May 2–18, at the Carroll House Art Gallery
(on Main St. next to the Alumni Center)
Wed thru Sat 12–5 p.m.
Opening reception, Thursday, May 2, 4–5 p.m.
Exhibit reopens for Reunion weekend,
June 7 & 8.
The KSC Art Department welcomes back five alumni: Randall Merchant ’77 (from Gilsum, NH), Eileen Longe ’12 (from Swanzey, NH); Nic Petrow ’11 (from Branford CT), Katie Houle ’13 (from Newtown, NH), and Jaz Graf ’00 (from Jersey City, NJ). Their work ranges from paintings, drawings, and wall installations to ceramics and printmaking that investigates abstraction, process, color, and representation.
Randall Merchant paints full time and has a studio filled with new works. His colorful and expressive creations been exhibited regionally at New England College, the Thorne Sagendorph Gallery, and juried Stonewall Farm Fundraisers. His contributions to the Alumni Exhibition will showcase a new body of paintings completed during a three-month stay in Greece in the fall of 2012. Inspired by the vibrant colored soil and the countries’ fantastic and ancient traditions of historical narrative and violence, Merchant’s canvases manifest a lyrical eye with gestural allusions to time and space.
Jaz Graf’s work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, and she earned an international artist residency at Can Serrat in Barcelona. Her mixed-media pieces are grounded in their relationship to paper and printmaking. She reexamines the content and physicality of books and the ideas within them. Fabrics and papers, are printed, torn, and resewn to be reconfigured and represented in series or installation formats.
Eileen Longe returned to college after 20 years and completed her BFA. She displays her ongoing love for the pastel medium, and her work is represented with partially collaged drawings of small boxes. Longe’s delicate works suggest mysteries in both art and life.
Katie Houle’s ceramic reliefs and sculptures were inspired by her experiences working in her family’s construction business. Her interest in building sites and the inevitability of deconstruction consider the constancy of change in the world. Houle sculpts quirky shapes, bits of bearing walls, and piles of brick: construction zones and building fragments in miniature.
Nic Petrow paints with a crazed sense of abandon and rebellion. His paintings are exuberant fields of spray paint, stencils, and multiple layers of gesture and color that he compares to the addictive sweetness of gummy bears. He plans his paintings by conceptually collaborating with other artists’ written instructions, which he interprets into his own work process, much like a musician interprets a composer’s score.
The Carroll House Gallery offers current art majors opportunities to work with the guest artists, help mount and curate their work, learn from their experience, and perform other gallery-management tasks. For more information, phone 603-358-2040.