LA Faculty Art Show

by Caitlin O’Brien

The arts department values the fact that our faculty members are professional working artists. This fall, the LA visual art faculty shared their current creations with the community. On Sept. 17, students, parents, teachers, and members of the community gathered in the Conant Gallery to take in the work of Zack Dawson, Laurie McGowan, Dina Mordeno P’18, ’20, and Scott Smith, who presented paintings, collages, photographs, sculpture, and board games.

Zack Dawson exhibited collage, painting, and sculpture at the show. Of his work and process, he shares, “Whether in two dimensions or three, with sculpture, painting, or collage, I enjoy reining the juxtaposition of disparate elements into a coherent composition and seeing what meaning or message evolves from the process.”

Laurie McGowan’s photographs were all taken at home during the pandemic. Some of her pieces, including the one shown here, focus on the forest and trees. “This past year and a half have meant more walks than ever in the woods surrounding my house in New Hampshire,” she says. “I am comforted by the thought that the trees know me and are waiting patiently for me. I gain much more from them than they from me.”

Laurie also reflects that her quest is to look for the light concentrated into small beams through the leaves of summer, creating shadows of nearby trees falling on parent trees”. Leonardo DaVinci once said, “Look for the light; that is where the spirit lives,’” she notes.

Collage by Zack Dawson (Untitled #9)

Ice Fisherman, Vermont Trees Communicating #1

Crane Beach Marsh

Dina Mordeno also finds her inspiration in the outdoors, noting that when playing outside as a child, she would stop what she was doing and close her eyes (but not all the way) to see the colors of the landscape. Her “lashes would blur all the details in the landscape and allow for just color and light to be seen. It was calming and centering.” Remembering this experience, and with the desire to ground herself and meditate on the horizon, Dina began creating landscape paintings while on sabbatical in September 2020-January 2021. Her work is “inspired by the landscape and the ever-changing color and light of the seasons, with a focus on the horizon.”

Salisbury State Park: Black Rock Creek

Scott Smith’s contribution to the art show was his board game, Dungeon Drop. Scott began working on the game in 2018, often during dorm duty. Over the next few years, Dungeon Drop won The Game Crafter’s “Game Pieces Only” contest, was signed by a new publisher called Phase Shift Games, and was launched on Kickstarter. After a successful expansion campaign in 2020, there are now about 40,000 copies in print in a variety of languages around the world.

Regarding his work, Scott says, “Since then, I’ve had to think about who I am as a designer, take my work more seriously, and begin to think about my artistic voice. Using Dungeon Drop as a starting point, I want my games to question how players interact with games, find new uses for old components, and play with different ways to use the tabletop space.”