WCMA

Williams College Museum of Art Presents
Mike Glier: “Along a Long Line” and Amy Podmore: “Predicaments”
October 31, 2009–February 21, 2010

Williamstown, Mass.– The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents the annual Williams College Studio Art Faculty Exhibition featuring artists Mike Glier and Amy Podmore. The two artists will give a gallery talk and tour of their exhibition on Wednesday, November 11 at 4:00 pm. This event is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend.

“Along a Long Line” is Mike’s Glier’s response to what he considers the urgent issue of landscape. The title of his project, “Along a Long Line,” refers to his journey to four separate places along the 70th line of longitude: the Arctic circle, the rainforest of Ecuador, the subtropical environment of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the city of New York. Using the en plein air technique employed by both French and American expressionists, Glier’s paintings both describe the uniqueness of the local landscape and maintain a global perspective. As Glier explains, “Landscape is vital and human survival within its mass always in question, but more so because of accelerating environmental changes . . . My way of addressing the current threat is to picture the vitality of the living world, to engender sensitivity toward it and to share my experience of being within it.” The exhibition at WCMA features 44 of Glier’s paintings.

Along with the works he painted, Glier also compiled a collection of photographs, blog entries, and stories from his journey. This collection has been published in a book of the same name by Hard Press Editions. Glier will be autographing copies of this book, Along A Long Line, at WCMA’s Season Premiere Party on October 29, beginning at 5:00 pm in the museum shop.

“Predicaments” is a selection of new work by Amy Podmore and includes a range of sculpture, video, and installation. Podmore animates the bizarre, ironic, and perplexing facets of life through her often humorous, yet poignant, work. Often, her art flip-flops between the absurd and the rational, the somber and the whimsical. For example, one sculpture that will be featured is a five-foot tall, 500 pound bronze pitcher that appears to have human legs and feet and is crouching in a pouring position. Podmore says, “I am intrigued by affable contradictions … the fact that two opposing ideas can be entertained simultaneously.”

About the Artists
Mike Glier was born in Kentucky in 1953 and lives in New York State. In 1975, he received a BA from Williams College and then attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He received an MA from Hunter College in 1975. Solo exhibitions of his drawing and painting have been held at the San Diego Museum of Art; The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center; The Wexner Center, Columbus, Ohio; MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts; and at the Williams College Museum of Art. In 1989, he was the New England recipient of Awards in the Visual Arts 9 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting in 1996. He is currently represented by Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston; Gerald Peters Gallery, New York and Santa Fe; and Geoffrey Young, Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Amy Podmore has had her work exhibited at The Rose Art Museum; The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln,Massachusetts; Sculpture by the Sea in Sydney, Australia; Massachusetts College of Art; the Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, N.Y.; the Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, Maine; ArtSpace in New Haven, Conn.; the Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston; and at the Williams College Museum of Art. She received her BA from the State University College of New York at Buffalo in 1981, her MFA from the University of California at Davis in 1987, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1986.

Williams College Museum of Art
Each year, WCMA presents an exhibition of the work of one or more of the College’s studio faculty. It is an opportunity for the students of Williams College and our community to experience the range of aesthetic practices that inform teaching in the art department. While dedicated educators, studio art faculty members also exhibit widely. They work across artistic media and encompass the breadth of approaches and subjects that characterizes current art.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Excerpt from Ethos on the Line essay by Lisa Corrin from Mike Glier, Along a Long Line
from Hard Press Editions, Lenox. 2009.
"The immediacy of Glier’s paintings is a correlative to the urgent sense that, as the earth comes perilously close to losing its ability to sustain life and human beings fail to reflect critically on their symbiotic relationship to its eco-systems, this might be the last time such places can be seen in this way..."

Along A Long Line press release by Hard Press Editions
Hard Press Editions announces the publication of Along A Long Line by artist and Williams College professor of art, Michael Glier. Along A Long Line traces one man’s artistic and ecological adventure to four distinct locations along the 70th Longitude. While the colorful abstract paintings in the tradition of Modernist landscape are at the forefront of the expedition, the book includes Glier’s detailed blog entries and photography revealing the artist’s impressions of each habitat while addressing the urgent issue of man’s connection to and place in nature.

Mike Glier January 23, 2008: Afternoon at Haulover Bay, St. John, Virgin Islands, 83°F oil on aluminum, 24” x 30” ©2009, Mike Glier/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Gerald Peters Gallery	Amy Podmore Disappearing Acts - Powder and Milk video still Courtesy of the artist