Robert Sweeney

Professor Robert Sweeney, who has been at the College for three decades, teaches Painting 1 and Drawing II, Fall Semester 2018. One of his favorite classes is basic painting. “I have to start from the absolute ground zero and I love that. Each year I teach the course, I basically am reinvented,” he says. “I’m a different painter this year than I was last year. I’m thinking about different things.”  

Here at Fayerweather 101, the class is drawing a life model, and Sweeney talks to a student about their work.

Professor Robert Sweeney with his students in Painting I.

Sweeney with his students in his Drawing II class, reviewing their final project: life-size self-portraits. “Learning to draw or learning to paint is not about copying the surface,” he has written. “When you look at a painting you’re actually misled by the finished results. All of the other work is underneath, and that’s where the real discovery is to be made.”

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Doug Culhane

Douglas Culhane, Visiting Lecturer in Art teaches Sculpture I, Fall Semester 2018. “Things – solid inanimate objects – seem to be the most knowable, reliable and defined entities of our daily experience.  I have always suspected that this is not the entire truth.  As a sculptor I explore the inner potential of things and create works that make the mystery, uneasiness and animate presence of solid objects more apparent.  The possibility of articulating ideas, feeling and  questions without language is the aspect of sculpture I find most compelling.” (Related link: douglasculhane.com.)

Doug Culhane with wire heads made by his students. Class assignment. 

A student welds her sculpture in the basement of Fayerweather, while wearing a safety mask and working behind a protective curtain. She is sanding down her sculpture, as  the sparks fly. Douglas Culhane offers guidance on the student’s metal sculpture.  

 

Culhane teaches two classes: Drawing 1 and Sculpture 1. Here, the students are intent on chiseling their works. Culhane has an M.A. in Art (Sculpture), The University of Iowa, and a B.A. in Fine Arts (High Honors), Colgate University, and has exhibited his sculptures in many galleries.

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Betsey Garand

Betsey Garand, Senior Resident Artist in the Department of Art and the History of Art teaches Printmaking I, The Handprinted Image. “It is my goal, with each student, to foster a level of conceptual rigor and independent thinking while simultaneously instilling knowledge of the technical skills needed to achieve the power of visual language. The building of an individual’s self-confidence and the fearless investigation necessary in becoming an articulate and meaningful visualist is achieved through a combination of traditional and inventive methods.” 

 

A student works on her projects in Printmaking 1.

Final class, students show one another their work and exchange prints.

Betsey Garand jumps up on a counter to take a selfie with her students.

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