Goldfarb Student Art Exhibition Opens This Week

"Ode to Mondrian," by Anthony Videira (digital photography, 2012)

Sam Miller (left) and Chris Nelson hang "A Manner of Perception" by Nicole Coumes (charcoal, 2012).

"Chernobyl Legacy," by Tatyana Nadgor (oil, 2010)

"Self-Portrait," by Jesse Sullivan (oil on canvas, 2011)

"Experience the World," by Briana Swota (wood, 2012)

The Joseloff Gallery is pleased to present the 24th annual Alexander A. Goldfarb Student Exhibition beginning Tuesday, March 12, and officially opening with a public reception and awards presentation on Thursday, March 14,  from 4 to 6:30 p.m.

The annual juried student art exhibition will be on display at the Joseloff Gallery through April 14.

The Alexander A. Goldfarb Student Exhibition and Awards Presentation is held each year in the Joseloff Gallery. All students of the University of Hartford are invited to submit up to two works of art to be considered for the exhibition. Of the works chosen for the show, two undergraduate students are chosen to receive purchase prizes in the amount of $1,000 each. The winning students’ artwork becomes a part of the Goldfarb Memorial Collection, to be owned by the Hartford Art School and proudly displayed throughout the University, in offices and public spaces.

Alexander A. Goldfarb, a Hartford attorney and art aficionado, is remembered by many in the Hartford Art School community not just for his excitement and interest in the arts, but also for his generosity. Goldfarb generously endowed a fund at the Hartford Art School to support this annual exhibition and provide prize money for the students. It was his intention that the older students use the money to travel or go on to advanced training after graduation, and that the younger students might use the prize money to offset the expenses of schooling.

The first Juried Student Exhibition – as it was then called – opened in May 1989. As the years have passed, some details of the exhibition have changed. The name changed from the Juried Student Exhibition to The Alexander A. Goldfarb Student Exhibition, and the jury process is now presided over by a single guest juror (a representative of the arts community, e.g., an artist, critic, or curator). Past jurors have included artists Cleve Gray (1992), Judy Moonelis (1998), Zoe Beloff (2002), and Clint Jukkala (2010), as well as curators Andrea Miller-Keller (1991), and Richard Klein (2009).

This year’s invited guest juror is painter and educational curator of ArtSpace New Haven, Martha Lewis. Primarily a painter and draftsperson, Lewis has been involved in a variety of projects including editing and printing her own fictional newspaper in Oxford, UK; leading groups of school children in making 6-foot totem poles on wheels from recycled materials; creating sets and costumes for a production of The Magic Flute; and producing a virtual book Glossary & Index from an outdated computer manual into which she inserted the history of the book and the history of the computer.

Lewis earned a BFA at Cooper Union in New York, and received her MFA from Yale University. Subsequently she has taught drawing through the college seminar program at Yale University, and at Columbia University.

In April 2009, Lewis curated the exhibition Yarn Theory at PS122 Gallery in New York, which featured knitted and crocheted models, structures and objects created by artists, mathematicians and scientists. Lewis's work is in the collection of Nuffield College, Oxford, and Chapman University, Orange, Calif., as well as in private collections in the U.S. and Europe.

The Joseloff Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 4 p.m. For more information, please call the gallery at 860.768.4090 or visit www.joseloffgallery.org.