2024 Faculty Exhibition

Press Release

A selection of recent artworks created by 11 faculty members of the Department of Art at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ will be featured in an exhibition at the University Galleries in the Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts from September 9 through December 4, 2024. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and on Saturday, October 26 and Saturday, November 23, from 10:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Admission is free. A conversation with exhibiting artists Seth Bechtold, Leslie Nobler, and Anna Carina Sinocchi will be held in person on Wednesday, September 18 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., followed by an opening reception from 12 to 1 p.m., in the South Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts.

On view in the Court Gallery, this exhibition features work by faculty who teach animation, drawing, digital art, textile design, painting, photography, and sculpture. The works in the exhibit reveal the faculty’s unique artistic practices as they innovate across diverse media. Faculty artists included in the exhibition are Seth Bechtold, Miriam Bisceglia, Cristina De Gennaro, Andrea Geller, Ashley Gerst, Marsha Goldberg, Diane LaFranca, Leslie Nobler, Michael Rees, Anna Carina Sinocchi, and Papa Gora Tall.

This year’s exhibition features new work from Professor Leslie Nobler, who presents a trilogy of mixed media installations celebrating the legacies of Jewish women. In Theresa at the Window (2024), the subject is Theresa Bernstein, a strong feminist, Jewish voice in 20^th century American printmaking and painting who organized professional artist women’s groups, gaining an inkling of recognition for its members. Fighting sexism and misogyny, Nobler depicts her gazing hopefully through a window at the greater art world in which she yearned to be accepted. Tu BiShvat & Connections (2024) celebrates the near completion of her Portraits of Resilience series and the Jewish holiday honoring the abundant gifts of the earth. In the collage are symbols of the Tu BiShvat observance (note figs, grapes, and stumpy broccoli-like trees) and the outstretched arms of Magdalena Abakanowicz and Chana Kowalska Winogora, depicting an imagined connection of a survivor and victim of the Nazi occupation of World War II across miles and decades. Nobler will also be exhibiting new work this fall in Seeking Joy, on view through June 2025 at the Heller Museum at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.

New William Paterson adjunct faculty member Marsha Goldberg presents acrylic and graphite works on Yupo from her Keep series. The series began as a response to a place and its architecture, focusing on the massive Fort St. Jean in Marseille, France. Rooted in observation of form, light, and color, the imagery evolved to become intuitive and self-referential. Through a slow meditative process, the paintings achieve shifts in color, the completion of shapes, and a sense of tension and balance results from a carefully considered set of choices. Goldberg was born in Boston, MA and attended Brandeis University and Boston University and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, later receiving an MFA from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. In addition to her studio practice and raising two daughters, she has taught studio art courses at Rutgers University, Kean University, and Middlesex College.

Professor Michael Rees returns with four new sculptures composed of biodegradable polylactic acid, recently shown as part of the exhibition Next to the Wild at the Athens Cultural Center in Athens, NY. Working out of the pandemic and prior to that, a cancer diagnosis, these sculptures explore the physical influence of the molecular body with shifting scales and strange intersections. They combine and recombine on multiple levels: as a detournement, combinatory DNA, and sculptural pastiche. Rees reflects: “Cancer is the rude intrusion of the wild on the body—a kind of out-of-control cellular onslaught. The physical imagery of my sculpture is derived from meditations, visualizations, and dreams. The augmented reality experiences, already a sort of portal through the physical sculptures, invite the presence of the body in repose. Usually, the body in recline is erotic or the result of violence. In this work, the bodies float and move in an eerie nether region. They are restless and alive but remote.” Rees received his MFA from Yale University.

The exhibition is one of three presented concurrently by the University Galleries. On view from September 9 through December 4, 2024 in the South Gallery and East Gallery is Before, After: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide, which traces generations of Armenian resiliency through the common threads of loss and survival. The exhibition examines connections passed down through blood, migration, and history, from genocide to diaspora to belonging. Artists John Avakian, Anush Babajanyan, Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, Vahagn Ghukasyan, Jackie Kazarian, Diana Markosian, Talin Megherian, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian, Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian, Jessica Sperandio, Scout Tufankjian, and Mary Zakarian integrate artifact with abstraction, witness accounts with recreation, old materials reused, and new molds made.

Before, After is bookended by The Armenian Genocide: One Family’s Story, on view in the Cheng Library through May 14, 2025. One Family’s Story traces the journey of Arek and Moses Zakarian from the turn of the 20th century during the Ottoman Empire through genocide, survival, migration, and reemergence in the United States. Visitors will engage with the family’s personal photos, memoirs, musical instruments, artifacts, and artwork which serve as a backdrop to the broader history of the Armenian Genocide. The exhibition is made possible by the Zakarian grandchildren, led by Susan Arpajian Jolley and Allan Arpajian.

The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print educational materials are available. For additional information, please call the William Paterson University Galleries at 973-720-2654.