Two of the grads also had solo shows running at New York and Philadelphia galleries this fall.

Teresa Baker, FCLC ’08, whose piece Sunset Turns South was part of “Amarcord,” had her first New York City solo show open at Broadway Gallery in September. “Mapping the Territory” featured her large-scale, asymmetrical paintings, many of which featured the use of natural materials like deerskin and willow branches, in a nod to Native American traditions.

Amie Cunat, FCLC ’08, contributed Sparkler II to the alumni show. An assistant clinical professor in the Fordham visual arts department, she recently had a solo show titled “West McHenry” running at Philly’s Peep Projects, where her colorful abstract work ranged from small acrylic paintings on linen to large mixed-media pieces meant to evoke cross-sections of houses. 

Vincent Stracquadanio, FCRH ’11, an adjunct professor of visual arts, curated the alumni show, which spread out across the Ildiko Butler Gallery, the newly renovated Lipani Gallery, and the Hayden Hartnett Project Space in the Lowenstein Center. 

“A big thread with all the artists in the show is that they came to Fordham and found either a class or a professor here that just kind of swept them away, and it’s this path that they’re still on,” Stracquadanio said. “They left fully changed as an artist because of the teaching at Fordham.”

David Freund: Gas Stop, a sampling of 27 black and white photographs pulled from a much larger investigation that Freund conducted from 1978 to 1981, are on display in the Lowenstein Center’s Lipani Gallery now through March 30.

The photos are a time capsule of sorts, from an era when some 200,000 independent full-service gas stations dotted the American landscape. Only half still exist today, replaced by larger, more uniform chain stations operated by corporations.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, artist in residence at Fordham and curator of the Lipani and Ildiko Butler galleries said Freund’s work, which will be published in a forthcoming set of books by Steidl Publishing is appealing on multiple levels. Car enthusiasts can catch glimpses of classic models, architecture buffs can take in a variety of designs of the buildings themselves, and graphic designers can observe hand-made signs that reflect regional differences in 40 states.

“It’s a lovely testament to something that’s really vanished. The idea of the mom-and-pop, local gas station has been replaced by the megastructure with 19 different filling bays,” he said.

“When you look at these photographs, you realize there was an incredible variety prior to the rise of the Texaco stations.”

Apicella-Hitchcock said that Freund, a professor emeritus of photography at Ramapo College of New Jersey, came to his attention in in 2014, when Freund attended the Fordham show Gary Metz: Quaking Aspen: A Lyric Complaint at the Ildiko Butler Gallery.

The Lipani Gallery, which is located in the visual arts complex, is the ideal place for the photos’ display, said Apicella-Hitchcock, as they exemplify the kind of original research students are tasked with creating.

“I like this exhibition because of its classic, sober demeanor,” said Apicella-Hitchcock.

“It’s someone going out into the field, methodically researching his subject, finding the results, exploring tangents, finding the lay of the land, and then presenting the information in a large, multi-volume set.”

David Freund: Gas Stop is on display at the Lipani Gallery daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. A reception and artist talk will take place Wednesday, March 22 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The technique, applied in Photoshop, sets the buildings apart from their surroundings by screening the background environment down to a grey veil.

And the context is America’s racial history, as each photo of a building depicts a formerly segregated school for African Americans, located north of the Mason Dixon line.

Photographer Wendel White’s show, provocatively titled “Schools for the Colored,” runs through Oct. 26.

“I was making a different type of photograph, I wasn’t interested in photographing the buildings in a straightforward way, or using text,” said White. “I wanted to move away from that and explain it in a purely visual way, to reconnect to the idea of the veil separating black world and white world.”

The artist said he often employs the term “veil” as homage to W.E.B. Du Bois, who, in The Souls of Black Folk, wrote of a “vast veil” that separated African Americans from the rest of society. In the exhibit, that separation plays out in the small towns of New Jersey and Ohio, as the photos create a catalogue of areas often not visually associated with the history of segregation.

“The visual representations of segregation are the stories that come out of the South. Everyone remembers the photo of George Wallace on the schoolhouse steps, the marches, and the hoses,” said White. “My interest lies in [the fact]that segregation was very much a northern institution as well, with a long history. It was extremely widespread and addressed in different ways by different communities.”

The show’s curator, artist-in-residence Casey Ruble—whose own work takes an unflinching look at troubled African-American historic sites—said White’s work speaks to how Americans often have a selective memory.

“White suggests narratives and talks about how a broader history gets written in this country,” said Ruble. “One of the things I love about this series is there are stories you don’t hear every day. Those stories . . . are a very important part of our history.”

The series got its start after a retired schoolteacher from Brooklyn, Illinois told White that he went to a segregated school. White photographed the building, and soon after began his research on the subject.

With support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Graham Foundation, and from Stockton University where he is a member of the faculty, White was able to travel and photograph sites from 2004 to 2007. He gathered information on the sites through interviews and through internet research.

Ruble said that, beyond the show’s aesthetic merit, there is an anthropologic and historic significance as well—all of which will be explored in the panel discussion, titled “Mine, Yours, Ours: A Conversation on Segregation in America, Past and Present.”

The panelists include:
Rebecca Carroll, producer of special projects on race at WNYC, and author of five nonfiction books, including Sugar in the Raw and Saving the Race;
Deb Willis, MacArthur Fellow and professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University;
Marta Gutman, Ph.D., architect and professor at the City College of New York, and author of A City for Children; and
Wendel White, photographer and distinguished professor of art at Stockton University.

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