We
are dedicated to creating an environment that is challenging,
that stimulates ideas and generates discussion and discovery
among our students, faculty, staff, and the public.
The Sculpture on Campus Program is an important part of such an environment." Gallery Director Nancy Einreinhofer, member of William Paterson's Sculpture on Campus Committee
A Dialogue with Art
by Terry E. Ross
As you walk across campus toward Shea Center, you'll see what Michael Brenson, art critic of the New York Times, once described as a "big industrial egg cracked open." In Caldwell Plaza, a brightly colored park bench appears strangely broken in half. Look up, and two bolts of red and blue neon dart beyond the facade of the Ben Shahn Center for Visual Arts. What is it? What does it mean?
These and other works are among the University's growing collection of outdoor sculpture. Inaugurated in 1990, the Sculpture on Campus program was designed to "enhance the academic environment by integrating art throughout the campus," explains Nancy Einreinhofer, director of William Paterson's Ben Shahn Galleries. Now, a decade later, there are 21 works on campus.
"Contemporary sculpture, like other aspects of modern life, is often complex and controversial-it stirs the imagination," says Einreinhofer. "This program gives our faculty, staff, and students an opportunity to interact with art and discuss it in a setting outside the gallery or museum."
To hear about the program from those who care the most, there is a passion and decisiveness about the selection of the artists, the choice of sculpture, and its placement on campus. Arguably, the collection represents "cutting-edge work from some of the best contemporary artists on today's scene." So boasts David Shapiro, poet, art historian, and professor of art, whose understanding and appreciation for the medium may stem from the fact that his father was a sculptor who studied under Rodin. Every semester, Shapiro takes his students on an outdoor tour of the "sculpture court," as he lovingly calls it, to teach them about art and its relationship with nature.
The wide-open spaces and hilltop grounds of the campus provide an ideal setting for sculpture. A case in point is the recently installed Papageno, by internationally renowned sculptor Issaac Witkin. Located near the entrance of the Atrium, "it is the best sculpture on campus to walk around," declares John O'Connor, professor of philosophy. He praises the way a viewer may peer through its hollow, steel curves and see the hills, a lake, buildings, and undefined spaces. And if one circles around it, the sculpture seems to take on a startling number of appearances. "The Witkin piece," notes O'Connor, "shows why sculpture is so rewarding to an attentive viewer."
Because modern sculpture is often big and difficult to place, many artists lobby to have their pieces sited here. Works are sometimes purchased, received on commission, or donated as gifts or loans; all are selected through a rigorous screening process. A committee, composed of Einreinhofer, art department chair Charles Magistro, art faculty and sculptor Ming Fay, and Shapiro, sorts through the proposals and approves the possibility of selecting a work by a particular artist. "Essentially, we are looking for excellence, for sculptors who demonstrate outstanding technique and a high level of creativity," says Einreinhofer. "We also wish to represent a variety of sculptural styles and media."
The result is a collection that truly represents art being created today- from the influence of constructionism in works by Lyman Kipp and Caspar Henselmann to the minimalism evident in sculpture by Bill Finneran and Richard Nonas.'
"People often shy away from an object when it is described as 'art' - they think artwork only belongs in museums," says Einreinhofer. "This sculpture is easier to relate to - it's something people can walk up to, move through, and touch." It opens up possibilities of public participation in and a genuine dialogue with the art - a primary goal of the Sculpture on Campus program. WP
Montreal Shift (1990-92) Caspar
Henselmann
"Montreal Shift functions, on one level, as a drawing in space. The piece, which is very frontal, has a formal composition consisting of a centralized curve which holds opposing diagonals. The whole is a geometry in major and minor tones, creating, through its volumes and planes, a generous, expansive space from a piece of urban architecture."
Nancy Einreinhofer
"Imaginary
Garden (1990) Richard Nonas
- "Richard Nonas is an extreme pioneer in the recent history of American sculpture. His bias is toward passionate factuality, and his sculpture on campus between Ben Shahn and the Student Center is one of the most provocative on any campus."
David Shapiro-
Yoakum
Jack (1977) Lyman Kipp
"Lyman Kipp's post and lintel assemblages are directly descended from the pioneering sculptures of American David Smith and consist of solid steel and aluminum plates painted in bright primary reds, blues, and yellows. His use of simple geometric forms and emphasis on materials displays a minimalistic aesthetic. The recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, Kipp's work is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and Storm King Art Center, among others."
Nancy Einreinhofer
Reversal (1989) Elaine Lorenz
"This
sculpture is a kind of celebration of the potential for Western
Art to heal the split between nature and culture and to deflect
itself from the Renaissance course of man dominating nature.
The suggestion is to find, somewhat decentered in his/her universe,
a new humanity that no longer thinks of art as an imperial conquest."
David Shapiro
Papageno (1972-73)
Isaac Witkin
"Papageno is a
complex arrangement of bold forms that both rise upward and expand
outward in space...the natural light enhances the reading of
the sculpture; the play on open and closed elements
adds to the composition's expressiveness."
- Fred B. Adelson
"Welding Words Together,"- New York Times, Sunday,
- November 15, 1998
- New York Times, Sunday,
Who's Doubting Who
(1989) Tom Bills
"Who's Doubting
Who is meant to be both
intimate and ferocious. A simple symmetry reigns, but everything
counts and is significant: the thickness of the piece, the little
bits of
negative space that become enormous, the
monumentalism and lack of mere business,
and the implication that something of immense gravity has to
be confronted in the everyday."
David Shapiro
Painted Sun Trails: A Timetable (1994-95) Merrill Wagner
"Merrill
Wagner often comes close to a Zen-like appreciation for material
or nature left completely alone. Here she has accepted a configuration
of boulders and stones and then
proceeded to paint the rocks exactly where the shadows fell.
She documented nature, as it were,
with art."
David Shapiro
Neon for William
Paterson College (1995) Stephen Antonakos
"Neon is like a poem whose adjectives are supplied by the constantly changing atmospheric condictions surrounding the site. It is by turn soft and warm on the dark, rainy days of autumn, and later, at dusk, quite vibrant. It is a drawing in light and color that uses the architectural backdrop as if it were a blank canvas, and it contains, in these two simple lines, all the energy of the painted gesture."
Nancy Einreinhofer