Figuratively Focused

Pulling together an exhibit between 10 different artists is a zesty endeavor. There is the pressurized crunch of a deadline. And there is the looming thrill of showing your work to a large audience. Then, and most importantly, there is the matter of creating the work itself and arranging it all neatly and coherently on the walls of an exhibit. 

In late January, Pam Sutherland’s Honors Art class eloquently mounted their exhibition “Figuratively Speaking” at the Visual Arts Center. The individual approach to figuration that each student took embodies the unique spirit of each of the artists, but, hanging together, the exhibit hums with a distinct unison that showcases the skill of the class.

The students began their contemplation of subject matter with artist Tommy Van Auken, who, over the course of one week, gave students instruction on how to draw from a live model and how to capture the detail and essence of a subject. “Being able to kickstart this year’s show with the figurative drawing instruction of Tommy Van Auken made this year’s experience especially rich in terms of both process and content,” Sutherland says. The students were led through sessions where they tried to capture the movement of the human form in anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes.

Maia Zasler ’23, a student in the class, had never been challenged artistically in that way before. Typically working in mixed media compositions, Maia found the speed and the approach to figurative drawing exciting. “Working with Tommy was a really cool experience, one I had never had before,” Maia says. “And his instruction and guidance served as inspiration for all our pieces in the show.”

After working with Van Auken, Maia was blooming with inspiration, but the direction she wanted her work to go in was still unclear. She kept returning to something Van Auken said in class, that focusing on the larger image of a subject is of primary importance and that proportion of a figure will follow naturally. “He was trying to have us imagine drawing a figure as if it were a landscape, then got us thinking about capturing the three-dimensional element of a face, and then bringing in the specifics with contour lines,” Maia explains. “I think the practice with that kind of approach made me feel more confident in my ability to take on a series of figure drawings, because I’ve never been that figuratively focused until then.”

Borne out of this new skill is Maia’s “Family Ties,” a series of tenderly drawn portraits of family members. Maia approaches the figurative focus with enraptured regard. Her brushy portraits hang separately and apart, confined to their own page, but maintain a connectedness created by little tendrils of lines floating around the dreamy personages. Some are based on photographs, like the one of her mother and sister held in laughter, while others she recognized from moments spent with relatives.

“I set out to capture my family’s energy on the page,” she says. “I didn’t want to create the general portrait. I wanted the portraits to really have the people and their essence in it. I wanted each picture to be related. Not just in the fact that they’re portraits, but that they appear to be in conversation with one another. My family is really close — that’s where I got the inspiration for its title — and I wanted that to be represented.”

Displaying the pieces offered another new experience for the students. They had the month of January to complete their work. Then, the day before the show, they gathered in the Visual Arts Center to pull everything together. “This exhibition opportunity was specifically designed to afford these Seniors an experience different from their culminating Senior exhibition in April that is on campus,” Sutherland says. “Having to curate how these individual and potentially unrelated pieces are installed — how they can hang together as a collective — is a valuable learning experience for these students. They have to think beyond themselves and their work in a mutually beneficial way."

“Figuratively Speaking” was on display for 24 hours, a Sunday. The distinctive splendor of the pieces and the unity between the artists were on dazzling display. “All of us had such different ideas and different ways of making our pieces,” Maia says. “And that was demonstrated in the range of styles exhibited.”