The Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery hosted a dual opening for two art exhibits, marking the first opening of the fall ‘25 semester on Thursday, Sept. 18. “New Works, Old Friends,” a collaborative ceramic exhibition featuring the works of Aysha Peltz and Mikey Walsh as well as “We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday!,” a vintage collection of vacation photos and historic landmarks, curated by Siena Heights University Professor Emeritus of Art History Peter Barr, will run concurrently until Wednesday, Dec. 10.
The gallery opening was paired with the art and design department’s annual barbecue, which featured a variety of barbecue staples and t-shirt printing.
According to Clinical Assistant Professor of Art and Design Miles Warner, the turnout and energy at the event were encouraging.
“This is our initial meetup, our annual Art and Design party so to speak, and it’s great to get all the students together. We’ve printed t-shirts with Donkey Kong on it and had a blast,” said Warner. “[The gallery opening] and the Art and Design Barbeque are happening in conjunction. It’s always a good time to get everyone together under one roof, and the last few years we have tried to tag team that with a reception.”
“[The Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery] has become a great hub for our departments and this sort of art, and a great place for everyone to meet up,” added Warner.
“We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday!” is a private collection of photos from the Rodger and Carolyn Kingston Vernacular Photo Collection, which feature vintage snapshots from unknown photographers that showcase summer vacation photos taken at a variety of recognizable landmarks. According to Warner, the idea was to depict the idea of travelling to a place.
“It’s really a fantastic thing, and we had [Barr] come in and curate an idea, do the layout and work with our collections people to put together an exhibition that is all about going on a summer holiday,” said Warner.
“Realistically, they are photographs that depict a landmark or a certain place or time, and we don’t know necessarily who the artists are or what year they’re from, but it’s all about the idea of travelling to a place,” added Warner.
“New Work, Old Friends” is a collaboration between two former colleagues of Professor of Art and Design Paul McMullan. McMullan, Peltz and Walsh attended Alfred University together in the mid-’90s and have not been in the same room together in decades.
“It’s always nice to be able to bring in old friends. We went to school together in 1995 and I haven’t seen [Walsh] in what I think has been eighteen years, and [Peltz] I see every once in a while because she’s done workshops for our students before. It’s great because we were all about ceramics, and we’re all still doing it,” said McMullan.
“I hope my students someday get to reconnect with their peers like this. There’s a big national conference that we all go to, and I’ve taken a lot of students from Keene State. They get to meet students from all over and make connections, and it’s just like this where we all keep reconnecting,” added McMullan.
Walsh, an Associate Professor of Art at Louisiana State University, brought a collection of humanoid ceramic creations to the “New Work, Old Friends” exhibit.
“The figures on the wall are all started from a ball of clay, each figure being a different type of clay, and they are meant to reflect the importance of the material through color and touch. I think of the figurative element as being a universal human archetype. Old, ceramic history but also a sort of contemporary take of the human form,” said Walsh.
Peltz contributed a series of pots, primarily made of porcelain, and wall-hung fixtures that are designed to capture the idea of motion.
“My work that you see here are all vessels, including pots that were thrown on the potter’s wheel, and wall hanging platters are a little more rugged and made of clay that allows me to manipulate them more aggressively,” said Peltz.
“The pots are generated from the action of throwing open a form that’s relatively simple, and then putting texture into the surface, stopping the wheel from that throwing action and starting to use more hand-building actions like pushing and ripping and cutting to manipulate them into the shapes you see here. I’m interested in making them look like they’ve just captured an action or a movement and frozen it through the firing process,” added Peltz.
Sophomore Peter Brown said that he enjoyed the exhibits and the art.
“I’m an art major, so of course I love seeing the wonderful art here, and art in general. It’s a great thing to explore art and the world of art around us,” said Brown.
“The inspired biomorphic pottery [Peltz’s contribution] was really interesting. Her forms are really unique and well-executed techniques.”
Ryan Pacheco can be contacted at
rpacheco@kscequinox.com
