ALUMNI ARTISTS EXHIBIT AT HAVERFORD COLLEGE

Alumni artists of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges will be featured in an exhibit at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery this summer. Debra Howell (BMC ’79), Thomas Loeser (HC ’79), and Andrew John Simon (HC ’74) will display their works May 28-September 12.

Howell is showing work from two ongoing series, “Narrative Waterscapes” and “Portals.” “Narrative Waterscapes” is composed of many different images woven together on the computer, and include seven digital prints of various waterscapes that, according to Howell, “are episodic and pull the viewer into a storyline.” “Portals” features 18 digital photographs of doors, passages, gates and openings that have been collected during the artist's travels over the past 25 years.

After graduating from Bryn Mawr, Howell earned an MFA in printmaking from Tulane University in New Orleans, where she currently resides. She has received two Louisiana Division of the Arts Visual Artist Mini-Grant awards; a National Association of Artists’ Organizations/Pew Charitable Trust Multi-Site Collaborations Program Project Grant; and a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and Rockefeller Foundation Initiative for Interdisciplinary Artists Project Fellowship. She last exhibited at Haverford in 1999, and her works have also been shown at New Orleans’ Le Mieux Galleries and Contemporary Art Center, and Washington’s Duncan Miller Gallery. She is a founding member of the Vestiges Project, a forum for writers and visual artists to investigate the interconnection of image and text.

Loeser displays three wall cabinets and one box from his repertoire of creative furniture. The cabinets are carved from mahogany and painted with stripes in bold colors, forming a complex overlapping pattern. “I use traditional woodworking techniques,” he says, “but I’m also very interested in paint and color relationships.” His box is based on folk “chip carving,” with many triangular cutouts used to create patterns.

A professor of art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Loeser received a BFA in furniture design from Boston University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He has been awarded several NEA Visual Artist Fellowship Grants and the Silver Medal from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce in London. He has exhibited throughout Europe, as well as at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Renwick Gallery in Washington, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Navy Pier in Chicago, and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). His work can be found in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Art, the Renwick, Yale, RISD, New York’s American Craft Museum, and Brooklyn Museum.

Simon’s exhibit, “Paintings from the Heart of Europe,” is composed of 27 of his works, including “Holidays at Donnerskirchen” and “The Haverford Class of 1974.” He describes these paintings as “different styles ranging from landscapes to self-portraits, from colorful patterns to art deco trees, from the complete abstract to naïve reproductions of the neighboring villages of Vienna.” He uses fineliner, markers, and acrylics, among other materials.

Simon studied law at the University of Vienna, Austria, and discovered his love of painting after a three-week course in the Austrian mountains; he has also studied at Switzerland’s University of Lausanne and the University of Cambridge in England. His paintings hang in museums in Japan, Taiwan, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, and the United States. Simon has also performed as a guitarist and singer in pop/rock bands and has recorded CDs of his original compositions. He is the author of many poems and short stories. His exhibit at Haverford will be his first overseas.

Located in Whitehead Campus Center, the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. from June-August. In September, the Gallery will be open Monday-Friday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and weekends from noon-5 p.m. For more information, call (610) 896-1287.