AUGUST 31 - DECEMBER 10, 2021
2021 Studio Faculty Review
THE ARTISTS REVEALED
THE ARTISTS REVEALED: 2021 Studio Art Faculty Review
August 31 - December 10, 2021
This exhibition of work by the artists who teach in the Department of Art and Art History reveals the breadth and range of the department’s studio art program. The participating faculty members are professional artists, involved in national and international exhibitions while serving as mentors to undergraduate and graduate students at the University. This exhibition highlights the broad scope of the department’s visual voice and creativity.
jason bombaci '07 Sep 19, 1982 - Nov 28, 2020
Jason Bombaci (b. 1982, Boston, MA, d. 2020, Rochester, NH) was a native of Concord, NH and spent his youth exploring New Hampshire’s mountains, rivers and rocky streams. Art was a big part of Jason’s life from early childhood. He began private art lessons at 9 and continued with studies under Estelle Smith, in high school. At UNH, Jason majored in art and attended the UNH Italy Program at Ascoli Piceno twice. He fell in love with painting landscape en plein air and emerged as an impressive young talent upon his graduation in 2007, showing exuberant yet skilled paintings in his first solo exhibition in Ampers & Gallery, Newmarket, NH. Jason’s further studies at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art garnered an MFA degree in 2011. Having completed his education, Jason returned to New Hampshire to build a well-rounded artist’s life. Juggling between physically demanding jobs, Jason pursued his art with passion and discipline while never ceased to be fun-loving, kind and loving to all people around him. As Jason’s painting grew in scope and dept, he began teaching at UNH as an adjunct faculty in 2018. Unexpectedly, Jason’s brilliant career was stalled when he was diagnosed of cancer and died on November 28, 2020, at his home in Rochester NH.
jason bombaci '07 Sep 19, 1982 - Nov 28, 2020
“My husband’s art is a reflection of his life. Today you will have the opportunity to see some of his work, take a glimpse into a fraction of his mind and soul. Jason noticed moments in time most people often allow to pass by them, and he was motivated to capture these moments and express them through his art. A quintessential artist, he believed nothing was ever finished, although there are many aspects of Jason and his work that were anything but ordinary. Prior to getting sick, Jason completed a series of our back yard creating a timeline of the gardens he was simultaneously building. Even outside in the gardens he was planning, building, and creating artwork. After he became sick, he painted a self-portrait illustrating himself playfully holding a starfish, and painting on an easel, while also fishing-as only Jay could. Despite his illness he created an optimistic depiction of his soul and character. Jason cared deeply for his loved ones and took care of them which is so clearly demonstrated in this piece of work specifically. In this gift he has left behind for us, we are able to feel his love and care even still. Jason lived his shortened life very deeply. His art exemplifies how he took life in as he went along, I am so grateful for that. He wanted to continue living and that was denied him and he lived his final days urging us to let the small things go. Jason would want us to ask ourselves, “what did I learn?” - Kassandra Bombaci
JAMIE BOWMAN
BENJAMIN CARIENS
benjamin cariens
Evidence of Things Unsaid What are the forms of silence? From the serenity of the contemplative to the horror and shock of the tragic, the expressive range of silence is broad. Through my sculptures I aspire to give expression to the raw and constrained pressure of silence. Often born of unease and anxiety while presenting a restrained grace and balance. Simple objects are rendered raw and mysterious, at once common and unknown: trumpets muted and restrained; houses impenetrable, their comfort inaccessible; a simple stack of “sticks” delicately balanced at their tipping point; figures lost in vacant reflection. There is history to these objects: their surfaces; pocked, calloused, creased and worn; their forms; fragmented, broken, pieced together. They emerge repaired, in a redemptive, but fragile state.
MICHAEL CARDINALI
michael cardinali
With these pictures of leaves, rocks, and seaweed, I tried to circumnavigate what I was prepared to see by removing the objects from where they were found and creating a new context within the studio. At times I combined multiple images together in Photoshop, and at other times layered spaces through setup and lighting. Similarities began to surface through the process, such as dimensional ambiguity and repetition of forms. The objects were recognizable but spatially confused, uprooted, simultaneously solid and floating, duplicated, ghosted, and enmeshed in a relationship with themselves. I’ve always been interested in how a photograph can exist as a meeting point between external and internal realities. You can photograph a place and embed within it your feeling for that place. The impressions here of light through water, trees, earth and atmosphere bring the materials into an altered relation with their surroundings to create photos that are part still life, part imaginary landscape.
BRIAN CHU
brian chu
"In all of my work, the act and process of painting remain most important to me as an artist."
BRETT GAMACHE
"As a New England landscape painter, I work outdoors throughout the year, enduring the weather, striving to capture nature’s ephemeral beauty with paint on canvas. For the past few seasons I’ve painted on-sight in the treasured nature preserves located in my town of Ipswich, MA. I have found great artistic inspiration painting the vast wetlands from atop the famous Crane Estate as well as deep within the meandering sand dunes that run along majestic Crane Beach. With my painting materials strapped across my back and canvas in hand, I hike by foot to reach my desired painting locations. My favorite time of day to work is in late afternoon when the sunlight casts beautiful blue shadows across the beach dunes. " -Brett X. Gamache
JULEE HOLCOMBE
julee holcombe
MEGHAN SAMSON
meghan samson
Through revisiting my past and recounting the present, I investigate ideas of self-portraiture. Using porcelain and stoneware clays, I create forms that question and explore identity, emotions, and personal narrative. By contrasting male and female, fragmenting the body, and personifying clay objects, I am in search of self. Vernacular forms of storytelling such as folklore and childhood journals, as well as memory and imagination, inform the imagery and content of the work. The inherent expressive qualities of clay and glaze create a visual map of fingerprints and drips on the surface of my sculptures, echoing the desire to make physical the process of remembering and experiencing. Seen as a whole, my artworks form an intricate connected web, performing the nuances of family, love, attachment, and self in varying conditions.
EMILY LEONARD TRENHOLM
“I am interested in painting the shapes I see in nature. For the past year, I have been working next to a stream, behind my home in Maine. Each day I arrive at the stream seeing something new. Time is layered as I record the movement of water and shifting light shapes to create a work which treads a line between abstraction and figuration.” Emily Trenholm is a landscape painter who keeps a studio practice working outdoors. She is the recipient of several awards and residences, including SOLO Competition at Bromfield Gallery, Monhegan Artists’ Residency, and Great Spruce Head Island Residency. Emily is an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire and Southern Maine Community College. She received her MFA from Boston University and BFA from the University of New Hampshire. Emily lives in Maine with her husband and two young boys.
EMILY WERNIG
emily wernig Creating functional, everyday objects someone can interact with is the driving force behind my practice. I create simple forms with linear patterns. Using texture, I create a space for the glaze to break and pool on the piece in order to add depth. This process drives my artistic decisions. I find comfort in the repetition of pattern, in addition to making the same form on the potter’s wheel. The unpredictable nature of the process challenges me to make more work. I strive to make pieces that someone connects with and finds comfort in using.
LEAH WOODS
leah woods Transfiguration explores the idea of an apron as not just a singular piece of clothing. Rather, it is representative of a whole person. This identity extends beyond simply using an apron for the purpose of cooking or working or creating and considers that those acts are part of the whole of someone who is caretaking and providing. The caretaker expresses their affection and concern through thoughts, emotions, and actions. The whole person, body and mind, are employed in this activity.
LIESE ZAHABI
liese zahabi As creators we understand the special seductive allure of media content, and the ways it can deeply affect and influence those who consume it. This is what creative work does so well; it grabs your attention ferociously, forcing you to pause and ask questions, to deeply consider things, lingering for days, for years, for a lifetime. Information (and mis-information) operates i the same way, invading our understanding of the world, coloring everything and everyone we see, creating a filter that persists long after we have forgotten where we even read something in the first place.