thePULSESome College of the Holy Cross alumnae are making a career in visual arts ~ and you can see their works at the college’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery through April 12.
Spark: A Celebration of Alumnae Artists is part of the yearlong 40th anniversary celebration of coeducation at the college.
“The college is highlighting the professional and civic achievements of alumnae in a wide range of academic disciplines, including the arts, throughout the academic year,” said Roger Hankins, director of the Cantor Art Gallery, who is the curator of the show. “The exhibition focuses on women with established careers, as well as recent graduates with emerging careers.”
Margaret Lanzetta (’79), a New York artist whose time on the hill is closest to the arrival of women on campus in 1972, was featured most recently in a retrospective of work at the Cantor Art Gallery in 2010. Lanzetta’s bold and color-saturated paintings, inspired by a recent extended stay in Morocco, will be shown, along with a series of translucent paper and fabric collages by North Carolina artist Ann Marie Kennedy (’89).
Kennedy describes these works as including “natural and domestic elements to create narratives about connections to the landscape.” Kennedy’s installations have been the focus of many one-person exhibitions since 2000.
Lanzetta graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s in fine arts from Holy Cross in 1979 and received her master’s of fine arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Lanzetta’s work was recently shown at La Cube Gallery, Rabat, Morocco, and the French Institute Gallery, Fes, Morocco.
Kennedy received a studio art degree in 1989, continued her education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and received her master’s in fine arts from the University of Iowa. Kennedy teaches at the Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, N.C.
Rachelle Beaudoin (’04) earned a bachelor’s in studio art from Holy Cross and her master’s in digital media from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007. She is also a graduate of the Brown University Sheridan Teaching Program in 2007. Beaudoin teaches digital media courses at Holy Cross and recently received a Fulbright grant to be an artist-in-residence at the quartier21, a center for contemporary art in Vienna, Austria. Beaudoin is currently in residence at the Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colo. As a performance and video artist, she creates videos in her exploration of feminist iconography and “the body… as site for art, an activator and as an object.” Beaudoin will display three video pieces from 2012.
Elizabeth Hamilton (’04) works and resides in Philadelphia. Hamilton received her master’s from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, in 2011 and was a Center for Emerging Artists finalist in 2012. Her work utilizes large-scale installations, altered ceramics and photography. Hamilton’s life-sized 1991 Oldsmobile, which she completed in 2011, was purchased by the West Collection in Oaks, Penn.
Teresa Buscemi (’07) received a bachelor’s in studio art from Holy Cross. Buscemi attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she received her post-baccalaureate certificate, and in 2011, she received her master’s degree in photography at the University of New Mexico. Buscemi currently lives and works in Albuquerque, N.M. Her work uses digital photography, electronic light sources and interactive installations to create shifting visual experiences.
Two Spark artists who graduated from Holy Cross in 2008 with studio art degrees, Amy Archambault and Justine Hill, also received master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 2011.
Archambault was recently awarded a 2013 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Sculpture and is a studio supervisor and lecturer in the visual arts department of Holy Cross. She was also featured in Pulse’s 2012 “Up and Coming Local Artists.” Much of her work is installation-based and incorporates physical and kinesthetic performances. For the exhibition, Archambault has created a large-scale installation, You will Survive, in which she has retrofitted a Subaru station wagon with all the equipment of a bomb shelter.
Hill resides in New York City and has worked as a studio assistant for artists Mickalene Thomas and Siri Berg. Hill’s abstract paintings and drawings were recently included in the exhibition No More Rock Stars at Galerie Protégé in New York. Hill’s gestural abstractions allude to a hybrid of architectural and natural space.
The most recent graduate included in the exhibition is Haley Kattner Allen (’11). Allen, who lives and works in Dallas, Texas, will begin a master’s program in photography at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., this fall. She is a founding member of the online exhibition site womanorial.com, a collective of woman artists who examine issues of femininity.
The Cantor Art Gallery is in O’Kane Hall, first floor, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College St., Worcester. The exhibition will be on view from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2-5 p.m. Saturday. Visitors needing assistance with handicap accessibility should contact Public Safety at (508) 793-2011. Admission to the gallery is free. For more information, visit holycross.edu/cantorartgallery.
PHOTOS:
(Top) Amy Archambault ~ You Can Survive, 2012-13
Mixed media installation ~ Dimensions variable
(Middle) Elizabeth Hamilton ~ 41 Eldor, 2012
Digital print,18” x 25” image, 24” x 30” framed
(Bottom) Haley Allen ~ On Slab of Concrete, 2013
Digital color photograph, 6-2/3” x 5”
