Land(e)scapes: students use conventional mediums in an unconventional way

In September, the students of “Re-Imagining the Landscape: Painting, Drawing, Photography and Glass” were given magic markers and four-by-six foot sheets of paper and sent to find a spot on campus to draw. Over the course of three weeks, they continued to capture their chosen scenes, moving from the sole use of magic marker to a multiplicity of gel pens, sharpies, graffiti markers, spray paint and, finally, digital photography. The images took shape, each reflecting the hand of its author in style, method and choice of materials: while some students chose to incorporate photographs directly into their work, others manipulated them with Photoshop or inked over them.

The students took remarkably different approaches to their work. Michael Mommsen ’10 took to the canvas with a frenzy of excitement and energy; his drawing communicates this, its color and layered blocks demanding a sense of movement and immediacy. Felipe Sanchez ’10, on the other hand, persisted with a pointedly deliberate precision, utilizing fine line to shape his scene. A few of the canvasses are dominated by a single medium, but many display a natural synthesis of the variety, resulting in unexpected textures and arresting depth.

After the students had found and committed their scenes to the canvasses, Professor of Studio Art Jim Butler announced the second half of the project: the students were tasked with transitioning their images to another four-by-six canvas, this time using oil paint alone. Translating a scene to an image ceased to be the focus of their process; instead, they were challenged to transfer the image itself through differing media.

For much of the class, this was one of the most difficult aspects of the project. Because they had had no idea about the second half of the project upon beginning, many of their methods were difficult to transfer to brush. To achieve the effect of the narrow ink strokes of his first canvas, Sanchez spent weeks devising a tool that would mimic the point of a pen when used with paint. Having created an incredibly “dense” first image of a tree, Anna Johnston ’10 found the conversion especially difficult, involving long periods in which she painstaking reproduced an explosive mass of magenta and yellow foliage. She ultimately found her muse by taking a more physical role in the painting process that closely mimicked the spirit of activity that had characterized the creation of her first image.

In the period of transition, the students gained an understanding that could “only occur through the materials,” as had been Butler’s intent in designing the structure of the project. The materials of the project, and the project itself, were chosen and formulated “to give students tools to think practically about how to make contemporary art images,” Butler explained. A necessary element of the project, then, was its spontaneity: most of the students would not have chosen to formulate their drawings in the way they did had they known they would be painting them, and subsequently, they had to use a completely different mode in the creation of their paintings.

“Making something new in art is by definition unpredictable,” Butler stated, going on to explain that through this difficulty, the students learned “how materials inform the making of art.” Instead of limiting the scope of their expression according to the medium, each individual was forced to find a way to manipulate the medium to convey their image. Eva Almiñana ’10 expressed that despite the

challenge, it was an effective and demandingly instructive way to be introduced to oil painting.

According to Butler, the class is based on “making images of the campus environment which are contemporary in meaning, style, and material usage[…] When something is contemporary, you know it when you see it and hear it. It’s something that resonates with us now.”

He explained that, “You do not see the process in art unless you’re able to read through the process.” In other words, the “depth of invention” involved in the creation of a visual piece is often missed by those who don’t use the materials. “It’s a different mode and a different speed of understanding. And it’s not better and it’s not worse, it’s just different[…]You don’t need a paragraph, you don’t need a page and a half, and you don’t need a lecture. You know it in one split second.”

The exhibit itself shows a little of this process. The students’ drawings are displayed alongside their oil paintings, and in comparing them it becomes possible to understand what Butler means. Each image is a facet of the Middlebury campus expressed through the eyes of its artists, but the images stop being simply a representation of the original scene and become something of a different kind: a fusion of the wholly individual perspective and method of the artist and their medium. In seeing them, it’s clear that something new has been created, something different from the content of the original scene.

In Butler’s words, “Humans want to engage in the new. It’s important[…] The contemporary is immediately and vividly recognizable.”

And by that definition, the paintings are doubtlessly contemporary. Some are gripping with an absorbing energy, others fascinate and still others come alive with a vibrancy exceeding both the canvas and its subject.