����ɬ Class of 2025 Art Majors will display their Thesis Art Projects in the Ortlip Gallery. Graduating ����ɬ Art Majors Aubrey Armes, Kaitlyn Avery, Sydney Gartley, Phebe Grant, Elyse Howard, Amelia Grace Morrow, Katie Naprawa, Graeme Roberts, Caleb See, and Elizabeth Sutay will exhibit artworks from their Senior Thesis Projects in the Ortlip Gallery from April 11-May 10, 2025. The Ortlip is located in the Center for the Arts on HU Campus: 1 Willard Ave. Houghton, NY. Gallery Hours are 9AM-6PM Monday-Saturday. There is no admission fee and the gallery is open to the public.

An opening reception will be held Friday, April 11, 6-7:30PM. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free, and open to the public.

The Senior Art Exhibition represents the culmination of 4 years of hard work and creative research. The artists in this show work in a wide range of media, including Oil and Watercolor Paint, Ceramics, Digital Art, Photography, Drawing, Video Installation, & Sculpture.

The Ortlip Gallery celebrates Ian Campbell’s photography exhibition, After Birds, with an opening reception Friday, October 25th, at 6:30-8:00 pm in the Center for the Arts at ����ɬ. Open to the public, the event includes refreshments, live music, and an artist talk at 7pm.

Ian Campbell is an artist and photographer based in Western New York State. He holds an MFA in Photography & Integrated Media from Ohio University and a BA from Wheaton College, Illinois. Ian has shown his work in galleries, film festivals, publications, and conferences throughout the U.S. From 2016-2021, Ian served as Assistant Professor of Art at Lyon College, where he taught a wide range of courses in photography, digital art, drawing, and art history. In 2022, Ian relocated to Houghton, NY, where he maintains an active studio art practice as well as being a stay-at-home Dad and freelance commercial photographer.

After Birds is an interdisciplinary endeavor drawing on themes from conservation biology but expressed through the medium of art. The exhibit is a series of infrared photographs of the habitats of extinct, endangered or disappearing species of American birds that Campbell travelled to and explored. Venturing from Rhode Island to Arkansas and Maine to Texas, Campbell drew inspiration from John James Audubon’s famous book, Birds of America. Accompanying each of Campbell’s striking photographs is an illustration by Audubon. Campbell explains, “My images are a response to John James Audubon’s landmark suite of bird paintings. Each of my photos is inspired by and builds upon an Audubon illustration, borrowing details of composition and design to create a dialog between past, present, and future. Yet the birds themselves are conspicuously absent from my photographs.”

Campbell’s exhibit in the Ortlip Gallery is a portal into what feels like a different dimension—serene and stark; peaceful, yet thought-provoking, familiar but somehow foreign in its dearth of avian life. The tranquil dark blue walls of the gallery bedecked in juxtaposed modern black-and-white photography and early 19th century detailed paintings, prompt contemplation of how human choices can harm other species. According to Campbell’s artist statement, a recent study published in the journal Science found that the North American bird population has dropped by 3 billion birds, or 29%, since the 1970’s. He attributes this to complex interconnected issues including habitat loss, pollution, poaching, invasive species, climate change, and other factors. Originally planning to document only the habitats of endangered birds, Campbell expanded the project to include common species in steep decline after reading Matt William’s book “Endangered and Disappearing Birds of the Midwest.”

Campbell’s hope is that, “After Birds will inspire viewers to seek their own connections with the natural world. This project is a meditation on loss, but it is also an invitation to learn from past failures, take note of conservation success stories, and make every effort to preserve our birds and their habitats.”

After Birds will be on display in the Ortlip Gallery through December 13, 2024. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 9am-6pm.

The Ortlip Gallery at ����ɬ celebrates The Ted Murphy Legacy: Forty Years of Alumni in Exhibition as part of the institution’s Homecoming 2024 festivities.  On Saturday, October 5th, in the Center for the Arts atrium there will be a closing reception at 7:00 pm with live music, light refreshments, and remarks from Murphy himself.

Featured in the exhibit, which opened August 26th, are works by seventy-seven artists who studied under Art Professor Ted Murphy over the past four decades at ����ɬ. Shipping their artwork from France, Seattle, the Netherlands, Texas, Maine, New York, Germany, and many places in between, these alumni have chosen to honor Murphy upon his upcoming retirement at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.  Over fifty of the artists will be on campus this weekend to celebrate a professor who inspired them to pursue a lifetime in the visual arts.

Murphy completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1980 at Mt. Vernon Nazarene College and his Masters of Fine Arts in 1983 at The Ohio State University. He then was an Art Instructor at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, Maine as well as Adjunct Professor of Drawing at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine before joining ��dzܲ���ٴDz�’s faculty in 1986.  Over the past 38 years, Murphy has taught Drawing I & II, Painting I & II, Introduction to Visual Arts, Art History (Renaissance, Baroque, Modern and Contemporary), Watercolor, Film Studies, Senior Seminars, and Honors Seminars.  During his tenure at Houghton, Murphy received the Mable Barnum Davidson Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts Award (2017-2023), the Excellence in Teaching Award (2003), and was asked to be the baccalaureate speaker for the class of 2011.

The beauty and vastness of the Ted Murphy Legacy Exhibition reminds me of a quote attributed to Pablo Picasso: “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” The visual expression of gratitude from these particular alumni to Professor Murphy in this exhibit speaks to his uniqueness and giftedness so poignantly; and yet it clears the dust from all of our lives too, reminding us that what each of us does on a daily basis can impact others for decades to come.

Linda Knapp, Ortlip Gallery Director

The Ortlip Gallery is proud to announce the opening of a new exhibit titled: Concept, Material, & Design: Contemporary New York Artists in Conversation. This exhibit is made possible through The Jean and Ben Frank Moss Endowment. The opening reception for the show will be Friday, September 1st from 6:30-8:00. The exhibit is on display through Homecoming weekend, October 6th-7th.

Stepping into the gallery for this exhibit, visitors will instantly be impacted by the dramatic scale and color as well as the contrasting media of each artist. The show features wooden, ceramic, metal, matte-board, and cloth pieces made by six different artists from around New York State. The theme throughout the exhibit is three-dimensional design.

Design is a category of art whose hallmark is that it seeks to meet a specific human need. Interior design is the most famous branch of this subfield but design in general also encompasses the making of furniture, lighting, vessels for eating and storage, as well as anything else created to alleviate the human condition.

Ortlip Gallery director Linda Knapp says, “What I hope visitors realize from this exhibit is that functional art is not bereft of beauty. I think also that we gain an understanding that amidst the banality of every day work and life, we are actually using objects that someone else spent time designing. It’s easy to take that—or them—for granted. Moreover, in a world of Walmart and Amazon which satiate our cravings for the cheapest and fastest, this show reminds us that the mundane of life can be infused with something greater when we opt for designs that are thoughtfully and meticulously crafted.”

“No place is a place until it has found its poet,” wrote Wallace Stegner in his novel Crossing to Safety. Walden Pond garnered fame because Thoreau wrote about it. Monterey’s Cannery Row would not beckon tourists without Steinbeck’s novel by that title. It could be argued, too, that no place is a place until it has found its artist. In the hamlet of Houghton, nestled among rolling hills and the meandering Genesee river, is a handful of artists perfecting their craft, raising their families, and transforming the landscape of Houghton into a storied place.

In the Ortlip Gallery at ����ɬ’s Center for the Arts is a new exhibit titled Organic by Nature featuring the recent works of Art Faculty Theodore Murphy, John Rhett, Ryann Cooley, and Aaron Harrison. Though each artist uses different media, the motif of nature subtly unites them. Upon entering the gallery you transcend the quotidian and enter a place of tranquility to reflect upon what is oft dismissed. You feel connection between your own small life—its periodic loneliness and fragility—and the larger world.

The annual Art Faculty Show at ����ɬ gives us a window into what these artists have been pondering over the previous year. Their musings create a rhythm in our own lives as we anticipate what their next show will bring. Art student Aubree Niles (class of ’24) explains, “I think the most exciting part [of the Art Faculty show] is just seeing what they’ve been working on behind the scenes, outside of class. I respect all four of them very much. They’ve done well at helping us to see the world differently through art. And now we get to apply that when we walk into the gallery and look at their work.”

One highlight for Visitors of this exhibit is that they are invited to interact with Harrison’s Million Birds of Hope 1 installation. Evolved from a decade-long project in which Harrison created a thousand slip cast ceramic birds to raise money for World Vision, Harrison’s rekindled project invites viewers to take a small ceramic bird from the installation as what he calls, “a reminder to keep hope alive every day. Five hundred birds will be on display. Five hundred birds are available for anyone to have. And, hopefully, these five hundred birds will inspire hope in countless others.”

Organic by Nature is on display from January 13 through February 4 on the ����ɬ Campus. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday 9am – 6pm. All are welcome to attend the opening reception on January 13^th, 6:30-8 pm. There will be light refreshments (starting at 6:30 pm) and a brief gallery talk (7 pm). Come see how these artists make a place for all of us.

The Ortlip Gallery at ����ɬ is featuring a rare collection of art loaned by Houghton alumnus Craig Proulx ’76. The exhibit, titled “Lithographs of the Holy Land and Egypt,” by David Roberts, Royal Academician, will be on display from October 28 through December 15 in the Center for the Arts gallery space.

Proulx explains, “While [I was] visiting a good friend, who is an antiquities art dealer and framer, in Alexandria, VA in 2012, he showed me [the] David Roberts lithographs he had. I had not seen any Egyptian and Holy Land monuments depicted so well. . . .” Proulx immediately bought these 6 prints, and as he learned of many more available, added them to his collection.

The son of a humble shoemaker, Roberts was born in Scotland in 1796. After demonstrating artistic potential as a child, he took a seven-year apprenticeship with a house painter, eventually branching out on his own as a theater set designer in both Scotland and England. By the 1820’s, Roberts was sought after for his fine-art landscapes, especially his realistic and detailed depictions of abbeys, cathedrals, palaces, and cityscapes from across Western Europe.

Yet what launched Roberts to new levels of fame were his drawings of more far-flung places. In the 19th century, Orientalism was a popular style of Romantic fine art which depicted the Near East through the lens of the West, blurring the boundaries of reality and fantasy for the voraciously curious Victorian minds. In the British world, devoid of photography but filled with an unsatiable thirst for the unknown and exotic, Roberts provided detailed images of Egypt, Nubia (present-day Sudan), Palestine, Jordan, and Syria.

David Roberts, Jerusalem, lithograph.

Blosser’s Exhibit “Territory” at ����ɬ is made possible by the Jean and Ben Frank Moss Endowment. For purchase information the artist may be contacted through:

PDX Contemporary Art
1825 NW Vaughn Street, Suite B, Portland OR 97209
Tel 503 222 0063 | Info@pdxcontemporaryart.com