Allegheny College Art Department Alumni




	This page features news about Art Department alumni.

Rebecca Allan, Studio Art Major, Class of 1985 is the alumna artist featured in this fall's "Faculty and Alumni Exhibition", October 2-25, 2009 (Closed October 10-13 for Fall Break).

Allan is a New York-based painter whose work encompasses the landscape, the figure, and themes of music. Rivers and watershed landscapes of the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest, and the Lake District of England have been her primary sites of investigation for the past 20 years. Exhibiting both nationally and abroad since 1985, her most recent exhibition, "Cumbria: Recent Landscapes", was held at Upfront Gallery in Penrith, England. Her work was also included in the exhibition "Arbores Venerabiles" at Wave Hill in the Bronx. Allan is also an accomplished botanical illustrator whose paintings of native plants collected during the Lewis and Clark expedition were exhibited at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington State.

After graduating from Allegheny, Allan attended the Allegheny Summer Program in France, where she continued to study painting with Richard Kleeman, as well as photography with Pol Corvez and Amara Geffen. She has been a fellow at Centrum Foundation in Washington, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Dorland Mountain Art Colony in California. Also, as a respected teacher, lecturer, and museum educator for over 20 years, Allan has taught painting, drawing, and art history at institutions including Purchase College (State University of New York), The New York Botanical Garden, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle Art Museum, and Frye Art Museum. From 1998 to 2003 Allan was an artist-in-education and teacher- trainer with the Washington State Arts Commission. She is currently the Head of Education at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture in New York City.

She writes, "Attending Allegheny was the best decision I could ever have made as a young artist. It was there that I received my foundation in the humanities and sciences, while being immersed in the discipline and history of the visual arts. My teachers--Richard Kleeman, Carl Heeschen, George Roland, Amara Geffen, Sharon Dale, Janice Hyatt---all offered unique knowledge and lasting insights my profession. Their dedication and passion for their individual practices as artists and teachers was contagious, and rigorous. The balance of work and friendship at Allegheny also helped me to cultivate qualities of equanimity and endurance, both of which are needed in great measure when you are working in the world as an artist."

For more information on Rebecca Allan, visit her Web site at this Link.

On March 27, 2009, four Class of 2001 alumni artists returned to the Allegheny College Art Department. Left to right are Alex Mead, Colleen Toledano, Eva Wylie and Bill Rodgers. While on campus they presented a panel, "Art After Allegheny", explaining how they sustained their careers and developed as artists since graduating. The next day they met informally with current students to discuss their artwork.
Alex Mead lives and works in Maine and is a founding member of BUOY Gallery, a performing arts and exhibition space. BUOY's Web site is located here.
Colleen Toledano received her M.F.A. in ceramics from Ohio State University in 2005. She is Resident Artist at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia and is teaching sculpture and ceramics at Allegheny spring semester, 2009. Her Web site is located here.
Eva Wylie received her M.F.A. in printmaking from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 2003. She is now on the faculty of Tyler as Area Head in printmaking. For more information on Eva, click here.
Bill Rodgers received his M.F.A. in photography from Ohio University in 2005. He is currently Manager/Director of Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh, PA. For more information, click here.

This event was supported by the Beazell Lecture Fund, the Student Art Society, the Office of Career Services and Allegheny Student Government.

Dara Frankelscheier Adkison, Studio Art Major, Class of 2007, is a Plush Toy Designer at Wild Republic, headquartered in Twinsburg, Ohio. She was recently promoted to the position of Natural Toy Specialist, utilizing her skills as a designer and her knowledge of natural and organic materials and manufacturing. Wild Republic is best known for their educational and innovative nature-based toys and plush available worldwide in zoos, museums, aquariums, etc. Dara writes, "My job is split between designing new product lines and handling communications from start to finish with our factories and licensing agents. I spent the better part of January, 2009 visiting our factories in China and India, working on our new product lines, and encouraging production. When I came back, it was right back to work on an innovative line of organic plush for 2010. The knowledge I have acquired and the opportunities I have had with Wild Republic have made my job very rewarding. I know that the work ethic I developed during my senior comprehensive project has been a big help to me. It helped teach me how to balance hundreds of little projects at once, a skill I utilise every day. However, the best part of my job is knowing that someone is having fun with something I created at Wild Republic". For more information on Wild Republic, please visit their Web site here.

Berry Breene, Studio Art Major, shown here with a detail of her work, completed a major public mural in downtown Meadville on Park Avenue at Chestnut Street. The 12 x 72 foot painting, entitled Streams Converging: Meadville at the Crossroads, was dedicated Saturday, October 4, 2008. Photos courtesy of The Meadville Tribune

For more information on this project visit here.

Alex Kropinak, Art & Technology Major, Class of 2007, currently works for Marvel Entertainment in New York City. He writes, "I was accepted as an intern and eventually hired as a video editor in Congers, NY at Wizard Entertainment, a magazine publishing company focused on comic book news. There, I helped create a video department for their website, and after about a year of producing a host of video content, including a few animated shorts, my experience led to another video editor position at Marvel Entertainment in NYC where I produce content for Marvel.com. I can't take two steps without running into a poster or statue of Spider-Man or Hulk, and am enjoying every minute of it."

Class of 2006 Art & Technology major Lawrence Schlosser works in Los Angeles with the Jim Henson Company.

He writes, "I have been working on a forty-episode kid's show called Sid the Science Kid due to air on PBS September 1st, 2008. The show is all computer generated. The characters are puppeteered through a motion capture system, which means there is a ton of animation data that must be corrected and "helped" along. I started as an intern towards the beginning of the project. I created CG models for the characters and their environments. As the modeling stage wound down and the motion capture production ramped up, I jumped over to the animation department and have been doing animation correction or "cleanup". This entails correcting things such as character eye-line, jitter, self-collisions, and interaction with props and environments. As well, I have been programming animation tools to help with the cleanup process using Python and MEL programming languages".

Maggie Susse, Studio Art Major, Class of 2006, works at Christie's Art Auction House in New York City as an Administrator in the Trusts, Estates & Appraisals Department.

"I support two Account Managers so my job is very diverse," she writes. She proofreads appraisals, binding and mailing them to clients or the department that requested them, and helps with writing excerpts that are featured in the catalogues. She writes clients to keep them informed about sales and how their property has done, and coordinates the process from start to finish by having the work shipped to Christie's, placed in a specific sale and assuring that the items are priced correctly with the appropriate reserves and terms. After an item sells, she makes sure that the clients receive a settlement check for their property.

Liz Geller, Art & Technology Major, Class of 2005, has pursued a career in the gallery and museum worlds. She worked with Boston contemporary fine arts as Gallery Manager of Clark Gallery in Lincoln, MA for a year and is presently Exhibitions Manager of the Corporate Program at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA.

She writes, "as Exhibitions Manager, I put together an exhibition to be installed at the offices of each corporate member. We highlight the public spaces of each office by hanging paintings in reception areas, conference rooms, boardrooms and lobbies. The paintings I choose are on loan to the Corporate Program by Boston area artists.

As an Art and Technology major, I enjoyed learning how to talk about what I was seeing and feeling in the work of other artists. The dialogue that was encouraged during studio courses has become an asset for me when presenting artwork to Corporate Members."

Kristin Kramarik, Studio Art Major, Class of 2005, studied graphic design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh after graduating from Allegheny. AiP awarded her graduation portfolio "Best in Show".

She works at Dobish Signs and Display in Pittsburgh as a graphic designer, and does freelance design as well. "I am extremely excited to be in the real world working as a graphic designer. I love my job and am excited to go to work everyday."

Raelynn Miles, Art & Technology Major, Class of 2005, received her M.F.A. in Communication Planning and Information Design from Carnegie Mellon University, one of the highest-ranking design schools in the U.S., in 2007.

She works for Addison in New York City as an Information Designer. She writes, "I became interested in Information Design and Information Visualization - taking complex information and presenting it to someone in a way that makes sense! It was exciting to find a field that seemed to be the perfect blend of creativity and objectivity....and I thought, "This is great. I can make people's lives easier through design!" She found that her Allegheny education left her "more than qualified and prepared" for graduate school.

"I've learned over the last year that I really love working in digital media.... particularly developing Web page architectures and figuring out how to structure navigation and layout in a way that works."

After completing her BA at Allegheny in Art & Technology, Katie Lauffenberger, Class of 2005, was accepted into the prestigious graduate program in digital arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she completed her MFA in 2007.

Katie, shown here with her co-workers and actor Patrick Swayze who was visiting her firm, is a digital artist and graphic designer at Resolution Digital Studios in Chicago. She writes, "my boss is a really cool guy. I've been encouraged to work on my own projects. I can use the equipment and the professional editors and audio guys to complete a full-blown professional-level stop-motion animation, which I also studied at SAIC. He also wants me to use my stop-motion skills to do some animated countdowns and internal marketing for the company. So overall, I think I am in a good place right now, and exactly where I need to be.

On April 11, 2008, Joey Groves, Art & Technology Major, Class of 2004, visited the Allegheny College Art Department to speak on his highly successful career since leaving Allegheny.

Groves was promoted in June, 2008 to Manager, HSC Web Services for West Virginia University School of Medicine. In this capacity, he is responsible for all Health Science Center Web sites and a team of six Web developers.

Eva Wylie, Studio Art Major, Class of 2001, received her M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 2003 and did further study as a Fellow of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. She has been active as an exhibiting artist mounting five solo exhibitions since completing her M.F.A. She is currently a Lecturer at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.

Illustrated is an interior view of Overlaps a 2007 installation at the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. Mixed media (silkscreen on windows, wall and fabric).

Left to right are Professor Amelia Carr, J. Arvid Klein, Class of 1954, and his wife Cynthia Crimmins. Klein was the alumnus featured in the 2006 faculty and alumni exhibition.

The building in the photo mural behind them is the Williamsburg Community Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of the projects designed by J. Arvid Klein's New York City-based architectural firm Pasanella + Klein Stolzman + Berg of which Klein is a founding Principal. The building received the "Best Public Building in New York City" 2005 award from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

During Klein's visit to campus, he met informally with Allegheny students and faculty to discuss his distinguished career in architecture.

Updated August 10, 2009