Germantown Academy held its annual Faculty Art Show this September with a spectacular display of photos, paintings, and sculptures from art teachers across all three divisions. In the Art Center are works made by Mr. David Love, Ms. Sara Ritz, Mr. Dainis Roman, Mr. Nicholas Wynia, Ms. Elizabeth Buckman, Ms. Romy Burkus, Ms. Jessica Killo, and Ms. Alia Tavildarin.
For her 17th year in the Faculty Art Show, Middle School Art Teacher Ms. Burkus created a series of printmaking pieces illustrating the nature nearby her friend’s home in Seattle, Washington. She had held onto the photos from her stay for roughly two years before using them in her work.
“I didn’t know what art they were going to be,” Ms. Burkus said. “Sometimes, as an artist, you just save your ideas or you save your inspiration and then later on, it could be a few years later, ten years later, you get a spark that’s related to that.”
After finishing printing the birds’ silhouettes using trace monotype, a combination between drawing and printmaking, Ms. Burkus decided to use linoleum, a different method of printing, to add color to her composition. She pointed out that there are many people making art of flawless bird silhouettes and wanted to “go past the perfect silhouette.”
To Ms. Burkus, the Faculty Art Show is important because it gives students the opportunity to see how meaningful art is to their teachers and brings attention to the diversity in the expertise of art teachers from the Lower School to the Upper School. She will be doing a sabbatical next semester, and her mixing printmaking types may come up in her work then as well.
Mr. Love, the Upper School Visual Arts Chair, designed various sets of pieces in the Faculty Art Show for his 21st year at GA. One group of his work, made of ink and thread on porcelain, were a collaboration with his wife, an art teacher at Penn State Abington, had also appeared at an exhibit on social justice in the environment at James Madison University.
“My work has explored societal issues for a number of years now as the world is undergoing some long overdue changes from police brutality to awareness of systemic racism,” said Mr. Love. He continues to explain how his art deepens his understanding of these things: “I have never dived into my own privilege and come to terms with the fact that my privilege comes with a cost.”
To Mr. Love, the Faculty Art Show is a wonderful space to have, and agrees with gallery directors Ms. Ritz and Ms. Killo that it is important to display faculty artwork. He wants to teach his students and other artists that “art can help us understand and provide a window into the world, and a really, really important one too.”
This year’s Faculty Art Show had an extraordinary and diverse array of artwork. Both the inspiration behind and the inspiration lent by the pieces have incredible meaning, and the GA community looks forward to next year’s Faculty Art Show as well.