Lamont Show Opens, Incites Conversations

The Lamont Gallery hosted a back-to-back event on Friday night, starting with the opening reception for their most recent exhibit, 2016, A State of Mind, and transitioning into a student exposition of performances addressing issues that arose during the election season.

“I feel artists should express their concerns within their community and world through their art as a form of expression.”

2016, A State of Mind featured the work of over 140 artists from the Boston Printmakers, a nonprofit organization founded in 1947 to support innovation in printmaking. Using a variety of styles and techniques, ranging from screen prints to stencils to collagraphs to encaustics, these artists tackled pertinent issues of the day, ranging from energy conservation to LGBTQ+ rights.Lamont Gallery Director Lauren O’Neal explained that Robert Tomilillo of the Boston Printmakers approached her a year ago to propose the idea for the exhibit. The idea seemed particularly important and powerful in keeping with the Lamont Gallery’s recent theme of using its exhibits to express public reactions to an array of sociopolitical issues. “We thought 2016, A State of Mind would be a relevant and impactful exhibition to bring to Exeter,” she said. “It’s another way to extend important campus conversations.”Tomilillo, who has worked with the images displayed in the gallery since January, praised the final result of the show and commended the professional work of O’Neal. “I was awed and inspired by the quality of the work,” he said. “Hanging 148 prints in the gallery was an incredible challenge.” O’Neal also celebrated the talent of the artists. “There is a high level of technical achievement in the works on view, and the pieces represent a variety of techniques, styles and materials,” she said.She went on to emphasize that the work featured in the show does not espouse one specific political belief. Rather, it demonstrates the power of art to make commentary on issues of the day. “The issues are complex and multifaceted,” she said. “There are many works where the interpretation is left to the viewer. The exhibition is an open invitation to contemplate, examine and start a conversation about something important to you.”Artist Mary Taylor spoke about the power of art as a means of expression. Her work for the show depicts a human head exploding and speaks to a certain mean spiritedness surrounding the election. “Creative expression is critical to understanding variant perspectives on everything,” she said. “As a vehicle for political or social commentary it is an extremely powerful tool/aid to elicit different avenues of thought on any one subject.” Artist Pat Conant’s print “The American Eagle” expressed a political statement about the ongoing problems within the country during the seventies, problems which persist to this day. “Printmaking over the years has always been a vehicle to present information on political and social distress because it can reach many people,” she said. “I feel artists should express their concerns within their community and world through their art as a form of expression.”Overall, O’Neal deemed the reception a success. “Many of the artists had never been to the Lamont Gallery and they appreciated the chance to see their work on display in dialogue with other pieces,” she said.After the gallery show, students performed in the gallery to speak about citizenship and politics in America.Prior to this event, many of the students had attended the two hour “My Take” workshop in the library led by design lecturer and artist Pamela Davis Kivelson of Stanford University and by Exeter’s own theatre and dance instructor Sarah Ream. “My Take” served as an interactive workshop exploring techniques artists can use to respond to and frame cultural events of the day. It addressed ways to use both visual and spoken art to generate ideas about social issues and helped students interpret the local and national events around them. The workshop focused particularly on Tuesday night’s elections and students’ responses to the process leading up to said event.Senior Alejandro Arango wrote a short play called “Political Lines”, which he acted in along with uppers Jacqui Byrne, Maya Kim and Grant Goodwin. The skit spoke to the divisiveness of politics and to ways in which the country can bridge these gaps.Arango explained that an excerpt he read from Joaquin Muñoz’s Humanizing Opposition motivated him. “It’s always been fascinating to me how invested people become with politics, almost to the point of arguing and ad hominem,” he said. “The play was a jumping off point for thinking about how we should discuss politics. An idea versus an idea, or two people versus each other?”He highlighted the importance of listening to one another and understanding people with whom we do not agree. “Above all, I believe we should make a consistent effort to humanize our opposition,” he said. “It’s only through an unassuming and honest understanding of those we disagree with, that we can hope to have fruitful dialogues on the issues we care about.”“We need to go beyond simply understanding that a discussion of ideas need not entail personal argument, but  that we also cannot separate the person we disagree from their humanity,” he said.Lower Rose Martin wrote and read a poem entitled, “My Love Letter to the Pledge”, which pointed to the hypocrisy of the Pledge of Allegiance and questioned the true equality of the country, framing the poem as a letter to all those who “do not feel ‘free’ in the land of the free.” At the end of her performance, she read her own interpretation of the Pledge of Allegiance, concluding the poem with the lines “Be sure to write to me when that happens. Signed, The rest of your country.”She also created a triptych of posters to supplement her poem. Each one featured a blue, red and white border and was emblazoned with Tupac Shakur’s quote “Pledge allegiance to the flag that neglects us.” Each poster displayed a different silhouette, based on pictures of faculty and staff members on campus and representing different minority groups in America.Martin explained that she welcomed the chance to express herself through creativity and to speak out about something important to her. “It felt important for me to do this because I felt that the best way for me to express my opinion on politics was through art,” she said. “I have always hated the pledge, since I was little. I thought it was not true and that we shouldn’t have to recite something we don’t believe in.”Upper Tim Han performed a monologue entitled “Confessions of a Republican”, using the transcription of an ad for Lyndon B. Johnson from the 1964 presidential election, in which a concerned Republican voter spoke out against Senator Barry Goldwater and endorsed Johnson. Martin applauded Han for his execution of the speech. “Tim Han has a really powerful voice and his monologue of the ‘Confessions of a Republican’ really drew in the crowd, myself included,” she said.For piano instructor Jon Sakata, the student performances were thought provoking. “The student performances struck me as potent interventions less into the space of the Gallery as into the space of our personal and collective held mentalities and language,” he said. “They raised for me questions concerning how our mentality and discourse are formed, shaped, programmed [and] calcified.”O’Neal echoed Sakata’s sentiment, commending the evocative nature of the student performances. “The student performances brought some of the issues raised by the art in the exhibition to life in a dynamic way,” she said. “Art is not as much of a static or stationary ‘object,’ but an ongoing conversation. Any time we can bring different voices into that conversation, we are all enriched—even if we disagree.”