Faculty member's art work makes the grade

by Alison Briant staff writer

Some people walk through the subway station, never stopping to look around them at the other faces in the crowd. They fall into a routine of riding the same train every day, climbing the same stairs onto the same street travelling to and from work.

There is, however, a certain someone who uses her creativity and imagination to stand back, look at this situation of people corning and going and find untold story upon story.

Prentice Hall Publishers recently published more than 70,000 copies in the United States and Canada of a high school literature book titled, "Literature: Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes."

Unit Six of this book concentrates on teaching about how to write and how to read short stories. A unique assignment in this book instructs the students to look at pictures and write a short story based on the content of the picture.

The two-page spread center picture introducing this unit is a painting by Cabrini's own Lisa Leamer.

Learner, assistant professor of fine arts, has devoted her creative efforts in painting to capturing the untold stories of the average people walking from the subway station to the street.

Her painting, "Final Departure," depicts a number of people exiting the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. Leamer describes the imagery in the painting as people moving "out of the darkness of the station into the light of the street."

Learner described her motivation for doing this, one of the first of her many "train," paintings. "My 83-year-old father has cancer and lives with me and my husband. The painting has a lot to do with departure and waiting on platforms and leaving. Every person is waiting with their own stories to be taken physically, emotionally and spiritually somewhere else," Learner said.

Leamer admitted that she was not conscious of the connection between the story behind her painting and her father at the time she painted it.

Prentice Hall also included paintings by Edgar Degas, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keefe throughout the chapter. "I am very honored to be the only local artist featured in association with such great artists, most of which have already died, especially my favorite, Edward Hopper," Leamer said. "It is amazing to me that they canvassed the country for art work to include and they chose mine."