2016
MFA MAAE GRADUATE PROGRAMS EXHIBITION CATALOG
WE ARE.... Educators
As mentors and teachers, our job is to challenge and support our students. To achieve this, we focus our education on aesthetic and technical skills, historical and contemporary analysis, experimentation, collaboration, and free inquiry.
Students
Each member of our community is a student. We learn from each other and value each other’s contributions.
Practitioners
While our primary focus is teaching, we are also practicing creative professionals who bring current ideas to those we educate. To broaden the student experience, we incorporate local and global perspectives.
Advocates
We believe art is relevant and essential to our culture; therefore, we promote education, presentation, and civic engagement through affordable programs and curricula.
Creative Citizens
Successful citizenship begins with integrity, inquiry, empathy, responsibility, honesty, accountability, and the celebration of diversity, which ultimately shapes our communities and cultural landscape for the betterment of the world.
Community
Our organization is comprised of a diverse group of people who see inclusion as a priority. Our success relies on cooperation, collaboration and respect for one another.
NEW HAMPSHIRE INSTITUTE OF ART
TABLE OF CONTENTS Message from the President About NHIA Graduate Programs Master of Fine Arts
Message from Lucinda Bliss, Dean, Graduate Studies Graduating Student Thesis Projects
MFA and MAAE Faculty and Visiting Artists Master of Arts in Art Education
Message from Suzanne Canali, Director, Arts Education Graduating Student Thesis Projects
Student Bios Board of Trustees Acknowledgments Galleries at NHIA
2016 Graduate Exhibition Catalog
Sustainability. It’s a concept one hears often in conversations regarding the environment and our relationship to it. At NHIA we place a great deal of emphasis on sustainability and several related concepts (resiliency, longevity, transformation, etc.) borrowed from contemporary ecology that have particular resonance for us as artists. In our graduate programs we focus on two other definitions of sustainability, what Merriam-Webster defines as “a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods” and what the Oxford English Dictionary defines as a thesis to be “upheld or defended.” It is in this respect we ask our graduates to prepare and sustain their final thesis work. We realize that the most difficult challenge facing any artist is how can they sustain their artistic practice—emotionally, intellectually, financially—long after that initial burst of inspiration has subsided. In short, what happens after the residency concludes and the vicissitudes of daily life intercede once more? It is our commitment to help sustain our grads in any way we can, to help ensure that the work presented here is not just one big splash, but instead sustains far and wide, rippling out long after this culminating residency has drawn to a close.
Kent Devereaux
MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
MASTER IN FINE ARTS
Our degrees in Creative Writing, Photography, Visual Arts, and Writing for Stage and Screen run as distinct two-year programs, each with its own faculty body and respective visiting artists, writers, actors, and critics. In residence, students experience the added benefit of cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration between faculty, staff, and students across programs. Students in all programs come together twice a year for ten-day residencies, during which they engage with visiting artists and writers, attend presentations, performances and lectures, participate in critique, and take seminars and electives that ground their work in historical and contemporary theory and practice. Professional practice courses built into each program equip students with a clear vision for the next phase of their artistic and professional careers. Between residencies, students work one-on-one with a faculty advisor and/or a studio-mentor, building on the creative foundation established at the residency in an individualized program of study and support. Throughout their time in the program, graduates gain an understanding of their place in contemporary practice, develop an expanding professional network, and achieve a transformed awareness of themselves as citizens and artists.
MASTER IN ARTS EDUCATION
Each of our graduate degrees for art educators is designed and run by practicing, professional art educators and artists. We believe that practicing artists make powerful educators; therefore, we empower each of our graduates to attain a sustainable art practice, academic excellence, and a strong professional network to support a lifetime of creative growth and professional success. We teach students how to build on the creative and academic vision they already have, in order to achieve their personal goals and transform them into a vital career in education. • Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE): a two-year hybrid program (face-to-face and online), for already certified educators who want to reconnect with their studio work. This program is studio focused and includes month-long summer residencies where students are able to immerse themselves in their creative work and engage in dialogue with faculty and visiting artists. During the year, students take online studio courses as well as courses in education • Master of Arts in Teaching Visual Arts (MAT): a two-year certification program for aspiring art educators. The program includes online and face-to-face coursework. • BFA/MAT Dual Degree: BFA students can achieve their BFA and MAT degrees in five years!
LOCATIONS
Our ten-day residencies take place on our Manchester and Sharon, New Hampshire campuses; Manchester with the benefits of an urban campus with abundant restaurants and cultural events, and rural Sharon, with the charm of the nearby village of Peterborough, and the surrounding natural landscape. Both campuses boast historic buildings and modern, renovated studio and classroom space, as well as multiple exhibition venues.
ABOUT NHIA GRADUATE PROGRAMS
It’s my pleasure to introduce the 2016 graduate programs catalogue on behalf of the faculty, staff, and students at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. This catalogue is a celebration and culmination of two years of intense creative and academic engagement for graduate students working in a range of creative disciplines. In these pages, you’ll find excerpts from Writing for Stage and Screen scripts, book excerpts from Creative Writing graduates, and images of work from our Photography, Visual Arts, and Master of Arts in Art Education students. At our January and July residencies in Manchester and Peterborough, New Hampshire our graduates have presented thesis exhibitions, orchestrated concert script readings with professional actors, offered creative writing readings, and delivered academic presentations. It’s a pleasure to be able to sustain the celebration and to document our graduates’ successes with this publication. Between the lines and images represented here lie many stories of remarkable courage and fortitude. It’s inspiring to work with students so hungry for creative growth and personal transformation. I toast each one of them and look forward to following their work in the years to come.
Lucinda Bliss
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
Thesis Projects
Pleasures and Terrors of Childhood (Series)
JEREMY ACKMAN
Inkjet Print
MFA, Photography
I’m a stay at home father. I’m in charge of watching a small child throughout the day, my daughter Leona. It took time for us to adjust to each other — her learning to eat, play, and sleep with me and not with her mother. She adjusted as I adjusted, and this process transformed my studio work. My photographs up to this point were mostly shot on the subway, at work, and in the neighborhood--almost never in my own home—and now, my domestic life has become my primary subject matter.
Pleasures and Terrors of Childhood (Series)
Inkjet Print
JOSEPH ACONE
MFA, Visual Arts
Thank You! is a portrait of a complicated place at the center of my community. Victory Park, in Manchester, NH, is home to a myriad of individuals, many of whom are challenged by homelessness and addiction—at least that was my initial impression. After months of inquiry—over lunches with the park regulars—I developed a collection of stories, images, and quotes. Thank You! was the resulting installation. The piece started as a series of stacked containers that disrupted the view of Victory Park from the gallery window. Each time a participant took a container, the park view became clearer.
EXCERPT: THE TRAGEDIE OF CARDENIO (CHARLES walks towards the door. He looks up at the painting of Saul Wellings, and graciously blows a kiss. CHARLES exits through the main doors.) LEE: You knew about this. KATHARINE: Everyone did. LEE: Everyone but me. KATHARINE: Someone rang the doorbell at like six, they wouldn’t go away. I didn’t know what to think, I walked towards the door with a knife. I thought about you, actually, and that time you came to get me when whats-his-face tried to... well, whoever it was slipped a note under my door. LEE: Jeez. KATHARINE: I thought I was still dreaming... it sounded like a telegram. ‘Saul Wellings passed away this morning. Come to the estate house at ten.’ LEE: That’s like a note from a Bond villain. KATHARINE: So, I showed up, and here we are. LEE: That’s all it said? He died, show up?
BENJAMIN BARTOLONE
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
I think we come to the theater not because we want to know the meaning of life, but to magnify the act of living in constant self-reflection. It is the same reason a teenager practices signatures on a notebook, the same reason we post selfie after selfie—not because we are self-obsessed, but because we are obsessed with finding ourselves. The same is true across any field, but especially in the theater. A favorite quote of mine from Joseph Campbell is, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” All we want is to experience what’s around us. Some fields like science and math are meant to understand that world, but my theater is to experience the world as it is, right there in front of us. I’m glad to be here with you.
KATHARINE: Well, no, it explained how this all works. Get you to give up the entire fortune. Apparently the crazy rich have been doing this to each other for a while. I had to laugh at one part, it said, “Make a man out of my son.” LEE: Uhhh.... KATHARINE: Yeah, I thought, “if you only knew.” (Pregnant pause.)
I am Crow. And as I feast upon this world so too will it feast upon me. Before the last scar fields formed in my throat, the willow hid her boughs from my limbs so I was left with the trestle of birch to lay my neck. The saffron song cauterized the crocus that bore it. These people I saw. These people I knew. Upon the road we were one. The flesh of their lost bodies were a stopper worse than cork. Which is the bone that breaks itself? Swallowed sights resonant in marrow made themselves into little lullabies that danced like worms in my throat: Crow, who sought the willow’s boughs and fell to bramble and thorns below. Who bellowed when the pressure burst inside and thistle blooms caught wind whistling for the child who wished at last to cry. This way wound round the neck the trestle of bark to rest. I am Crow who swallowed everything given to me and spat out my songs for the wolves to pick apart. Constellations across bark and leaves connected these sheathes of nightmares and dreams, tangleweb heartbloom the manias of the furlough found festering beneath recollections. Hale whispers
NICHOLAS BOEVER
MFA, Creative Writing
The Year the Stars Went Out is an Odyssean tale if the Odyssey took place in reverse. It’s Minimalism, Modernism, and Magical Realism collaborating on a song about the end of the world (high praise coming from the writer). My work in general explores the nature of consciousness, thought, and perseverance, the characters revealing themselves through the landscape and interactions with one another, rather than me talking about them. To that end, language will forever and always be my first love. My poems are often meditations on sound and words and how they interact with one another. I believe the sparse and calculated nature of Minimalism, then, is a poeticism unto itself. For a while, I struggled with this, being one to hide away too much in the background. Now, I write with the knowledge that a story shouldn’t be dependent upon what is hidden throughout it, but should instead be enhanced when those little bits of information are discovered.
winnowing in the haze pushed through the hours to weeks too weak to hold the weight of a wren’s egg laid in its nest. Held under by one face, how can you breathe down there? Or have you drowned already? You look at me and the others all see me: Crow
who broke the willow’s boughs to strike the earth,
who broke her wings so she could carry weight instead of
shedding it.
Reconsidered 1
ELLA CARLSON
MFA, Visual Arts
I feel it is imperative to appreciate the importance of deeper consideration, and to challenge the idea of absolute truths. In my current work, I photograph the ordinary— those objects so ubiquitous that they are barely noticed. I then disassemble, reassemble, and distort the imagery, investigating hundreds if not thousands of ways in which each of these objects can be manipulated and, therefore, reconsidered. As a result, the photographed object is no longer limited by its definition. No longer an “absolute,” the object transcends banality to become the sum of many complex considerations. This body of work was created from tea.
Reconsidered in Blue
The Journey
ELEANOR CLOUGH
Encaustic, collage and transfer
MFA, Visual Arts
My images illustrate memory and its changing phases of clarity and confusion. The materials used to create these 8”x 8” wood panels are cold and encaustic waxes. I use wax because I feel that the material lends itself to illustrating the haziness of memory’s recall.
The Journey
Encaustic, collage and transfer
EXCERPT: PEOPLE AT THE EDGE OF TOWN RUTH: You hate me. CHRISSY: By all accounts, I should, by god. RUTH: Yes. I deserve it. CHRISSY: Yes, you do. Most people would say that and a lot more. (beat) RUTH (pouring out): I... I thought of leaving -- of going back to Pittsburgh. But I know I can’t. I’ve been to so many different towns, different countries. Lawrence told me about Valencia, so I went to Spain hoping the culture and the people would be such a change that I’d never think of Constance again. But within two days of being there, the lemons tasted like apples from Sypolt’s farm. Then I went to Rome and in the spires of St. Peter’s Basilica, I saw the ridges of Hogback mountain. In the waters of Trevi Fountain, I felt the coldness of Bear Creek. And on the walkplatz in Munich, Germany, I saw Mom in the reflection of a blonde haired woman looking at dresses in a shop window. I swore it was her. I ran up to this woman, completely forgetting that I was in a different country and a different time, and I hugged her. Without saying even a single word. And this woman -- do you know what she did? She turned around and she hugged me back. For a solid minute. Without a rhyme or a reason, that woman let me stand there and cry on her shoulder. She patted my head and said some words in German, and then afterwards she walked me to a bench and left... And I sat there, feeling so ashamed, and I couldn’t understand it. I went to such enormous countries and cities and saw countless people, but I still couldn’t fill in this god-damn hole in the wall! Why is it like that, Chrissy? Why can’t I leave? (Chrissy takes a step toward her)
ANTHONY DELAUDER
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
We’ve all heard the same exasperated expression that theatre is the mirror the world sees itself through, but I’ve never quite agreed with that saying, especially as a writer. I think the world is the mirror against which my inner projections and feelings are either validated, and hence bounced back in the form of applause, or they are invalidated, and the play falls flat. As such, I am not writing to find the universal truth of the world; I am writing to find my own universal truth. And my expectation, and my hope is that I will find those thoughts and feelings that resonate most deeply, explore them through prose, and move on to the next mountain of understanding, so that in time I come to be a complete human being, full of empathy and sympathy that has been extradited from the characters I will have created over the course of decades. Granted, I am still new to playwriting. But I believe I have the resolve to keep trying, to keep experimenting, and to keep evolving in my work, much as I keep evolving in my actual life.
CHRISSY: You got the gall to talk to me about how bad you hurt -RUTH: No. Oh god no. I didn’t mean -CHRISSY: Do you know how much I’m sufferin’ because of what you did? RUTH: No. I have no idea. CHRISSY: You know Devin’s my oldest. And, well, I never thought I’d have kids when I was younger. Me and Bowen never planned on that. But then it just happened, you see. And before I knew it, Devin popped out with these long eyelashes and big old ears, lookin’ like the goofiest little mouse you’d ever seen. And he’d give me these big old open mouth kisses on the cheek. I swear to you, Ruth, that boy when he was a baby could melt an iceberg with one kiss. Everyone loved him. (RUTH comes out from behind the table, leans against it) RUTH: Chrissy, Devin’s going to get better, isn’t he? CHRISSY: Yeah. He’ll get better. But he’s not gonna be my baby much longer.
!30 Bees
DOROTHEA DODDS
Albumen Prints, 2015, 20x30�
MFA, Photography
Listening to the Bees honors the relationship between humans and honey bees with the alchemy of albumen, an egg-based photo process. Knowing that bees and flowers co-evolved long before humans roamed the Earth, I started cutting and folding my albumen photographs of bees into origami flowers. The flowers are placed inside the bee hive and the bees crawl on and into the objects, vibrating their wings while chewing or excreting wax. I view the current decline of world bee populations as a relationship problem. This collaboration facilitates a change in my perception of bees, from pests to sacred insects. This series offers a bit of relationship counseling.
Flowers
Albumen Photographic, Sculpture, 2015, 20x30�
EXCERPT: THE DEAD LETTER OFFICE (Lotte falls in love. Boat turns on the electric coil burner and removes two pieces of bread from their plastic sleeve) LOTTE You jumped up when I walked in. Like you’d been waiting for me and I still managed to surprise you somehow. I laughed, and you asked me why. You checked to make sure your fly was up and brushed your nose with your finger, just in case I wasn’t used to that. I wasn’t used to people brushing their noses just in case. There was something in the way you looked at me. It made me feel taller, my legs longer - my breasts bigger. You made me feel beautiful. You didn’t have to tell me you thought so, I knew. I sat up at the counter, like the movie star in my mind. You told me you were a real whiz at guessing how people took their coffee - just by looking at them. You said you’d never gotten it wrong. The catch was that you had to hold the persons hand, to really get a good read. So I said, “all right”, and you took my hand... and the rain fell against the window… and that old song simmered away on the radio… And the whole world disappeared. And I saw our future, Luke. In that moment. My parent’s backyard some September years from then, I saw you slip a ring on my finger and kiss me longer than Nana would think appropriate.
THOMAS DUBINKSI
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
Some days the world is full of stories, they float around in bits and pieces—like those poor ghosts in pictures people are always mistaking for dust. Once in a while, one of these stories will take a liking to you and decide that you’re worth haunting. It takes up residence in some desolate corner of your brain and waits. While it waits, it has plenty of time and not much to do, so it takes a look around—“oh, what a wonderful brain you have!” And the story starts to collect things that it thinks might be useful to it. Stories are terrible packrats and before long the story starts to get heavy with all its collecting. It begins to weigh you down, so you say to the story “hey, you! Move it along already!” and the story says “if you want me to leave, give me somewhere to go!” You fight about this for a while, you and your story, but stories are very resilient and excellent at arguing and after a while you realize what it is you have to do. So you close the door, sit down at your desk, and write your story. I hope to always be worth haunting.
I saw it all in that moment. And I blushed, and you noticed. You made me my coffee, light with two sugars, and you were so pleased with yourself I didn’t have the heart to tell you I drank tea. And then you looked at me, right in the eye, and you said – BOAT & LOTTE You’re making this real hard, kid.
JOETTA GONZALEZ-HANNON
MFA, Visual Arts
I have both struggled with and been witness to the near desperate desire to create, silenced by a haunting fear of failure. Challenging that fear through the act of making has proven an effective method for quieting my own ghosts. Currently, my work focuses on childhood anxiety and how it tends to follow us into adulthood. The imagery I use reflects on this question, illustrating the recognition of the marks of a phantom when one is clearly present.
438 Lost Items
JACLYN KAIN
Digital Prints on Adhesive Film
MFA, Photography
The central theme of my work is the recognition of lost items. I have cataloged over 500 found objects and articles of clothing from the lost and found section at the Hosmer Elementary School in Watertown, MA during the 2015/2016 school year. Through this work I am exploring the dualities of memory and forgetting and possession and loss, and how these elements influence our identity construction, social relationships, and our relationship to objects. The collected items are presented in two and threedimensions, isolated from the function, purpose, and meaning they held before becoming lost. I use color to quantify the physical objects in rectangular sculptural stacks, containing their randomness and chaos. My bewilderment by the mass of forgotten items was the impetus for the meticulous process I began of documenting, collecting, and organizing in an attempt to make sense of the material waste.
Lost and Found
Digital Prints on Adhesive Film
“For twenty years, I’ve been running Big Ivy trails. I often run to Douglas falls from my home near the entrance to Big Ivy’s forest. After each run, I soak my legs in the refreshing, spring-fed waters of Walker Creek. I watch the water gliding past. Sometimes minnows nibble at my legs. In those moments immersed in the creek, I feel completely alive - and deeply grateful.” ~Will Harlan
STEVEN MCBRIDE
MFA, Photography
The Big Ivy section of Pisgah National Forest is a unique, bio-diverse ecosystem in the mountains of western North Carolina. My photography explores the edge between greed and balance, man and nature. I display unique and endangered aspects of this grand biosphere, intertwined with environmental portraits that emotionally link human interaction to the forest, highlighting these feelings with the words of my subjects. My project culminates into a visual narrative, putting forth that the entire Big Ivy section of Pisgah National Forest should be protected from logging, ensuring not only the forest’s health, but the people’s as well. This project is an environmental portrait of an endangered forest, human significance, and life.
EXCERPT: ANONYMOUS Braxton Hicks rhymes with bag of dicks, an uncomfortable truth I stumbled upon during a misguided internet search for a bag drying rack. But it got me thinking about the donor dick, the one that led to the Braxton Hicks contractions I started feeling a few weeks ago. This dick didn’t get a leading role, wasn’t even a co-star, or a supporting dick. It was backstage, an anonymous dick, maybe wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, which explains how it managed to hack my womb. I wonder about the dick. Is it a big dick or a micro? A straight dick or a bent billy? Is it a predatory dick or more of a bedroom eyes varietal? Is it friendly? Or is this dick more reserved? Is it gentle? Or a ram rod? Has this dick seen a few things? Or is it more sheltered? A monastic dick. Or maybe it’s not a dick at all, more of a cock or a prick. Maybe this dick has an accent or speaks with a lisp. I wonder about the dick. Not much. But I do wonder. Is it a Leaning Tower of of Pisa dick or a Big Ben? Does it hang out in bars or is it a bookstore dick? Has this dick done time? Does it write from the slammer to its hundreds of offspring. “I hope this letter finds you well and in capable hands, as mine are quite busy at the moment.”
IRENE MCGARRITY
MFA, Creative Writing
My fiction forges a sense of intimacy with its reader through honesty, humor, and a celebration of the dark and awkward. Readers of my work laugh and feel less alone, but grapple with a sense of profound discomfort. My characters are broken and they experience the world through a filter of alienation. Their attempts to connect with others are misguided and unrequited, yet they go on, propelled by an unexpected determination, and an array of coping mechanisms, like sarcasm and dissociation. Major influences include: George Saunders, Lorrie Moore, David Foster Wallace, and Junot Diaz.
I hope that it’s a kind dick, a dick with compassion, a dick who thinks before it speaks, and speaks well. Or at least coherently. But I’ll never know, will I? I’ll never know anything about this dick because it isn’t here, never was. The baby kicks and I think I’m okay with not knowing the dick. I think we’ll be okay.
EXCERPT: FRESHLY BREWED TAG INT. HUDSON TOWNHOME - 2:16PM Hawk walks into the front door, coffee and a bag of cat food in hand, to find his father, PAUL [late 40’s, All-American looks with a boy-next-doorcharm] sitting on the couch, watching TELEVISION. His cat, CHARLIE, is curled up next to him. Hawk has coffee grinds on his face and his khakis are covered in dirt. He grabs a bottle of pills from a cabinet near the entryway and puts them on a coffee tray next to his dad, along with the coffee from Matt. Hawk slumps into the sitting chair next to him. PAUL What happened to you? Paul pops some pills and winces. HAWK I made coffee. PAUL Made it or rolled in it? HAWK Something like that. Hawk puts his apron on the floor and hears a THUD. Reaching in the pocket, he finds a new chalkboard name tag with the word “Andy” on it. Hawk grins.
SARA NORCOTT
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
Words are present when all else fails. Even then, though, words are hard to come by, a thought, a memory, or an experience wells up within our souls, and we find words again. My whole life has been surrounded by them. If life is a battle, words are my sword. They’re how I’ve come to discover that which makes my heart and mind come alive. Some writers have dreams concerning their work, others have encounters. I tend to have to wrestle the story from my soul. It’s only in the act of sitting down to write that the rest streams forth (sometimes, more quickly than I can type or put to paper). It’s as if the creativity calls to me, and if I’m faithful to answer the call, a bit of dialogue or character is suddenly a part of my life. For this, I shall always be grateful. Days fade much more quickly than we could hope, despite our protests, and time is such an ethereal companion. How wonderful to be able to live a thousand lives in a thousand worlds, though I have but a limited amount of days, simply because of my words.
PAUL I’m getting jittery just from smelling you. But thanks for the coffee. (beat) Do you think you’re going back? HAWK (looking at the name tag) Yeah. I’m going back to The Grind. Paul looks at Hawk, who’s smiling, looks to the cat and shrugs. FADE OUT. THE END.
UNDERSTANDING THE FAMILY LANGUAGE I chuck a toy down into the belly of the B for my son to follow. It is the wrong toy—his sister’s—but he doesn’t know this. Yesterday he stole her Barbie from the bathtub and stuck her to the bathroom counter. Barbie split-legged, her bald plastic kissing gray, speckled marble. The knob of toothpaste by her foot glowed white and red and green. He licked the knob. He would lick it. He would lick his own butthole. But he will not jump into the B. B for Bad.
THE BURNING OF KELVIN MACNAMARA Beelzebub huffed back into his office. His head was wigged by a coif of smoke and acid and his tentacles flailed red and manysuckered. I imagined each sucker sucking the life force of each kid in that school, one sucker per kid, attached to the head or face like an oxygen mask or diving mask or Halloween mask that hid the true nature of the world, faceless, which was cruel but irrelevant,
DOUGLAS O’CONNOR
MFA, Creative Writing
I like to experiment within and outside the boundaries of language, playing with form and diction. From a silly vignette that extols the many definitions and sonic values of the word, “cock,” to a flash fiction piece where family members climb into letters of the alphabet, to a word search whose words, all culturally prescribed virtues of masculinity, cannot be found among the letters, to a novel about a boy who kaleidoscopes different registers of language in a child’s attempt to disguise the conventionally-accepted version of reality happening around him into something he can digest, my current work celebrates, ridicules, subverts, and challenges ideas of masculinity and family in myriad forms.
the world could be sucked away brain by brain, and one of it really mattered, murders, war, touching, none of it mattered, because Beelzebub rendered it all irrelevant because of his big suck.
EXCERPT: THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD OF CECILY BLINKSTOP Warm evening light fills the entire room. Cecily waits in the middle of her room and holds Amanda Jane’s hand. Helen and Kevin step into the room. Kim enters right behind them. Helen, Kevin, and Kim cannot take their eyes off the hundreds of colorful cranes that hang from the ceiling. HELEN There must be hundreds... CECILY Four hundred and fifty six. KEVIN But how? CECILY (proudly) Amanda Jane made them. Helen, Kevin, and Kim look around the room. They do not see Amanda Jane. HELEN Well where is she? Cecily still holds Amanda Jane’s hand.
JENNIFER POTTS
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
I am a storyteller. I observe the world around me through a storyteller’s lens, watching and listening to the characters that come in and out of my life. I spent first part of my career as a theatre director, telling stories on the stage. Four years ago, I decided that I needed a new challenge. I needed a new way to explore storytelling. I needed to grow as an artist and a woman. I returned to school to study film production for two years and then screenwriting for another two years. During this time, I have directed three short films, written four feature-length screenplays and one stage play, and I am now in development for my first feature film: The Extraordinary World of Cecily Blinkstop. I am always looking to improve and grow and become the very best storyteller I can be. In The Empire Strikes Back, the beloved Yoda sums up the standard that I live by: “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.”
CECILY (confused) Right here. Kevin and Helen look at Cecily and then at each other for answers. Kim rolls her eyes again. CECILY (CONT’D) Right here. This is Amanda Jane. KIM You’re crazy. Cecily tears up. Cecily holds out their hands, locked together, to show them.
Ningen
SUZANNE REVY
Archival Inkjet Print
MFA, Photography
My teenage boys seem to have gone into their rooms, and I’m not sure they’ll be coming out until they leave for college. As a parent, I have witnessed each chapter in their lives and have created a visual diary of photographs showing their creative and imaginative play, their explorations in the woods behind the house, trips to local pools or amusement parks, and—more recently, their interior spaces, messes and technology. As they’ve grown, earlier pursuits were abandoned for new experiences farther from home, and the diary’s entries have become less frequent. I turn my camera’s lens to their absences, and realize that each chapter has been fleeting and ephemeral, and the photographs within the diary are traces of the perils and poignancy in the life of my small family.
Alien
Archival Inkjet Print
BIBO AND BERTIE: THE LAST YEAR IN THE LIFE OF ALBERT EINSTEIN ACT I SCENE 1
Princeton, New Jersey--March 15, 1954. AT RISE: Lights up on Albert Einstein’s study. The stage is set with a big wing chair mid-stage right. An end table sits next to the chair, stacked with books. Upstage left is a messy desk piled with papers and scientific journals, with a chair behind it. Next to the desk is a table holding a record player. Downstage left is a suggestion of a wall with a curtained window. Upstage center, portraits of physicists Newton, Faraday and Maxwell are projected on a scrim. Midstage center is a tall pedestal with a fern on it. ALBERT EINSTEIN sits in the wing chair, his famous hair lit from behind as the lights come up. Even during his nap, he holds his brier-wood pipe in his mouth. He wears a scruffy bathrobe and slippers. There is an open notebook in his lap. MUSIC UP slowly--the beginning of the last movement of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the Agnus Dei. Give the music some time to build until the soloist is well into the lyrics: “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi.” (Lamb of God, take away the sins of the world.)
SARAH RIEHM
JOHANNA “HANNE” FANTOVA enters enthusiastically, stage left, holding two shopping bags. She wears a simple yet feminine cotton day dress. Hanne sets her bags down, shakes her head, clucking disapprovingly. She walks over to the chair, and sees that Einstein is dozing. He SNORES a bit.
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
I have always been drawn to creating stories with universal themes that transcend time and place. My favorite plays include Inherit the Wind, The Crucible, Man for All Seasons, and Amadeus. I consciously seek out projects with strong female characters which today’s theater, despite all its strides in diversity, still seems lacking. I treat each project as an in-depth learning lab, spending half my development time in research so I can represent a different place or time with authority and authenticity. I firmly believe that my eclectic writing ideas stem from divine inspiration, the wellspring of all truly great literature.
HANNE Bertie?
DEIDRE RILEY
MFA, Visual Arts
My paintings emerge from direct observation of nature with an interest on naturalistically representing the interplay of light and shadow across form. My work focuses on issues of destruction and creation, construction and deconstruction, merging the real and the unreal, ultimately giving life to stillness which will remain in time. I strive to express a sense of emotion through my paintings and am driven by an interest in expressing a visual poem while representing universal themes.
Winter Carnival
Oil
EXCERPT: SO LONG LIFE NED Hello little girl. What are you doing in the bar this late at night? MAGGIE Dad? Dad, what are you doing? What did you say…Oh, my God, Dad, daddy?? (She crosses to him, hugs him, holds him steady.) NED Why are you in the bar little girl? You know you’re not allowed down here at night. MAGGIE Huh? NED I have the wrong shoes dear. That damnable costumer has pulled the wrong rehearsal shoes for me. Be a dear, run, and get me the correct brown shoes. You know, the wingtips. MAGGIE Wingtips, sure. Where are they? NED In my black case, at the foot of my bed in the hotel room. MAGGIE At the…foot…of your bed? Crap! Dad that was 20 years ago. We’re not there Dad, we are at home. NED Not now sweetie, I need to get ready for rehearsal. I’m meeting our new “other woman” today.
OWEN ROBERTSON
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
Why do I write, why do I tell stories, why do I desire to be part of an industry that according to most has been dying for four-thousand years? Simple, I must. I have been a story teller for the last 25 years and now I have arrived at the point where I no longer wish to bring other people’s stories to life; I have finally accepted that my life, my experience as a human being has filled me with stories that can be and should be shared. I write because I believe I have something to say about our human experience in the world. I write because the voices and characters in my head drive me nuts; it’s the way I can give them life on my pages. On my pages, I can bring new souls to life, explore new worlds, adventure to times and places I might never go were it not for the glimpse into my imagination.
MAGGIE No Dad, you’re not. You’re not meeting her, you’re not there and you are not going to make that memory your only moment you connect with me in months. Not that memory!! NED Yes, sir, very excited indeed. She is supposed to be remarkably talented. MAGGIE NO! No, Dad, please, please talk to me! Maggie, your daughter! I’m right here Daddy. Please don’t be there, not then.
Exit
JAMES ROLDAN
Carbon Pencil on Board
MFA, Visual Arts
Through research, drawing and the accumulation of data, I am seeking ways to respond to incidents and conditions that haunt me. One such incident was the mass shooting in Newtown, CT in December of 2012. This caused me to investigate similar events in order to explore the links between those who commit these violent acts and the cultural mythology surrounding guns that permeates this country. What differentiates the bad guys from the good guys? Isn’t the assumption that they have discrete identities a dangerous one? Power is seductive and many believe guns give them power. Is this merely a cultural delusion? Why do we continue to allow the mass media to feed our fear-based responses in order to profit from it? Who else profits from it? I am exploring portraiture, narrative, and cultural imagery, to discover whether art can be effective in fostering dialogue between two sides of a polarizing issue.
Exit, Facial
Carbon Pencil on Board
Event Horizon
GLEN SCHEFFER
Archival Pigment Print
MFA, Photography
In 1874, James Nasmyth and James Carpenter published their hypotheses on how the surface of the moon came to be. Viewing through a telescope, they made detailed drawings that were transformed into topographic models. The models were then photographed under light that simulated how the surface of the moon is lit by the rays of the Sun. These photographs referenced the moon’s surface authentically. Nasmyth and Carpenter’s dialogue between fact and perception has inspired me to investigate and interpret cultural understandings of exploration and perception through the transmission of photography. A recent surge of space exploration imagery seduces, but it also raises questions. Why keep searching? Can answers be gained? I am interested in these places I cannot get to, things I cannot see with my own eyes, and the seduction of pictures. I create photographs of how things beyond reach can be imagined and fabricated, weaving the seductive image with the deconstruction of the illusion.
Profile of a Primordial Comet
Archival Pigment Print
Phenomes Linguistiques D’un Abre
DANIELA SNOW
Cedar wood, glass, house paint
MFA, Visual Arts
Life is process rooted in a past, present, and future. This work is a reflection of life intrinsically connected to the present and the accumulation of a past. The object is a way of initiating a conversation with my audience about interconnnectedness. How does a study of basic color terms relate to the process of using paint to simulate growth, as well as to indicate change through formal repetition? Most of my work uses wood and revolves around trees, for they embody everything about what life means to me and the subject speaks to humanity’s role within the environment. Trees have an interconnecting root system, which binds them to their surrounding trees; this reflects social binds within society and interactions between cultures.
Cumulus
Acrylic on wood
EXCERPT: THE WOMAN WHO ATE HER HOUSE
Grief is an accumulation of life. All the thoughts, actions,
smells, tastes, sounds, sights, everything sitting within a mind, collected through the years; grief is a hoarder.
Mrs. Abigail Turner lifted a heaping spoon of her house into her
mouth. It did not taste like oatmeal the way she thought it might even with the cinnamon, brown sugar, and milk. But it reminded her of it. It reminded her of those early frost covered mornings when the children would sit around the table wild haired and holding spoons like spears, staring sleepily at her as she scooped the lumpy gobs into their bowls. This lumpy gob she’d made looked similar, but was not as gentle. The children though would gobble up the oatmeal, they liked lots of brown sugar and milk. Jack liked cinnamon. Ellen would push her hair out of her face the way children do in that adorable manner; clumsily with a flat open palm at the same moment she would lift an oversized spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth. Mira, she remembered, was always eating with her hands, a mess she never minded. Abigail had ground the wood up with her late husbands wood chipper. “What was I thinking?” She said to herself. She first thought she could do it with a blender. She nearly forgot the chipper existed.
MARTHA STAVROU
MFA, Creative Writing
Most of my writing explores dysfunction and how it affects relationships within a family. I employ many of the senses, which allows me to express the emotional struggles that plague people with mental illness, through a written exploration of the physical consequences that can manifest as a result of their disease. These consequences can dramatically alter the environment that they, and other family members, live in. I question one’s ability to forgive, and consider whether if we are limited in our abilities to both heal and forgive how much of that is self imposed? Repetition of language, landscape and what characters do versus what they say, play a key part in the telling of these stories. Searching for the right words, finding the right details so that the emotion I want to communicate resonates with the reader can, at times, feel like climbing Mount Everest. But when it happens and the words fall into place, it’s magic.
She was standing at her kitchen sink staring out the window
swatting at the air with the slip of paper that the sheriff had left on her door when she had caught just the smallest glimpse of the contraption sticking out from behind a pile of yard equipment. She found it buried in the weeds behind the two John Deere tractors, the snow plow, the spare tires, several rusted rims and some kind of large, square, metal frame that looked as though it were a department store display rack.
EXCERPT: NANCY One day I finally knew what I had to do, and began. First, writing her name down. In the movement of my hand, In the shaping of her name, Her face fell in front of me, and I was fourteen again. We were walking up the street, me with my book bag and Catholicism, and she, with a pack of Marlboros and tales of drinking and sex with her boyfriend. My borders unraveled with her, enough to smoke my first cigarette, to say my first swear, to be liked for me. I hadn’t a care, not in those moments; Those fretless times before my nosy uncle
LISA TESSIER
MFA, Creative Writing
My experiences are the instruments of my work. It is in the fine tuning of these moments of experience that the emotional truth emerges. My work is an ongoing investigation of narrative voice. How authentic I can make it? How best can I cultivate my stories? My goal is simple, yet complex: to develop characters who are able to carry my stories to fruition. And in order to do that, I must get lost in corners that aren’t comfortable, and blur the lines of fact and fiction, while retaining the integral truth.
sat in his Buick outside school, and closed the curtain on my new life.
FLIGHT OF THE ROPE SWING Lose the rope. Afternoon river swallows your legs and arms into the rush.
Plunge your skin to the bottom, to emerge, dripping, hair in your eyes. Feathers drenched, spread them in the sun.
Children are the birds of envy.
ALEXANDRA WALL
MFA, Creative Writing
My writing investigates the powers of memory, experience and emotion, and plunges us to their vibrant depths. I seek out immersive thoughts and lines to convey the things in our human experience that don’t quite have a word. I rely on atmosphere and visceral imagery, language that resonates in sound and meaning – words that I love to speak aloud, and that have personal significance. I pursue stories, images and language that confront the uncomfortable and strange in all of us, exposing what we may otherwise avoid. Words, lines and images become vessels and mirrors for the profoundly personal things we carry, that we didn’t even know were there, however deeply dark or hidden.
EXCERPT: PLAIDSKIRTS JOEY (getting angry again) After everything we were to each other, you didn’t think you could call me? JANEY By that time I had lost the girl I was. (Janey’s speech begins to get less formal and more relaxed. She starts to use contractions and begins to slightly shed her southern accent. It comes in and out. The more real she gets the less the accent) JANEY (CON’T) I kept seeing all of the happy families leaving the hospital with their new babies. I wasn’t allowed to even see mine. It was torture. I could not get out of my head that after he was born, they only let me hold him once. Once -- the moment I delivered him. Then they took him away. I felt him inside of me for nine months and then -- nothing. I laid in that hospital room all alone. Until on the second day three ladies from the local church auxiliary showed up. They apparently didn’t get the memo that I was an “Adoption Case”. They had knit baby hats to give to all of the new moms. A very sweet grandma type -- gave me one and asked me the color of the baby’s nursery and what I was going to name my son. I never told her my baby was gone. Gone with his new mom.
JUDITH ZOCCHI
MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen
Does art reflect life or life reflect art? For me, lines blur. As a child of the sixties and seventies, I am shocked that open dialogue and honest debate are growing extinct. I am watching political correctness smother the privilege of passionate exchanges of ideas. As a playwright and screenwriter, I am blessed with the opportunity to examine and express my point of view, while understanding the viewpoints of others. It is my wish that those who experience my work will be engaged and fearless as they examine their own viewpoints, and leave with a new found respect for others who might not share the same ideas.
Later that day, I paid the nurse’s aid to get me one of the blankets that my son was wrapped in so I could take something with his scent home with me. I kissed the hat a hundred times and asked her to smuggle it in with my son’s belongings. In some crazy way I thought I was sending him home with a lifetime’s worth of kisses from me.
MFA FACULTY
MFA SELECTED VISITING ARTISTS
MAAE FACULTY
Lucinda Bliss Dean, Graduate Studies
Steve Almond Katherine Bradford Sean Downey Gillette Elvgren Lauren Fensterstock William Giraldi Arthur Giron Yoav Horesh Candice Ivy Leslie Jamison Steve Locke Rose Marasco Jane Marsching Michael Oatman Lance Olsen
Lucinda Bliss Suzanne Canali
Creative Writing Monica Bilson, PhD Ryan Flaherty Paul Harding Tim Hovarth
Director Faculty Faculty Faculty
Photography Jason Landry Lindsay Beal Amy Theiss Giese Jonathan Gitelson Stephen Sheffield Francine Weiss
Director Faculty Faculty Faculty Faculty Faculty
Visual Arts Craig Stockwell Cynthia Atwood Brian Bishop Patricia Miranda
Director Faculty Faculty Faculty
Writing for Stage and Screen Buzz McLaughlin Director Kathleen Clark Faculty Karen Sunde Faculty Robert Lawson Faculty
Dean, Graduate Studies Director, Art Education
Faculty Mike Ariel Jason Bagatta Shelley Carson Tory Corriveau Jacquelyn Gleisner Marcus Greene Karen Hillson Claudia Michael
MAAE SELECTED VISITING ARTISTS Todd Bartel Angela Cunningham Sean Downey David Ernster Candice Ivy Al Jaeger Beth Krommes Shawn McNiff Gina Siepel Stephen Sheffield Barbara Sullivan Lindsey Warren
It is my honor to introduce the published work of the 2016 Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) graduates. Over the last two years, these graduates have transformed themselves as artists and educators. Witnessing this transformation is what I love best about this program! MAAE students enter the program having given themselves fully to their classrooms, hungry to invest in themselves and their own creative work. By the time they complete their degrees, that investment in individual growth has turned outward, and they re-enter the classroom newly informed as educators, and ready to spread the culture of transformation. Art educators leave a lasting impression on their students by making their classrooms safe places to imagine, create, listen, take risks, and identify a sense of self. MAAE graduates, having gone through a rigorous process of growth, are able to leave lasting impressions on their students and schools. They also graduate as engaged and committed practicing artists!
Suzanne Canali
MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF ART EDUCATION
MASTER OF ARTS IN ART EDUCATION
Thesis Projects
REBECCA KOSTICH
MAAE
I am fascinated by nature and the science, mathematics, and psychology associated with it. The presence of nature has played a significant role in my life, and so it has greatly influenced my artwork. I have focused primarily on natural science illustration and children’s book illustration, combining my passions of nature, art, and teaching. Most recently, I have explored the themes of identity, differences, and inclusion. I use my work to convey the message that all of our differences make us who we are as unique human beings and that they should be acknowledged, accepted, and embraced with confidence. It is a common thing for children to feel alone, left out, or different from their peers, and my goal is to reach out to them and reassure them that it’s normal to feel this way. If my stories and illustrations help even one child through difficult times, then my work will have been successful.
Fall Morning in the Backyard
MARIANNE LIPARI
Watercolor, 20x13”
MAAE
Throughout the past two years in the Master of Arts in Art Education program, I have pursued the study of watercolor to include still life, floral and landscape subjects. In my work I have progressed from a desire to understand the technical qualities of watercolor to the ability to express myself and my own feelings through the transparent, ethereal qualities of the medium of watercolor. Color has been the focus of my explorations. For example, while painting a study of a still life of fruits and vegetables, I captured the abstract qualities of simple and complex forms through the subtle nuances of hue and saturation. While discovering the beauty and wonder of the landscape, I have found the fullest expression of color and its ability to tell a story. Saturation, light and color harmony systems have allowed me to discover the joy and peace of a balanced composition, as well as the ability to express feelings and mood that lift beyond the painting’s mere technical efficiency.
Hydrangeas
Watercolor, 13x20”
Smoke-fired stoneware
SARAH RAICHE
MAAE
My sculptures abstract various qualities in nature, such as logs, leaves, and flowers, with the curves of the female form. They work together to state an indistinct difference between what we call nature and ourselves, human beings. They are meant to remove the walls that we put up to separate ourselves from our surroundings, to eradicate the idea that we are so distant from the living world around us, and to rejoice in the commonality of strength and growth that we share—thus allowing us to reconnect with nature and appreciate it as a whole, to promote a healthy life for ourselves and our earth.
Smoke-fired stoneware
Ode to Philip Taaffe
CHRISTIE VALIHURA
Mixed media on wood, 24”x24”, 2015
MAAE
My path as an artist is one of personal discovery and creative exploration. Each new technique or medium experimented with bonds me with the present moment. I move between techniques as frequently as I move between hard edges of a square canvas to cut out shapes of a panel. I use art to connect with my life and the creative process to interpret my existence in the world. I attempt to control my thoughts and feelings in the form of shapes and colors in my paintings. I research new patterns and forms to understand my identity, channel my feelings, and widen my appreciation for the use of decorative arts.
Retail Therapy 2
Mixed media on foam panel 48” x 85”, 2015
STUDENT BIOS
Jeremy Ackman, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, served in Kosovo, New Orleans, and Iraq as a member of the Ohio National Guard. Jeremy attended the University of Massachusetts Boston where he graduated with a BA and received a MFA at New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2016. His work has been shown in New York, Boston, and Minneapolis in venues such as Black and White, The Griffin Museum of Photography, and Panopticon Gallery. Joe Acone is an artist and teacher from New Hampshire. He received his BFA in Illustration and an MFA in Visual Art from the New Hampshire Institute of Art. He currently teaches at NHIA and at Lasell College. Joe writes, “An artist is a train station. As such, I want to acknowledge that I sit on an axis of life experiences, ideologies, and schools of thought. Though I am limited by my perception, I strive to make connections between what I know and see.” Ben Bartolone is the New Jersey-based author of six plays, two screenplays, a video game, and two short musicals. He was a recipient of a year-long development process with The Active Theater, and his play Timepiece received an industry reading in April 2015, directed by Markus Potter and starring Nick Blaemire. Ben received a BA from Drew University and participated in a two-year professional workshop at Circle in The Square Theatre School, spending his summers in residence at the Chautauqua Theater Company. Since 2009, he has regularly produced new works and classics for both local and national audiences. Nicholas Boever is a writer of extremes, from 500-page novels to 50-word poems. A native of Massachusetts, Nicholas works as a technical writer with a software company. His poems Left the Beach in My Spine and Forgot There Was Such a Thing as Hubris appeared in Ayris magazine. Ella Putney Carlson has an Educational Associate degree from the American Society of Photographers and has received professional recognition as a Master Photographer, Master Artist, Craftsman, and Certified Professional Photographer. The recipient of multiple Kodak Gallery Awards, Fuji Masterpiece Awards and Courts of Honor awards, Ella has taught photography at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, NHIA, Middlesex Community College and DeCordovoa Museum. Her work has been published in books and magazines and exhibited the Vermont Center for Photography, Arts League of Lowell, the Professional Photographers of America International Exhibition, and the American Society of Photographers Exhibition. Ellie Clough is a practicing artist and educator. Ellie earned a BFA from New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2009, followed by an MFA in 2016. She previously attended the University of New Hampshire as a student of printmaking and fine arts, going on to study at Santa Reparata School of Printmaking in Florence, Italy, and learning graphic arts at Rivier College. As Master Printer for Galaxy Graphics, she was involved in the production of prints for the Franklin Mint. Ellie also served as designer and illustrator for Kenmore Stamp and Softside Computer Magazine. A.J. DeLauder is a playwright and actor for Theatre On the Lake, based out of West Virginia. His play Gracefully Ending won the 2016 AACT NewPlayFest and was published by Dramatic Publishing. The People at the Edge of Town was a finalist in the Ohio University-Chillicothe Playwriting Contest, while other plays received readings at New Hampshire Institute of Art and the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. A.J. holds an MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen from New Hampshire Institute of Art and is a member of the Dramatists Guild, The Playwright’s Center (MN) and the Preston Arts Council (WV). Dorothea Dodds, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, is a New Hampshire-based artist specializing in farm-to-table photography. Using eggs and beeswax from her farm, Thea’s handmade photographs reflect a strong sense of place and connection to the environment. Thea holds an MFA from New Hampshire Institute of Art and a BA from Hampshire College. Thea’s editorial work has been featured in numerous publications including Newsweek, ABC News, CNN, The Boston Globe and The Huffington Post. She is co-author of The New Art of Capturing Love (Amphoto 2014).
Thomas Dubinski is a Massachusetts-based playwright and screenwriter. Before attending New Hampshire Institute of Art, he received his BFA in acting from the University of Connecticut. Past projects include Hiero and the Spirit Cabinet and 30 Miles Off. His latest play, The Dead Letter Office, was a finalist for the Hope & Optimism on Stage Competition (a grant partnership between Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame). Joetta Gonzalez-Hannon lived in eight states and moved 43 times by the age of 19. She received her BA from the University of New Hampshire in 2009 and her MFA from New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2016. Joetta was awarded a fellowship with the Photography and Art Museum at UNH in 2008. Her work was featured at the 2009 Hubbard Award Ceremony in Durham, NH and has been exhibited in the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery in Portsmouth, NH and the UNH Virtual Art Gallery. She continues to make art in her home studio in Nottingham, NH. Jaclyn Kain teaches photography at Simmons College and works as a corporate art photographer for Fidelity Investments. Her work is represented by Gallery NAGA in Boston, has been exhibited in fifteen solo and group exhibitions throughout New England, and is included in various private, university, and museum collections. She resides in Watertown, Massachusetts. Rebecca Figler Kostich received her BFA in Illustration with Dean’s Highest Honors in 2011 from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA, along with a Minor in Creative Writing and Initial Licensure in Art Education. She completed an MAAE degree at New Hampshire Institute of Art and currently teaches studio art at GrotonDunstable Regional High School in Groton, Massachusetts. As an artist, Rebecca primarily focuses on natural science illustration and children’s book illustration. Marianne Lipari was born in Oneida, New York in 1957, discovering her passion for art at the age of five when she won a contest at a local grocery store. After attending the University of New Hampshire for two years as an art major, Marianne transferred to St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, eventually graduating with a BA. She went on to teach art in several public schools before taking a position St. Patrick’s, where she has worked for seventeen years. Marianne has also worked at the Nashua Children’s Home for ten years. Steven McBride has been a professional commercial and editorial photographer for over 20 years. He is a member of the American Society of Media Photographers, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, and the Society for Photographic Education. McBride’s current fine art work focuses on the preservation of natural landscapes. Through human narrative and the depiction of beauty, his work helps others realize what is at stake in the loss of ecosystems. Irene McGarrity has been writing since the tender and awkward age of ten. Her fiction has appeared in PANK, Hobart, DOGZPLOT Flash Fiction, and other publications. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from New Hampshire Institute of Art and lives in the Pioneer Valley with her wife, her daughter, and their three cats. Sara Norcott, born in Malden, Massachusetts, is the author of two plays, one screenplay, a poetry book and two television pilots. Sara earned a BA in Communications from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an Associate Degree from Wave Leadership College in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In addition to her writing, Sara has worked as an actor, assistant director and choreographer for several theater productions. She is also a singer, songwriter and visual artist. Doug O’Connor’s prose and poetry have previously appeared in decomP magazinE, Ayris, Quarter After Eight, The Tusculum Review and other publications. A resident of Hudson, New York, Doug works as a data solutions specialist at Bard College and earned his MFA in the low-residency art and writing program at New Hampshire Institute of Art. His flash fiction piece, Understanding the Family Language, will appear in the fall 2016 edition of Paper Darts.
Jennifer Potts is both a screenwriter, director and producer. After graduating from Drew University with a BA in Theatre Arts, Jennifer founded and ran the Cornerstone Performing Arts Center in Fitchburg, MA, overseeing the theater and directing multiple productions every year. In the past four years, she has directed three short films, written four feature-length scripts, and is currently in development for her first feature film, The Extraordinary World of Cecily Blinkstop. Jennifer’s short films have been screened at film festivals across the United States. Sarah Raiche grew up in Manchester, NH. After attending Colby-Sawyer College as an undergraduate, Sarah decided to move north. She enjoys hiking, fishing, and taking walks in the woods where she find inspiration to create works of art. Suzanne Révy grew up in Los Angeles, California, but moved east to pursue a BFA in Photography from the Pratt Institute. More recently, she earned an MFA from New Hampshire Institute of Art. For many years, she worked as a photography editor in magazine publishing at U.S. News & World Report and at Yankee Magazine. With the arrival of two sons, she left publishing to create a personal photographic diary documenting the day to day life of a small family with two growing boys. Sarah Riehm/Sarah Lawrence has seen her work produced Off-Broadway in New York and was recognized as a national finalist at the American College Theater Festival at the Kennedy Center. Her first play, Liberty, won the Southern Playwrights’ Award and received a staged reading sponsored by Oberon Theatre. Sarah is also the author of several nonfiction books and articles. In addition to her MFA, she holds a Masters in International Management and has taught at universities in Iowa, Texas and Hong Kong. Deidre Riley is a painter inspired by the Boston School style. Deidre earned her BA in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh and Art Education Certification from Carlow University. She also studied painting and drawing at the Ingbretson Studio in Manchester NH. Deidre has a studio in Manchester NH and teaches painting at New Hampshire Institute of Art. Owen Robertson lives in Tampa Florida where he is an adjunct professor at Saint Leo University. He is also the founder and executive director of The Lab Theatre Project in Tampa, a company focused on bringing new works to life in an environment focused on preserving the writer’s vision. A twenty-five-year veteran actor and director, he has worked on over 70 shows. He is eternally grateful to his wife Beth for her love and support of his work as an artist. James Roldan is a New Hampshire-based visual artist, illustrator, and educator whose work has been published in Boston Magazine, Yankee, Philadelphia Weekly, Merrimack Valley Magazine, and Business New Hampshire. James holds a BFA in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from New Hampshire Institute of Art. Jim has taught at Chester College of New England and currently teaches at New Hampshire Institute of Art and Southern New Hampshire University. He is a past president and current board member of the New Hampshire Creative Club. Glen Scheffer uses photography to create images that explore the space between realistic representation and the imagination. Using large and medium-format cameras to construct his images, Glen finishes his work in the darkroom in the form of large archival pigment prints and handmade books. Glen exhibits regularly both in the Boston area and nationally. He resides in New Hampshire where he teaches photography at New Hampshire Institute of Art. Daniela Snow is a German native, recently moving to New England from North Idaho to finish her MFA at New Hampshire Institute of Art. She holds a BA in Anthropology as well as BFA in Studio Arts from Eastern Washington University, Washington. Daniela’s work has been exhibited at shows throughout Washington and Idaho. She currently resides in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Martha Stavrou is a writer and photographer who draws, paints, mothers children and animals, creates verbs from nouns and maintains her sanity by running a business with her husband. She holds a BFA in Studio Art and an MFA in Creative Writing and enjoys playing with sarcasm and satire in her work. Lisa Tessier began writing, drawing and painting as a child, where art served as an escape from her strict upbringing. Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New Hampshire Institute of Art and enjoys the challenge of creating stories and characters based on real life experiences. She has recently added poetry to her repertoire. It is her belief that language and cadence will enrich her stories and expand her horizons. Christie Valihura enjoys using art to connect with students, and teaches to promote creative confidence and self-awareness both during class and after. Certified as an art educator in the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Christine works as a part time traveling elementary art teacher for the Lexington Public Schools in Massachusetts, additionally teaching and coordinating activities for the after-school program. She also organizes an annual public student art show that displays hundreds of artworks from all the elementary after school programs. Alexandra Wall is a lifelong lover of the arts, having played with poetry and storytelling from a very young age. She has experience in dance, theater, singing, and a range of visual arts including painting, animation and mixed media. Alex holds a BS in Communications/Graphic Design and is currently working on a number of poems and short works. Judith Zocchi has published over 100 children’s books. Other notable accomplishments include writing lyrics for two international rock songs, hosting a PBS show and writing the TV pilot for the children’s classic Pat the Bunny. She presently has a musical in development, The Magic Fishbone, which originated in the BMI Lehman Engle Musical Theater Workshop. She is the founder and producing artistic director of the Good to Go Festival in NYC. Judy holds a BA from Mount St. Mary’s University, an MA from New York University, and is a graduate of the UCLA Professional Screenwriting Program.
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OFFICERS Joseph Reilly, Chair Elias (Skip) Ashooh, Vice Chair John Mercier, Treasurer George Foote, Jr., Secretary
New Hampshire Regional President, Eastern Bank Consultant Executive Vice President, Senior Loan Officer, Primary Bank Former President, Advantec
TRUSTEES Maurice Beliveau Nick Bentley Howard Brodsky Suzanne Canali Ellie Cochran Ellen Davis Theresa Dolloff Tom Dougherty Stan Fry Benjamin F. Gayman Stephen Gehlbach, M.D. Terry Heinzmann Liz Hitchcock Karen Mayeu Maureen Mills David J. Murray Adrienne Silversmith Bill Stevens Tom Stevens Phyllis Stibler
Artist and Publisher CEO, RiverStone Group Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer, CGA Global Partners Director, Master of Arts in Art Education, New Hampshire Institute of Art Retired Professional Artist Former Marketing Director, Cityside Corporation Vice President, Corporate Technology and Information Management, Fidelity Investments Chief Executive Officer, Flashpoint Technology Attorney at Law, Devine, Millimet & Branch P.A. Dean (Retired), School of Public Health and Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Professional Artist Owner, Hitchcock Creations Chair, Design Department, New Hampshire Institute of Art Chair, Ceramics Department, New Hampshire Institute of Art Principal, Clear Eye Photo Alumnus, New Hampshire Institute of Art President, Harvey Construction Corporation Chief Administrative Officer, KeyCorp, (Retired) Founder and Former President, Stibler Associates LLC
TRUSTEE EMERITUS Barbara Bickford Photographer
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
GALLERIES AT NHIA
Produced by New Hampshire Institute of Art
Contact Information 603-836-2573 exhibitions@nhia.edu nhia.edu/exhibitions
Lucinda Bliss, Content Editor Emily Bradley, Content Editor Meaghann Mellen, Content Editor Jennifer Robertson, Design Karen Mayeu, Design Printed by RAM Printing Special thanks to: The NHIA students, alumni and faculty, for the creative inspiration they provide our arts community.
Emma B. French Gallery 148 Concord St, Manchester NH Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 11am – 5pm The French Gallery serves as the centerpiece of the New Hampshire Institute of Art, showcasing work created by alumni, faculty and students and work that ties thematically to our graduate, undergraduate, or community education curricula.
Roger Williams Gallery 77 Amherst St, Manchester NH Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday 11am – 5pm The Williams Gallery features a broad range of artwork in diverse mediums and dimensions, that serves as an educational experience for students and the community alike. The gallery has won Manchester’s Best Gallery award for five years and exhibits regional, national and international artwork.
Sharon Arts Center Gallery 30 Grove St, Peterborough NH Gallery hours: Wednesday-Saturday 11am – 6pm, Sunday 11am – 4pm The Sharon Arts Center is a cultural landmark in the Monadnock Region, often hailed for its local art scene. The Sharon Arts Center Gallery is one of the best in New England, offering two spaces that exhibit a broad range of artwork that responds to and enhances the distinctive heritage of the Monadnock region, while featuring the best artwork from across the country, providing rich and diverse cultural experience.
Manchester Campus | 148 Concord Street, Manchester, NH 03104 Sharon Arts Center Campus | 457 NH Route 123, Sharon, NH 03458 603-836-2588 | gradadmissions@nhia.edu | www.nhia.edu The New Hampshire Institute of Art is non-profit and NASAD and NEASC accredited.