Davis Gallery
Contact
Email: davisgallery@hws.edu If you would like to be added to the Davis Gallery email list, please contact sgage@hws.edu.
Phone: (315) 781-3487
Hours
Fall 2022
Monday-Friday: 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Saturday: 1-3 p.m.
Or by appointment, call (315) 781-3487
For more information, please call (315) 781-3487 or email davisgallery@hws.edu.
davis gallery at houghton house
Named in recognition of the generosity of Clarence A. (Dave) Davis, Jr. '48, the Davis Gallery is an academic resource of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The Davis Gallery at Houghton House is the exhibition space of the Department of Art and Architecture. The Gallery has six shows each year beginning with a faculty exhibition and ending the year with a student exhibition. In between, a variety of artists and architects are invited to show their work and an exhibition from the Collections of Hobart and William Smith Colleges is staged. The mission of the Gallery is to exhibit, and make accessible works of art in support of the educational goals of the Colleges and for the benefit of the community at large. The Davis Gallery is primarily a space to immerse Hobart and William Smith College students in visual culture by providing an environment for studying the role of art and architecture in shaping, embodying and interpreting cultures.
2022-2023 Exhibitions
u.a.c. bungalow paintings
Michael Bogin
August 26-October 1, 2022 | Davis Gallery
The path to the U.A.C. bungalow leads uphill through a green tunnel of leaves. Two thick mud walled rooms are surrounded on all sides by a broad tin roof covered verandah. Standing on the verandah looking out over the paw-paw trees and banana plants, I could see the turtle shaped silhouette of Adakluto in the distance rising above the tropical forest. Sometimes I would sit on the verandah reading and small children from the village would sit on the railing and watch me for hours.
These paintings start on the verandah of the U.A.C. bungalow enveloped in the press of heat and humidity, and then, when my work goes well, something happens.
Image: artist's studio, 2022
Act, Impact, Repeat: Meditations on Personal Myth and Power
Christina Hunt Wood
October 6-November 5, 2022 | Davis Gallery
Act, Impact, Repeat is an exhibition of found object assemblages and video art exploring the collective impact of microaggressions. In her work, Wood uses deconstructed beer cans harvested from ditches in rural spaces throughout NY state to construct her “water tapestries.”
Each piece represents the harms enacted on the environment around regional bodies of water such as Seneca Lake and the Susquehanna River. The artist’s Manual Project video series captures the destabilizing feeling of being in dialogue with cognitive dissonance.
Image: Susquehanna Tapestry (detail),2021, discarded cans, 24 x 48 in
biophilia
Claudine Metrick
October 6-November 5, 2022 | Solarium Gallery
Biophilia uses painting, installation and animation to examine the natural world. Part careful biological observation and part wild imagining, the work in this exhibit celebrates a personal relationship with nature while calling attention to how it’s imperiled.
Image: Nightshade, 2022, water and gouache on wood panel, 12 x 16 in
October 8-11: Fall Break
the future i fear is coming
Leslie Tucker
November 10-December 10, 2022 | Davis Gallery
These works explore how we respond intrinsically to our environment, exploring how we evolve into who we become according to what society demands from us over time. In the exhibition "the future i fear is coming,” history folds into the present, transitioning into the tale of a future potentially post-apocalyptic society. Jean Baudrillard's observations from “The Illusion of the End” (1992) in which he observes that “post-apocalyptic narratives necessarily imply that any present status quo must be understood as temporary,” firmly address the inevitability of impermanence. The idea that our current circumstances are permanent is a mirage: this reality can be disrupted at any moment.
Image: I am the First and I am the Last, 2015, photo-composite printed on Endura Metallic chromogenic paper, 49 x 50 in
November 24-26: Thanksgiving
December 4-6: Reading Days
December 10: Semester Ends
Beth LIVENSPERGER
February 3-March 3, 2023 | Davis Gallery
This exhibition takes corporate architecture as its point of inspiration, using this banal and ubiquitous architectural genre to explore the relationship we create with our built environment. Creating a counterpoint to the Davis Gallery’s wonderfully historic architectural features, Livensperger uses paper to transform the space into a fictional office suite. Pattern, isometric perspective, and scale shifts highlight the artificiality of corporate space, while figures at work reflect power dynamics large and small.
Image: Spilling, 2021, ink and silkscreen on paper, 60w x 78h x 28d in
Spring Break: March 20-24
Winding/Wounding
Robert McCann
March 9-April 15, 2023 | Davis Gallery
Robert McCann’s work ties together current events, history, transient pop culture and autobiography with the physical world-building of paint. From a personal position, McCann pursues big themes like life and death, desire and loss, rock and roll, hope, and progress. He sees painting as an open and fundamentally fictional space. McCann’s recent paintings are influenced by his newest role as a 40-something first-time father in the wake of a worldwide pandemic.
Image: z Rider, 2021, oil on canvas, 60 x 78 in
The archive as art
Anthony Cerulli
March 9-April 15, 2023 | Solarium Gallery
What happens when we view Indian manuscripts and manuscript archives as art? "The Archive as Art" is a photo-ethnography exhibit that portrays my reflection on this question. It presents the material heft and structural complexity of India’s centuries-old manuscript cultures as art objects and curated spaces that are at once aesthetically compelling and capable of conveying historical knowledge. I hope the exhibit also underscores the value, for students and scholars, of bringing sensual, spatial and artistic awareness and consideration to the things with which, and the spaces in which, we do our research.
Image: Manuscriptistan 58, Hyderabad, 2019
Student Exhibition
April 28-May 21