CENTENNIAL: University of Redlands alumni from the mid-1900s to recent grads display their work.
November 18, 2007
By PENNY E. SCHWARTZ SPECIAL TO THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE
An alumni art show featuring the works of 51 artists debuted last week as a coda to the University of Redlands’ yearlong centennial celebration.
At the opening reception for the “Welcome Home!” show at the Peppers Gallery, many of the artists and several of the professors who instructed them gathered to view the varied work.
The show curator was Carla Goldberg-van der Merwe, a 1987 graduate of the university’s Johnston College. She pitched the idea last spring to art professor Penny McElroy, who liked the idea and asked her former student to put it together.
“This is a very diverse show,” Goldberg-van der Merwe, who lives in New York, wrote in a pre-show e-mail. “It covers eight decades, from 1938 to 2006, and shows one good representative piece from each of the 51 artists.”
Many of her contacts for the show were made via e-mail and word-of-mouth, Goldberg-van der Merwe wrote. The hardest part was locating art alumni, she wrote.
Works were not juried into the show but selected by the artists to represent their own work. The pieces run the gamut of media and styles.
“We have end-of-career artists like Emil Edgar, who is 92 years old and established . . . and re-emerging artists, many of whom took time off to raise children before returning to the business of making art, like myself,” Goldberg-van der Merwe wrote.
Newly graduated artists are represented, along with every discipline taught in the university’s art department.
“What makes this show hang together is its reflection of the diversity of this school’s student body, which runs from very conservative and traditional to very liberal,” the curator wrote. “Diversity is our school’s calling card, and I think this show expresses that very well.”
A number of local artists who graduated from the University of Redlands were on hand for the show’s opening reception. Ann Bingham-Freeman, of Yucaipa, Class of ’78, is represented by a metal sculpture. She complimented the show, as did Jeannie Gaylord, Class of ’72, a Redlands potter.
“It’s impressive and diverse,” Gaylord said.
Grace Shinoda Nakamura, Class of ’49, was among the oldest artists in attendance. The watercolorist from Whittier was interned at Manzanar, one of the camps where the government sent people of Japanese heritage during World War II. The experience has colored much of her subject matter, she said.
Each art work was accompanied by an artist’s statement, revealing some of the artist’s background and artistic vision.
“It’s exciting to be here,” said Nakamura, who spoke at the reception with a man who had been one of her art sponsors during her college years. She attended the University of Redlands on a partial scholarship offered by a Redlands church group.
Other local artists in attendance included Janet Edwards, Class of ’55, known for her etchings of Redlands sights; Barbara Dornbach Beddoes, ’74, an oil painter and jewelry artist; and painter Jeff Owens, ’63, a retired art teacher at Redlands High School. Among the newest graduates with work on display was potter Fritz Nugent, Class of ’06.
“This is like a show of calling cards, with a little piece of each artist on view,” said David Lawrence, former head of the art department at San Bernardino Valley College.
Lawrence is not a Redlands alumnus but was on hand to view the show.
“It’s interesting to learn what happens to students after they leave the school,” he said.
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`Welcome Home’
What: A show featuring the work of 51 University of Redlands alumni.
When: 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 2 to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 10. The final day, a Monday, hours are 1 to 5 p.m.
Where: The campus’s Peppers Gallery, on East Colton Avenue, near the Administration Building.
