Supporting Art Studies

Sylvia Smith ’73 Opens Eyes With Visiting Artist Fund

by Matt Getty

September 1, 2009

Sylvia Smith ’73

Sylvia Smith ’73 frowned at her charcoal sketch. Carefully adding each line, she struggled to draw the perfect Chicago skyline at the center of a sprawling canvas. Her art professor, Eric Weller, had invited the maverick painter William Wiley to class, and Wiley had quickly sketched an outline of the United States on the canvas, challenging Smith and her classmates to fill it with images representing their home states.

But when the students finished, Wiley did something Smith didn’t expect. Instead of critiquing the sketches, he began furiously blending them, scrubbing at the black and gray strokes of each until they bled into one another and created a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Suddenly, the young art major saw her work in a new light. “Here we all were worried about our brilliant little sketches, and he ended up working them into the canvas so they looked like something entirely different,” says Smith, now a senior partner at FXFowle Architects. “That did a lot to open my eyes to the creative process.”

Two years ago, when Smith, who also is a Dickinson trustee, considered how she could best help today’s students, she came back to that moment. “I thought if I could help bring a creative artist to campus, they might have that same kind of impact,” she explains. “It’s one thing to be taught by someone. It is another when you see someone going through the creative process. It’s wonderfully engaging and affirming.”

To open that window into the arts, Smith established the Sylvia J. Smith Visiting Artists Fund with a $75,000 gift that brings a professional artist to Dickinson each year to craft his or her own art while working with students. Last fall, Dickinson welcomed the program’s first visiting artist, emerging painter Kris Benedict, who spent the bulk of the semester in a Goodyear studio working closely with students to provide advice and inspiration.

“It was really interesting and comforting to watch a professional struggle and to know that we’re struggling as much as he is,” says Spanish and art double major Rachel Warren ’09, noting that Benedict sometimes labored for months on a single painting. “It helps to show you that the more you invest in your work, the more you’ll ultimately take away from it.”

For other students, Benedict’s habit of working on multiple paintings simultaneously offered a new perspective. “I’d pop into his studio, and he’d be working on so many different things,” says Navajeet KC ’09. “The way he worked showed me that I could work in a different way.”

Because Benedict’s paintings developed into an exhibit that opened in New York’s Sue Scott Gallery this January, students also got a valuable glimpse into the possibilities of art after graduation.

“I think that’s one of the mysteries to students,” says Todd Arsenault ’99, assistant professor of art. “When you’re out of school, how do you go about the routine of making your work? The fact that they saw him develop a body of work and that several of them were able to come to the opening in New York and look into the business side of the art world—that was really an amazing process for them.”

Looking forward to the arrival this fall of the second visiting artist, Chinese ceramicist Li Chao, Smith hopes that the program will reach beyond the art department and open eyes across campus. “I see art as a way of crossing all of the liberal arts,” she explains, noting that even students who don’t plan on art careers can gain valuable insight from meeting and working with a visiting artist.  “To be a citizen of the world, you have to understand and appreciate how other people think. … If you can see things through an artist’s eyes and understand how they look at experience, your own perspective is enhanced and your life enriched.”

To hear more from students on the impact of the Sylvia J. Smith ’73 Visiting Artists Fund, watch the "Supporting Art Studies Video" below.