Faculty Exhibition 2017

Press Release

A selection of recent artworks created by 22 members of the art faculty at William Paterson University in Wayne will be featured in an exhibition at the University Galleries in the Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts from September 11 through October 20, 2017. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on September 17 and 24, and October 8 and 15 from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held on Wednesday, September 13 from 4 to 6 p.m. A faculty panel discussion is scheduled for Monday, September 25 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

On view in the Court Gallery, this exhibition features work by faculty who teach ceramics, drawing, graphic design, sculpture, painting, photography, and printmaking. The more than 40 works in the exhibit reveal the faculty’s unique artistic practices as they innovate across diverse media.

This year’s exhibit will feature two new full-time faculty members, Matthew Finn and Julie Ann Nagle. Finn is a graphic designer who has worked for more than 10 years on corporate and non-profit projects involving website, logo, and print design. From 2011-2017, he served as a visiting professor of graphic design at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY. Finn received his BFA from Western Michigan University and his MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He will exhibit Mournful Bliss (2016), a three-part wooden wall sculpture composed of reclaimed wood and metal.

Nagle is a sculptor who uses archeological methods to excavate her personal heritage and question her own mythology, beliefs, and identity. In Bloodlines (2017), she sculpted a pair of saddles that replicate her grandfather’s saddle for his horse Dama and the saddle for her own pony, Silver. Using meticulous beadwork, she preserves the designs of the original leatherwork, which is beginning to decay, much like her memories. The saddles are also taking on a new life as Nagle embedded them with moss collected from the horses’ burial ground. Beneath the saddles, she strung beads like roots to echo the familial bonds between the riders. Nagle earned her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has exhibited at Abrons Art Center, New York; Franconia Sculpture Park, Franconia, MN; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City; among others. She is currently an artist in residence at Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ. 

Zhiyuan Cong recently spent his 2017-18 sabbatical creating a large-scale charcoal drawing in the Gongbi style of Chinese painting, which is characterized by detailed brushwork and often depicts figurative or narrative subjects in bright color palettes. For the faculty exhibition, he will present two monotypes, The Silent Memory and The Passage of History (2017), which portray ghostly images of ships at sea.

Robin Schwartz recently returned from Sydney, Australia where she exhibited work from her Amelia and the Animals series in a solo exhibition as part of the Head On Photo Festival. She was also the recipient of a Head On Portrait Prize for her photographs that explore interspecies relationships through her daughter, Amelia, and animals of all varieties.

Other faculty artists included in the exhibition are Stephanie Beck, Miriam Bisceglia, James A. Brown, Kyle Coniglio, David D’Ostilio, Angela DeLaura, Barbara Friedman, Andrea Geller, David Horton, Elaine Lorenz, Charles Magistro, Daryl Joseph Moore, Leslie Nobler, Lily Prince, Lauren Razzore, Juan José Robles, Wes Sherman, and Gerald Slota. 

The exhibition is one of three on view concurrently in the University Galleries. For Home and Country: World War I Posters from the Newark Public Library, on view in the South Gallery, showcases more than 20 propaganda posters and commemorates the United States World War I Centennial. On view in the East Gallery, the Veterans Book Project, created by Monica Haller, consists of 50 books about recent American-led wars that were authored by a veteran, a veteran’s family member, or an Iraqi or Afghan civilian or refugee. This exhibition is loaned and administered by the Weeks Gallery at Jamestown Community College. 

This exhibition is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print educational materials are available. For additional information, please call the William Paterson University Galleries at 973-720-2654.