AROUND THE QUADS
Alumni Artist Series Continues
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WO Loomis Chaffee graduates exhibited art work in the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. Gallery this winter as part of the yearlong celebration of alumni art in conjunction with the school’s Centennial. The final show in the series opens April 28. “Painting Time: Work by Andrew Sendor,” which ran from mid-January to mid-February, featured a selection from the private collection of Mickey Cartin ’66. Mr. Sendor is an American artist whose work has been exhibited worldwide to much acclaim. He was included among the “10 Painters Who are Changing Their Media in the 21st Century” in an October 2014 article in The Huffington Post.
Illustration: Patricia Cousins
Happy Birthday, Dear Founders . . .
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IRTHDAY celebrations for Loomis Chaffee's Founders have punctuated the school’s Centennial year, and with one more still to come, the party’s not over yet. The school honored the birthdays of Abigail Loomis Hayden on September 23, John Mason Loomis on January 5, Osbert Burr Loomis on January 30 (his half birthday), and Hezekiah Bradley Loomis on February 27. A celebration of the fifth Loomis sibling, James Chaffee Loomis, will take place on his birthday, April 29. Organized by the Centennial Celebration Committee, the betweenclass festivities have been fun, welcome diversions from daily routines. At each celebration, students enjoyed baked treats, signed a huge birthday card for the day’s honoree, and collected one of the five Loomis family “trading cards” complete with portrait and bio. Students who collect all five will be entered in a prize drawing after James’ birthday.
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Each birthday party had its own unique touch. At John’s celebration, students enjoyed cookies in the shape of his prominent mustache, and they posed for photos using the cookies as disguises. Students struck poses with life-sized cutouts created for Osbert’s celebration. In honor of Abigail’s birthday, students and faculty were encouraged to “pay it forward,” performing an act of kindness for someone else. And Hezekiah’s festivities were partnered with Philanthropy Day’s thank you note-writing campaign to Annual Fund donors. Not to be left out of the celebrations, alumni gathered off campus at receptions in Boston; New York; Washington, D.C.; and West Hartford to mark Osbert’s half birthday in “A Toast to Osbert” over Head’s Holiday weekend. To view photos from the birthday celebrations and from the Head's Holiday receptions, go to www.loomischaffee.org /magazine
The Mercy Gallery exhibit included five paintings from Mickey’s collection and five paintings borrowed from other collections, to tell a “fuller story,” according to exhibit curator Steven Holmes, overseer of The Cartin Collection. Mickey has long been instrumental in bringing artists and their works to share with the Loomis community. “Explorations,” a photography exhibit by James Pomerantz ’96, ran from February 24 to April 16. The exhibited images represented only a fraction of the photographs James took while on assignment for The New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and other publications over the past Origins, 48 x 36, oil on linen, polymer resin, paper balls 12 years. Gallery visitors and spray paint by Sarah Lutz ’85 were invited to select a photo and communicate with the artist via email in order to “engage in active dialogue that contrasts with today’s expected mode of photographic consumption.” In the finale of the alumni artist series, painter and mixed media artist Sarah Lutz ’85 will exhibit her work in the Mercy Gallery from April 28 to June 14. Sarah also will be a Visiting Artist in the Richmond Art Center April 27–30. Earlier exhibits in the series featured the works of Jon Goodman ’71, Deborah Zlotsky ’80, Catherine Monahan ’08, and Joe Hill ’93.