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College’s 113th Annual Exhibition, ‘Vita Wild,’ opens on Sept. 8

Artwork: A brightly colored drawing and screenprint on paper featuring a buffalo

John Hitchcock’s “Songs in the Sky 1 (Right),” drawing and screenprint on paper 2020

Randolph’s 113th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art is a visual feast, says Director Martha Johnson, “with some works occupying breathtaking scale that must be experienced first hand.”  

Vita Wild: Contemporary Wildlife Art opens on Sept. 8. 

With a primary focus on animals in the American wilderness and their intrinsic connection to the ecosystem, Vita Wild showcases nine contemporary artists whose works reflect cultural and environmental changes that expand the expression and definition of traditional wildlife art. 

The exhibition title is derived from the College’s motto, Vita abundantior, which emphasizes an abundant life as the ultimate objective of a liberal arts education through exploration and encounters with the complicated spectrum of human creativity. 

Featured artists include Johnny Defeo, John Hitchcock, Frances Hynes, Adonna Khare, Mark Messersmith, Shelley Reed, Lauren Strohacker, Tom Uttech, and Travis Walker. 

Vita Wild features paintings, prints, and sculpture offering diversity in a category that has its roots in realism of subject and faithful representation of habitat,” Johnson said. “This exhibition initiates conversations about the state of our environment and the fragility of its inhabitants.” 

Some of the artists, like Khare and Reed, carry on the tradition of realistic rendering, but with a shift in context. 

Uttech and Hynes conjure a sense of the sacred that binds the human and the animal, while Strohacker and Walker are interested in how spaces are shared across species.

Hitchcock’s depictions of buffalo resemble the Kiowa Comanche beadwork of his mother’s ancestors; Defeo’s paintings contain both a serenity and an undercurrent of foreboding and imminent threat; and Messersmith’s environments are “complex, fauvist explosions, anchored by lovely Renaissance predellas,” Johnson said. 

“Together,” she said, “these artists offer an abundance of imagery connecting us to the life of the wild.”

Artwork: Black and white drawing of vears, bison, wolves, and more larger animals depicted sitting together with smaller animals, like owls and rabbits

Adonna Khare’s “Bison and Bears,” carbon pencil on paper, 2020

The exhibition, made possible by the support of Mary Gray Shockey, ’69, opens on Sunday, Sept. 8, with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. 

Artists Adonna Khare, Mark Messersmith, and Shelley Reed will be on campus later this fall for the 33rd Annual Helen Clark Berlind Symposium on Saturday, Oct. 26; their panel discussion will be moderated by Tammi Hanawalt, curator of art at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Wyoming. 

Find out more about both events at maiermuseum.org

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