On Monday night, the Eric Dean Art Gallery opened its doors for what will be the last art exhibit of two of Wabash’s most gifted sons. An entire year’s work has come to fruition as Michael Russell ‘08 and Dan Gillespie ‘08 unveiled their latest collections. The effort and toil they went through paid off, as a multitude of faculty and students alike arrived to enjoy the art and to say farewell to the artists the College has come to know these past four years.
Upon entering the gallery, the contrasting artistic perspectives displayed by Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Russell entrance the eye and entice the mind. Where Russell chose a curious approach to abstract painting through a strategic blend of acrylic paints, Gillespie decided upon a rather unique approach, representing a lifetime of memories through a combination of photographic print and acrylic paint. The dissimilar yet immensely appealing perspectives on art taken by Mr. Russell and Mr. Gillespie left even the most experienced art observers impressed.
“I came from a school that had 300 majors,” said Professor Morton, assistant professor of art history, “and this is as good as the best of those shows.”
“One of the things that I really like about this show,” continued Morton, “is that they have shown two completely different voices, using basically the same media.”
Chair of the art department Dr. Gregory Huebner praised the two artists as he reflected on time spent with them during their tenure at Wabash. “I had a great experience with both of them,” said Huebner. “They are both guys that work really hard.”
Dr. Huebner went on to elaborate about his thoughts on both the artists. “Michael is just a natural abstractionist, which is quite odd. Even since his sophomore year, he has really been able to put together a good sense of composition in abstract form,” Huebner reflected. “And Dan has always been a very deep thinker, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that his work kind of evolved into this mixture of dream and reality and the balance between what we think of things as we remember events from our past, how it changes over the years from our experiences, and the effect that that has on memory.”
Mr. Gillespie reflected on the inspiration for his latest collection, “I’ve lived all around the world, and since I was young I’ve been moving a lot. I’ve had lots of different experiences with tons of different kinds of people and you can see that in my work,” he said. “And a lot of [the paintings] have to do with memories of these places. I can’t get back to the places that I’ve been, but I have all these wonderful memories of where I was. So the only way I can really evoke that emotion of being there is by painting it and trying to relive it through the photos and relive it through the colors.”
Mr. Russell, however, tends to find his influence in different places. “Obviously the critiques of my peers like Steve Miller and Dan Gillespie and Professor Huebner have been very influential in where things go,” Russell explained. “But for the most part I just kind of put some paint on the canvas, put a line on the canvas, and go with it.”
Each artist gives credit to Wabash for opening up his mind and allowing them to explore new concepts in their artistic expressions. They will leave the College having developed artistic abilities that surpassed even their own professor’s expectations. “They both do the type of work that I assumed they would move for,” said Professor Huebner, “but they did it better than I thought they would.”