University Gallery - Salve Regina University

February 22 - March 5, 2006
Artist's Reception: February 22 5:30 - 7:00 pm
"The Wetmore Series"
Harris Deller - Jay Lacouture

In the fall of 2005 Harris Deller and Jay Lacouture worked together in a studio in the Wetmore Building on the campus of Salve Regina University. This 19th century carriage house is slated to be the future home of the Salve Regina Art and Cultural & Historic Preservation programs. This impressive building with its many stone textures and architectural intricacies, coupled with the Newport coastline, provided inspiration for a daily work routine over some seven weeks. With support from a sabbatical leave from Southern Illinois University/Carbondale and the Salve Regina University’s Presidential Faculty Scholar fund, the two artists worked in tandem developing ideas and forms reflecting a sense of place and time. Friends for over twentyyears, the two artists engaged in a dialogue of form and materials. This work is the result.

The artists would like to thank their respective institutions, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and Salve Regina University, for the support of the creative endeavors of all of their arts faculty.

ARTISTS' STATEMENT

Working along with a respected colleague is an enriching and somewhat challenging experience. Observing one's own daily work in relation to a peer brings the often-lonely solitary studio pursuit to a different level. A long friendship provided a backdrop of trust and open communication in both materials and words. Music from our past revealed even more about common experiences from the 1960's. The coincidental visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to our campus added a more introspective moment of reflection to this collaborative experience. The works resulting from this experience "are what they are" and mark a point in time and occupy a place among many objects that both of us have made over the last thirty-some odd years. Fueled by the necessity to "make" and nurtured by a friendship essentially centered on making the dialogue resulted in fusing new and old forms and surfaces. The creative journey continues.

VIEW BROCHURE (PDF)