.3 cm). Collection of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Gift of Thomas J. Wilson and Jill M. Garling P2016. © Estate of Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Photo by John Bentham. Page 10 Alexander Liberman. Abstract in Black, 1961. Lithograph, 27 1/4 in. × 21 in. (69.2 × 53.3 cm). Collection of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Gift of David R. Palmer, Class of 1951 in loving memory of his father Fred L. Palmer, Class of 1923. © Alexander Liberman. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Wayne Miller. American actress Jayne Mansfield covering herself with a towel, 1958. Gelatin silver print, 9 3/4 × 6 3/4 in. (24.8 × 17.1 cm). Collection of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Gift of Thomas J. Wilson and Jill M. Garling P2016. © Wayne Miller. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Jean-Philippe Charbonnier. The Legs of Marisa (Berenson), Paris, c.1978. Gelatin silver print, 7 3/8 × 5 1/2 in. (18.7 × 14 cm). Collection of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Gift of Thomas J. Wilson and Jill M. Garling P2016. © Jean-Philippe Charbonnier. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY.
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Page 11 Julia Jacquette. Your Every Word, 2014. Oil on canvas, 31 × 23 in. (78.7 × 58.4 cm). Collection of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Purchase, William G. Roehrick ‘34 Art Acquisition and Preservation Fund. © Julia Jacquette. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Garry Winogrand. New York, 1965 (published 1981). Gelatin silver print, 14 × 11 in. (35.6 × 27.9 cm). Collection of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Gift of James, Class of 1980 and Georganne Garfinkel. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand/ Eileen Adele Hale. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Joel Meyerowitz. Caroline and Margaret, 1985. Chromogenic contact print, 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.3 cm). Collection of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Gift of Dr. Stephen Nicholas. © Joel Meyerowitz. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Page 13 Myron H. Davis, photographer, “Pure Liberal Arts: At Hamilton College Ageless Subjects Open New Minds,” Life, April 27, 1953, page 132. Page 15 George Silk and Georgiana Silk, photographers, “New Style Graduation,” Life, June 9, 1972, page 97. Page 20 Rose B. Simpson, Take A Seat, 2022. Clay, glaze, twine, bone, leather, and wood beads, 31 1/2 × 12 × 11 in. (80 × 30.5 × 27.9 cm) . Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Purchase, William G. Roehrick ‘34 Art Acquisition and Preservation Fund. Page 21 Finkel, Jori. “Rose B. Simpson Thinks in Clay.” New York Times, June 16, 2022. https://www.nytimes. com/2022/06/16/arts/design/rose-b-simpson-claysculpture.html Page 22-24 “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together.” Beyond Granite. Monument Lab. https://www.beyondgranite.org/ exhibition. Photos Courtesy of Monument Lab