Art Faculty Exhibition
March 27- April 25, 2004
The Department of Art and Art History at Saint Mary's College dates back to 1929. In those early years, Brother Cornelius, followed by Brother Kyran, recognized the value of visual art to a liberal arts education and developed a broad offering of courses in studio art practice and art history. For the past thirty years, the department has been led by Professor Roy Schmaltz, a nationally recognized artist who has educated generations of students and enriched the tradition of painting in the Bay Area. His sumptuously colored paintings have illuminated varied themes including the ever-changing California landscape, stories from the Bible, and the circus. Roy Schmaltz holds MFA and BFA degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute and later studied in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar. He has had solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Realist Gallery, San Francisco, the M.H. de Young Museum, the U C Santa Cruz Art Gallery, the San Francisco Art Institute Gallery and the Frye Museum. His work is in public and private collections across the country.
Ray Beldner is a new tenure-track professor in studio art. Professor Beldner is a sculptor and public artist whose sculpture, assembled from individual dollar bills that he cuts, mutilates and sews together, examines the value of art and money and challenges the sanctity of both. Beldner, born in San Francisco, received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Mills College. His work has been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally and can be found in many public and private collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Museum of California, the San Jose Museum of Art, the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, California, and the Federal Reserve Board, Washington D.C. He has taught sculpture and interdisciplinary studies at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of the Arts, Oakland.
The newly established Artist-in- Residence program brings visual artists from diverse media to the campus for a year of teaching, curating of student exhibitions, and individual mentoring. This year's resident, Mariella Poli, is an Italian-born photographer who uses modern architectural spaces as containers for personal memories. Her large-scale color photographs and video installations capture the silenced voices of bustling, once inhabited, hotels, factories, and Catholic convents. Mariella Poli has a BFA and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited and been published in Italy, Mexico, Spain, Austria, Denmark and the United States. Her work is in museums and private collections. Since 1994 Ms. Poli has been teaching photography and interdisciplinary classes at the San Francisco Art Institute as well as the Studio Art Center International in Florence, Italy, and the California College of the Arts.
This spring, graduating seniors in studio art will be having their own exhibition in the Hearst Art Gallery. Coincidentally, art history seniors will be conducting original research based on the works of art in the museum's permanent collection. To acknowledge our expanding partnership with the Hearst Art Gallery, we have included in this faculty show the symbolic realist work of Carrie Brewster, the museum's director. Ms. Brewster received a BFA degree from Carleton College and an MFA from the University of Florida. She has worked as an arts administrator, art educator and exhibiting artist for over twenty years. Her paintings, drawing, prints and sculpture have been exhibited in the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Rumania, Turkey, Iran, New Guinea, the Philippines, and Korea. She is represented in numerous private and public collections both in the U.S. and overseas. Ms. Brewster teaches an independent study course for the Art Department in Exhibition Design and Installation.
We invite you to visit this four-person exhibition and celebrate with us this new departmental sampling.
Anna Novakov, Ph.D., guest curator
Anna Novakov is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History at Saint Mary's College. Professor Novakov holds a Ph.D. from New York University. She has contributed to the dialogue about public art, modernist architecture, and gender through her books which include Veiled Histories: The Body, Place, and Public Art and Carnal Pleasures: Desire, Public Space, and Contemporary Art. Most recently, she has been awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts for the forthcoming Hidden Heroines: Women Architects of the 1920s Reconsider the Modern Home.
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Contact: Heidi Donner (925) 631-4069 or hdonner@stmarys-ca.edu
Website: http://gallery.stmarys-ca.edu
