Academy Employees’ Artwork Showcased at Gallery

A broken bottle, a gargoyle sculpture, a hand-knit baby sweater—just a few pieces from the Lamont Gallery’s Hidden Treasures 4 exhibit. The show, which seeks to showcase the “hidden” artistic talents of Exeter’s staff, will run from Nov. 2 until Dec. 12.

The exhibit welcomed submissions from any employee affiliated with the Academy, according to Director and Curator of the Lamont Gallery Lauren O’Neal. O’Neal hopes the gallery will give the faculty and staff an opportunity to share their work with the Academy community.

The logistical process for seeking out faculty artists was simple and direct. “We sent out a few emails, a few posters, a few gentle reminders starting last year, and then sent out an online form that anyone could sign up on,” O’Neal said.

This is the fourth installation of alumni work in the gallery through Hidden Treasures. This year, it features artwork from over fifty different faculty members. Lamont Gallery intern Olivia Knauss said that the exhibit displays “a breadth of mediums and different types of art.” Knauss, echoing O’Neal’s sentiments, also said that she hopes the show will shed light on some of the hidden talents of the Exeter faculty.

“The exhibition features everything from a wooden hobby horse with wheels, to a large-scale photo mural, to a cross-stitch Monopoly board—a phenomenal range.”

Knauss and O’Neal spent months planning the logistics of the showing and fielding artwork from staff members. They also spent an additional two weeks laying out the pieces in the gallery. “I think we put out the call about two months in advance to give people time to finish their work if they were still working on a piece,” Knauss said. “And then when we finally got all of the work here, it took about two weeks to arrange it as it is now.”

Normally, the time spent setting up a gallery is dedicated to laying out in a cohesive and artistic way. “Like people, art has conversations with each other,” Knauss said. “Each piece that’s on the wall was put there for a specific reason. Maybe there is a common theme with another piece, or a nice correlation of colors, or maybe it just looks nice next to another work. But there are a lot of reasons why pieces are placed where they are.”

For Hidden Treasures 4, this task proved particularly daunting due to the wide variety of mediums that were represented in the exhibit. "PEA employees work in a variety of art forms, and use so many different materials for self-expression,” O’Neal said. “The exhibition features everything from a wooden hobby horse with wheels, to a large-scale photo mural, to a cross-stitch Monopoly board—a phenomenal range.”

Lower Eleanor Mallet agreed with Knauss and called the range of artwork “dynamic and unique. There was everything from intricately crocheted sweaters to breathtaking photography,” she said.

One photographer represented in the exhibit is art instructor Steve Lewis, who submitted some of his freelance work—a framed photo of a vintage station wagon parked outside the Ioka theater.

Lewis said that he hoped people would enjoy the chance to see some faculty artwork. “I chose that image because it was something I really like,” Lewis said. “I liked the vintage feel of the car and the theater, and I thought that maybe other people would appreciate it and like to look at it as well.”

Lewis added that his motivations for submitting work were simple. “It’s really about exposure. Getting people to see your work,” he said. “There’s no big money in it, there’s no glory. It’s just about sharing your art with other people.”

Mathematics instructor Tom Seidenberg concurred with Lewis, saying that the show is “a great opportunity for us ‘non-artists’ to show off our work.” Seidenberg said that he thinks the gallery will increase awareness of the amount of artistic ability on the Academy campus. “I walked through the exhibit today and was absolutely amazed at the works displayed. You quickly realize that PEA truly is a diverse collection of talented people.”

Another contributor to the exhibit, math instructor Emma Phillips, submitted a hand-painted mathematical drawing to the gallery. Phillips said that the Hidden Treasures exhibit inspired her to really dedicate herself to her art.

“I had never really done a painting before, but I’d been working on this drawing for a while, and the call for artwork from the gallery was kind of an incentive to really sit down and finish it,” she said. “I just thought it would be fun to have something on display.”

Phillips, like many of her colleagues, simply practices her art in her spare time, and has been drawing mathematical sketches and designs since her college years. “I used to doodle stuff like this on graph paper when I was bored in class,” she said. Phillips said that she was thankful to the Lamont Gallery, as it gave faculty members a rare chance to showcase some of their hobbies and talents.

“Faculty here don’t really get the chance to show off much,” Phillips said. “And that’s the way it should be, the focus should be on the students. But it’s nice for faculty to get the chance to show off once in awhile.”

Contributions from Daisy Tichenor