New art teacher brings refreshed sense of pride to student work

Professor Elaine Smollin is just one of the professors to join the Roger Williams University ranks this past year. However, she has had experience teaching at the college level since 1978 where she was a teacher in New York City.

Currently, she instructs stu­dents in figure painting and drawing in the College of Ar­chitecture, Art, and Historic Preservation at RWU. She has noted that her students have so far been mature in their inter­actions, with "an abundance of creative energy," and that she would like to "help them [to] create artistic practice that re­spects both visual art and the aesthetics of architecture."

She has encouraged her stu­dents to each create their own personal studios within her class space, and after the first few weeks began urging them to see and care for each and every work as if it were a masterpiece in a museum; to imagine their work as a significant artifact of living history.

Smollin was raised in Albion, Rhode Island (near the Black­stone River), and said she be­lieves that the state has defined her as a person. The Mount Hope Bridge, in particular, has been a major influence in her life, she says. She has lived in New Jersey, and she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts, as well as her Master's degree, at Pratt Institute and New York Univer­sity, respectively.

Outside of the U.S., she said she has lived in over 30 coun­tries at different points in her life. The sense of being a Rhode Islander, and the knowledge that she can always return made it possible for her to be com­fortable anywhere, she said

Smollin has been in love with architecture, as well as art his­tory and preservation, for a long time. While in New York, she began work renovating a loft at the top of 157 John St, in Schermerhorn Row: the last 18th century block still intact in New York City. Specifically, she had been repointing the brick walls, said to be quite weathered, by hand.

Smollin's main focus of the last 10 years has been to complete paintings and drawings influ­enced by her life in archaeology, a field in which she has spent many years. From 1990 to 1992, for example, Smollin had taken part in the excavation of an African burial ground. She was also able, through a Cana­dian journalist by the name of Antanas Sleika, to find work in Lithuania at an archaeological dig working on the ruins of a Renaissance court complex dat­ing to the Middle Ages, a site which contained 12th to 14th century foundations as well as some from the 15th to 18th centuries.

As a result, Smollin has dis­covered similarities between film theory and archaeological theory, specifically a common use of special theory, which she developed between 1992 and 2004.

She also had a job at Bard Col­lege managing international students hailing from countries formerly occupied by Totalitar­ian regimes, on a grant provided by Irex/NEH. During this time, Smollin also became interested in writing essays on film and politics, contributing articles to the London magazine Next Level. This process made it pos­sible for her to reflect on over 20 years of landscape draw­ings based on a special theory; in turn, based on archaeology and film theory, resulting in six 8" by 24" drawings with inter­changeable parts.

Now, Smollin says that she is quite happy to be here at RWU, exploring material and theory dynamics alongside her students. Before officially start­ing to teach here, Smollin spent a lot of time in the library, re­searching, and exploring the campus.

"The food is quite good," Smollin said. But, she person­ally prefers to "brown bag it" with her own lunch.