Alumni Corner Archives
Spring 2011
Alumni at Work
Read about what alums Cynthia French, MFA '03, and Geoff Herbach, MFA '06, are up to.
Fall 2010
Visual art by MALS alumna featured at the Smithsonian
Loretta Bebeau MALS '98 was one of fifty-five artists chosen to exhibit her work in “Revealing Culture,” a juried exhibition at the Smithsonian’s International Gallery at the S. Dillon Ripley Center from June 9 through August 29, 2010. “Revealing Culture,” touted by critics as a “groundbreaking exhibit on disability,” featured more than 130 works of art in a wide range of media. The four works chosen for the exhibit visually document how hearing loss affects communication.
Bebeau is a full-time artist who has been creating art for twenty years. In fall 2010, she showed work at the Bloomington Art Center (1800 W Shakopee Rd. Bloomington, MN 55431) as part of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) Mentor/Protégé exhibit.
A reflection
by Loretta Bebeau MALS '98During the past ten years I have used the English alphabet to represent conversation, memory, or emotion in conceptual drawings and collages. This evolved into nine-part grids with graphite-stenciled letters on sheet rock. Not much attention was given to them, and no gallery wanted to show them, but the works were addictive; I was working under compulsion.
When a call for entry arrived for the "Revealing Culture" exhibit, I realized that this could be the perfect opportunity to test the strength of my concepts. I sent off the required written materials and the four images, then forgot about it. Ten months later I received notice that all four works would be included. I was absolutely shocked, but thrilled. There's a lot of work to making boxes and shipping art. It's behind the scene, unseen. I'm a small artist with a small budget, so it was my job to invent the safe carton for fragile material, then build and ship.
But almost immediately I began to think about the implications of graphite on sheet rock. I wanted to make notable new works that showed depth.
The works in "Revealing Culture" addressed hearing loss. Communication is a game of chance, and searching for words is part of that game. Vowels are the most easily heard, but consonants form structure and meaning. Walls function in the hearing process by bouncing sound waves. The graphite letters represent human presence and sink into the piece, but the addition of paint brings us back to the present moment and sits on the surface. The viewer is simultaneously in and out, held in suspension.
I have deliberately chosen mundane sheet rock, a marginal material. The choice allows me to examine marginality rather than individual emotion. Marginality is a social construct. Mixing mundane material with fine-art material (and the formal grid) changes the work to high-art, an art category concerned with social values. My works transcend emotional expression to become social statement.
The curators at the Smithsonian understand the social implications of art, and I was lucky to be ready with art that fulfilled their search. Having one's art selected for an exhibit that three curators intend to "break ground" is a beginning, not the finish line. I will use the opportunity to curate exhibits, speak about art in our society, and of course create new works of art.
Spring/Summer 2010
Welcome to the first GLAAS Alumni Corner!
With the support of the university and the efforts of alumni volunteers, we are pleased to announce that GLAAS is the new alumni organization of Hamline's Graduate School of Liberal Studies. We've been busy for the last year, hosting events such as the Green Light Send-Off for graduates in the spring and a potluck "Thank You" dinner for faculty this past fall. We've reached out to alumni via email and surveys, and we're working to make communication even more effective. In recent months, we've met to plan and consider upcoming social events and professional opportunities. We are underway, and there is room for you. We invite all interested alumni to attend upcoming GLAAS planning meetings and events.
Submissions: In each issue of The Exchange, Alumni Corner will be devoted to GLAAS and will feature a piece written by an alum. Though not a venue for creative work, we seek submissions of short essays, articles, and book reviews on topics of interest. Please send submissions to Annette Schiebout at aschiebout@hotmail.com.
On Connecting: This Place & These People
by Beth Mayer MFA ‘07I remember the first night of my Core class in the MFA program at Hamline University. Deborah Keenan, who already had me enthralled, leaned in and said, “I’m going to tell you the truth. I don’t know what you will give up in order to make graduate school work, but you will need to give up something. For instance, some television.” I remember being alarmed. As a mother with two young children, my life was already full. I was lucky to have gotten to class on time. Lucky to have a pen in my hand. What would I give up? Deborah Keenan was right, of course, but I still didn’t get it. I had every intention of compartmentalizing my life in an effort to heed my professor’s advice.
A confession: It’s laughable now as I’ve been proven so irrevocably wrong, but initially, I decided that it would be best not to make any real friends in graduate school. I’d be polite, of course. (I have manners and want people to like me.) But I already had enough friends. (See full-life.) And I was a serious student—about writing; publishing; observing my gifted professors at their craft; learning from them in every possible way; getting a position teaching college upon graduation. Serious, serious.
Thankfully, the very nature of Hamline’s Graduate School of Liberal Studies conspires against such didactic thinking. This graduate work is not about compartmentalization; it is about connections. Everything needed to shift, yes, but it was to make room in me (my waking and even my dreaming self) so that I could fully participate in that extraordinary, but limited, season of my life. And it didn’t take long for me to recognize my classmates for who they were: these lovers of words (and ideas and language and questions and humor) were my people. Lucky for me, they took me in.
Oh, and along the way? All my serious, serious professional goals are coming to fruition. And I thank my time at Hamline for this. At Hamline, I was compelled to realign, to engage as a full participant, and to become genuinely connected not only to my work and the work of others, but to the people I now have the honor of knowing and the place that has changed my life.
So, now what?
We’re all busy. (See your own full-life.) But GLAAS is getting busy, too. If you aren’t finished with Hamline yet, if you want to remain connected to these people and this place, if you are interested in events and activities and professional work where the pleasure of ideas and language intersect—join us.