Meet the Anton Fellows: Creating what I wanted
Interview with Sarah Reardon
Sarah Reardon used an Anton Fellowship to fund seven weeks of concentrated artistic work during the summer between her junior and senior years. Sarah's paintings, which explore diversity at Clark, are on display until the middle of fall semester 2004 at Clark's Traina Center for the Arts. In a recent conversation, summarized below, Sarah discussed her Anton Fellowship project.
You are double-majoring in studio art and art history. Did you know you wanted to study art when you came to Clark?
Yes. I became interested in art when I took a six-week, pre-college program at the Rhode Island School of Design. From that moment, I wanted to do art; it was the only thing I wanted to do.
How did you find out about the Anton Fellowship, and why did you decide to apply?
My studio art professor, Sarah Walker, told me about the Fellowship. I thought it seemed like a great opportunity to do something I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Art supplies are really expensive, and working in a large format, which I wanted to do, is even more expensive. I thought it would be a challenge to undertake a project that would be interesting for everyone, that I could display on campus, and that would be bigger than I'd done before.
What did you decide to do?
I created twelve 3 x 5 foot paintings, each one of a different Clark student. One thing that I've been focusing on for the last couple years is portrait photography--I've been photographing everyone! Then I started creating paintings from the photos, just on small scale. I really loved it and decided I wanted to try larger paintings.
For the Anton Project I thought it would be really interesting to photograph and paint individual students that represent the diversity here on campus. The people that I chose to paint are from all over the world--America, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Thailand, England. I picked as wide a variety of nationalities as I could find. And the paintings do represent Clark. When you ask a Clark student where he or she is from, you never know what to expect by way of an answer. I took a role of film for each person, and then I went through and picked the ones that I thought really captured their personalities, a moment when they were really themselves.
The paintings show that everyone is both different and the same. That's what I really wanted to portray.
Once you chose the twelve photos, how did you get the likenesses onto the canvas?
Two I sketched by eye. For the rest I used a projection device to project each image onto a 3 x 5 foot canvas, and then sketched in the amount of detail I needed to use as guides. I wanted the paintings to be as realistic as possible.
Have you gotten any feedback yet on your exhibit?
I have. A lot of people have told me that it is very good. People are recognizing their friends in the paintings. One of my friends said "You made me so famous. Everyone knows me now!"
Will you be following up on this project in some way, or exploring something else?
Actually, this semester I'm going to be working on other things. I've been doing portraits for such a long time that I want to explore something else. In my studio topics class this semester I'm making collages of just about every single idea I've thought of. I've created them from my own photography (more people!), sketchbook drawings, magazine cut-outs--any design that I thought was interesting. I'm going to translate the collages into paintings.
Your Anton project sounds like probably the biggest project you've had a chance to work on since coming to Clark. I imagine there are things that have come out of that experience that you might not get in a standard classroom situation. Can you comment on that?
It was definitely a learning experience just to understand how artists actually work on their own time. It wasn't an assignment, it wasn't anything anyone told me to do.
And since I worked on the project during the summer, it wasn't in a classroom. I was in control of it. There was no actual assignment.
I had to work on my own and come up with everything on my own. I had to follow through with my idea, find the space to work, find the materials, manage my time--there was no "due date." So it was really creating what I wanted to do.
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Four of Reardon's paintings. Click on any image to enlarge. Images copyright 2004 by Sarah Reardon. |
A gallery tour
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