Are you ever curious about the art faculties’ own work? This month, you have the chance to get a glance of your current teachers as working artists, away from their teaching responsibilities at the school.

With a goal to build a stronger connection between the art students and teachers, our school holds a Faculty Art Show every other year. The 2018’s Faculty Art Show, in the Grubbs Gallery, showcased the works from Daniel Roe, Natalie Hume, Edward Hing, and Charles Raffetto.

There was also an artist reception on Saturday, April 14.

Roe presented four landscape paintings from the past year, all of which were oil on canvas paintings in the size of 24″ x 36″.

“I’m very proud of these paintings because I’ve always been intimidated by landscapes in the past.” Roe said, “I made a choice to paint them only with a palette knife, to eliminate a lot of the worry I would have about completing the details I was always afraid I wouldn’t be able to capture.”

He continued: “In the end, I think I’ve been able to make lively recreations of some of the larger than life scenery I’ve had the pleasure of visiting in the past year.”

Hume made a series of block prints based on the old mill buildings in and around Easthampton. She told The Willistonian: “I am primarily a potter, and I have a studio here in town in the Riverside Industries building which is an old mill building / factory which has been converted into studio spaces for artists and other businesses and makers.”

“As you know, there are other ones in town like Eastworks, as well as the Keystone building and the Paragon Building,” she said. “I love the way these factories have been repurposed without losing the historic architectural features and also the way their silhouettes reflect on the various waterways in town from different vantage points.”

Hume said she enjoys this “unique aspect of Easthampton” Her four relief prints in the show reflect photos she’s taken of the buildings and their reflections.”

Hing presented seven pieces of 16×20 pigmented inkjet prints. The images are digital photographs he made in Ireland during Spring Break. “They’ve inspired me to continue making still life images in a similar style and I may incorporate this type of work into my travels, creating these vignettes using objects unique to and found while on the road,” said Hing.

In Hing’s artist statement, he introduced his experience of participating in an artist’s in residency program at an isolated farm that has been converted to studios called Cow House Studio, in Enniscorthy, Ireland, a trip funded by Williston’s professional development budget.

“Sitting in the studio one morning, the clouds broke open and my coffee cup was enveloped by incredibly mesmerizing light that came streaming in through the windows,” Hing wrote in his statement. “In an ‘aha’ moment I recognized the possibility of making a series of still life images. But what of? Fortunately there was a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ in one of the rooms in the barn, plus a lot of random objects scattered about that intrigued, and so I spent the week digging around in the corners and chasing the light around the studio.”

“It was totally immersive and a return to my pre-Williston process as a still life photographer,” he said.

Raffetto’s art piece was of a more unconventional media. He said, “I think it is basically an example of projection mapping across a famous piece of architecture. I made a scan model first, and then made content in Adobe Flex to fit in the panels, windows, and stuff like that.”

Raffetto explained that it took him about 15 hours to build the model and another 10 to 15 hours to make and map the content.

The artists were all excited to see how students responded to their work.

Roe said: “As far as the exhibition as a whole, I think it’s awesome to see work all by current teachers in the gallery. It feels good to cement the idea that we are all working artists as well as teachers and its comforting to be in good company.”

Hume, as both an art teacher and the head of the Arts Department, said: “We try to have a faculty show every other year to share our own artwork with the Williston community and with our students,” she explained. “It is a great chance to share our craft with others and to illustrate, by example, how to both teach and make art and how these two things are related. Our art students like to see what we make and usually have many questions about our artistic lives and philosophies.”