Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1966

  Diane Franklin - Multi-media Artist

I am fascinated by texture and color and inspired by a myriad of images from the natural and constructed worlds. I’m particularly intrigued by the interplay of color and light, including reflections, shadows and unexpected luminosity. I try to create some of these effects when altering the white papers and fabrics with which I generally begin my work.

I’ve also started incorporating my own photographs into my work. I've spent time in Europe each year (pre-pandemic), and I take a lot of photographs when I’m there, usually of buildings, street art, and the many exhibits that I visit. I’m playing with combining these with Asian lettering and some of the papers I’ve printed using a gelatin printing process.

Ellen Leopold - Ceramic Artist
On and off over more than 20 years, I have been a denizen of the formerly-Radcliffe-now-Harvard Ceramic Studio.  The first studio opened--too late for us--in 1971, in the basement of Briggs Hall in the Radcliffe Quad.  It's moved three times since then and now occupies a state-of-the-art facility across the river in Allston.  

Although I have worked in stoneware, the majority of my work is porcelain, with colorants added.  This means that the patterns visible in the attached images are embedded in the clay body itself, visible front and back, not applied on the surface. All the pieces are covered with a transparent glaze and fired in an electric kiln. 

   Judith Larzelere - Fiber Artist

Judith Larzelere is a world renowned art quilt innovator.  She developed her signature style in the 1980’s, a combination of machine strip piecing and machine strip quilting.  Her quilts are abstract, not based on block composition, and emphasize color interaction and movement.  They have great impact when viewed at a distance and reveal detail and nuance upon closer inspection.  Her work is owned by many corporate and private collections and published extensively. Judith has taught at Arowmont, Banff, Haystack, Penland craft schools and numerous workshops in Europe and the US. She has an MFA in painting from Rutgers University and has exhibited her quilts extensively in the U.S., Japan and in Germany

White Goods - This quilt is strip pieced from undyed fabrics which in the industry are known as “white goods.” I was interested for a time in seeing just what could happen to a quilt if I used my usual methods but eliminated color.  Even white goods vary in tone. This was one of a series of white works.  (56”h  x 56”w  completed 2014)
 

"Luminosity:Primary Colors” is not beautiful in any traditional art sense; the colors and shapes are not comforting. My goal is narrow, to see just what can happen when minimal elements strip (no pun intended) a visual experience to its bones. “Luminosity: Primary Colors” is my interpretation of a suggestion by Goethe that equal luminosity results when the proportions of red, yellow and blue in an artwork are: 8 parts blue, 3 parts red and 1 part yellow. (62”h  x 64”w completed 2010)

Translucent Volunteer - This quilt has 2 separate layers that together make the  image. The top surface consists of strip pieced white fabrics, some translucent, some reflective. Underneath that is a middle layer of large colored shaped. The viewer’s eyes focus between the two layers to grasp the composite image.  (50”h x 46”w completed 2015)

"I  have recently retired from active quilt making to pursue a new career as a hand weaver.  Weaving as a mediumoffers me discoveries in texture, color selection, and methodology. My pieced quilting was a form of collage. I had developed my  own ways  of approaching a new quilt so  that the process was    intuitive  and my focus was on the realization of my vision. Weaving is for me an additive process and I am still searching to find my own new thought patterns as I set up then execute a project. I am building the visual vocabulary of this new   language and adding to its grammar as  I work at my  loom."

See more of Judith's work at http://www.judithlarzelere.com/

       Florie Maynard - Painter

A Word About Why I  Paint
 

Since earliest childhood, painting has been a real passion for me. It has kept me me centered through all the ups and downs of life and career.
 

Much of our world in hidden from us as we go about our busy lives.  We often rush towards goals, and do not pause to listen, look and wonder.  Painting requires such focus including eye and hand and object painted, that it changes how we apprehend.  Why one line or color works is sometimes a mysterious choice, reflecting both our emotions and what we see. As the painting unfolds, we find a new adventure that was not preconceived, only started with courage and hope.

These paintings explore real, imagined, and abstract journeys. I hope they bring to you something of what I felt when painting them.
 

 

Left upper & lower: Landscape & January 6 Insurrection

Below: Backyard, Energy of a Spirited Toddler & Heights Harbor

(click on any image for a larger version)

 

 

 

 

Eileen Blumenthal Kahan - Quilter

I’m working on a quilt called “Wilderness Wandering/Promised Land” begun during the Covid-19 pandemic.  The more muted side represents the Wilderness with diagonals of sky and sun appearing.  The brighter colors on the reverse side express for me what I expect our new normal will feel like at first – a kind of Promised Land. I spent many hours at home and had abundant time to work with my fabric:  cutting out the strips and experimenting with color and design combinations.   The process allowed me to relax and discover a direction during this prolonged, emotionally fraught medical/public health crisis. 

Left upper & lower: Wilderness Wandering and detail
Right upper & lower: Promised Land and detail
(click on any image for a larger version)

  Jane Greengold - Public Artist

      I engage in various forms of art-making:  community engagement projects; ephemeral landscape works; permanent and temporary public art installations; and studio work including painting, drawing, and collage.

      Since 2014, with the support of the Design Trust for Public Space, I have been working on a project I proposed, called “Opening the Edge.” The goal is to encourage the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to take down fences at the edge of its developments all over the City, because I think these fences further separate residents from their neighbors. I have been working  with residents and neighbors of one typical NYCHA development to design such a space at their development. We hope the fence will come down and the design will be realized in 2022.

      That project is very slow.  But my longest running community project began in 1998! It is an almost annual series of Halloween Impalements -- an installation of hundreds of carved pumpkins impaled on the 273 pointed posts of a long fence, and left for months to decay, illustrating the toll of time. This has become a community collaboration. Until the Pandemic, I and my friends carved about 100 pumpkins and neighbors contributed over 100 more. (During the Pandemic, the pumpkins had to be socially distanced, so we did many fewer pumpkins. )

      My newest community project invites the public to join in making ephemeral art works in a local park, using natural materials on the sites where they are found. These interventions can be made in a few hours, and disappear within hours or a few days.

     My more traditional, earlier, public installations are site-specific, intended to heighten a sense of place, and are often engaged with social issues.  They are based on the history, function, or physical attributes of their sites.  I have done permanent works for the MTA Arts for Transit progam at the Grand Army Plaza Station in Brooklyn and (with Kane Chang Do) the MetroNorth station in Pleasantville;  the NYC Percent for Art Program at a high school in Brooklyn and a Fire/EMS Station in Queens; and temporary projects for the centennials of the Brooklyn Bridge and Grand Central Terminal, among others.  
  
   Halloween Impalements - normal year, socially distanced and a video (click on pictures for larger versions or the video)






   Queens Fire/EMS station, subway terra cotta mural, subway platform installation (click for larger versions)