Last Tuesday, people sat in the aisles, crouched on the floor and crowded the doorway of Loew Auditorium to get a good look at the renowned professor who would briefly introduce her own paintings, pastels and prints that were to be unveiled in the Jaffe-Friede & Strauss Galleries later that evening. Despite the freshly fallen snow, at least a hundred students, faculty and local residents came to view the latest show from Dartmouth studio art professor Louise Hamlin.
At the beginning of her presentation, Hamlin thanked the friends and family who had "so patiently put up with my technophobia" before jumping into a presentation that highlighted the numerous color etchings, monotypes, paintings, CD booklets and book covers that she has created over the course of her career. Hamlin's work has been published internationally, documented in countless literary media outlets and preserved in more than half a dozen public and private collections.
Hamlin's lecture touched most vividly on her personal connection to art. The professor spoke of her fascination with the "hidden nature of the familiar," of the advantages of the inevitable learning that occurs in the process of creating, and of her ability to inspire young artists, a result of years of experience in the field. The presentation was as much a glimpse into Hamlin's life as it was an overview of her work -- every painting on the slides had a back story, whether it was related to a mussel farmer, the eagle scouts or the tolling of church bells in a European countryside.
Hamlin explained her 30-year progression as a representational painter as a movement from heavy reliance on grids and their "comfortable" geometry to an interest in landscapes and, most recently, to a concentration on the "exuberant" and "tender" depiction of still life.
"I've always directly been inspired by what catches my eye, engages my mind, the world around me," she explained. "I truly believe the work we do in solitude and together are vital to the human spirit."
The crowd that gathered in the galleries following her presentation remained for hours, giving many people the chance to speak with the artist herself. "I've gone to a lot of [art shows] and I personally just find the style of her work very visually appealing," Dana Leland '09 said.
"The subject matters are very contemporary," Hamlin said, with regard to the warm reception her art often receives. "Some people don't think so, but simply by definition it is contemporary. Those subject matters didn't exist 100 years ago, and they probably won't exist 100 years from now."
Among the myriad topics broached in the exhibited paintings are the "anthropomorphic" nature of Italian olive trees, the metaphorical implications of selected poems about childhood and most prominently, the many exacting observations of orange plastic construction fencing, the likes of which have recently lined several areas of the Dartmouth campus.
"The fencing is just very strange and interesting. When I saw it on a blue tarp coming up East Wheelock I very nearly had a car accident," Hamlin joked. "It was just amazing. How the light hit it, how it sometimes became transparent, sometimes was opaque -- how it looked like it disappeared even though it was still there. It's an oddly beautiful presence in nature."
Hamlin expects her exhibit will put to rest many inaccurate notions about Dartmouth art instructors. She hopes that, if anything, the display of a decade's worth of her imagination and labor emphasized the challenges that plague and unite the minds of everyone engaged in creative endeavors. "We're not just telling [the students] what to do," she said. "We're struggling with it ourselves, too. Making something out of nothing. All artists must do that. It's important for the students to understand that we practice what we preach."
In viewing her exhibit, professor Hamlin hopes people gain the understanding that art itself is an ever-evolving medium.
"As an artist, there is always another idea, something more you want to get. It goes on and on," she said. "You could always do it better if you do it more."
Hamlin's work will remain on display in the Jaffe-Friede & Strauss Galleries until Feb. 4, 2007.
