Painting a Picture
SLIPPERY ROCK — An ever-growing art project of Slippery Rock University professors and students will be hoisted aloft at the Bayfront Maritime Center in Erie.
The monthlong exhibition, beginning Sept. 1, will feature the sail art collaboration between Heather Hertel, associate professor of art, and Ben Shaevitz, professor of physics and pre-engineering.
They are using the nontraditional sailcloth as the support for large-scale paintings.
“I see this as fine art combining communities and cultures — art, sailing and science,” Hertel said in a university news release.
“Paintings on sails for racing boats are usually black with solid colors, very graphic in style,” Hertel said. “My painting will be very loose and translucent.”
Hertel said her ideas include painting human figures on the sails. She said she wanted to use a hot-wax process but was advised that the beeswax would crack. She switched to acrylic paint.
In addition to nine Slippery Rock art and science students, who she said have been working nonstop on the project since classes ended in May, Hertel credited David Krayesky, SRU associate biology professor, with providing photographic images of red/brown algae cells, which she incorporated into the artwork.
Shaevitz donated six sails for the project. Hertel said her father donated one. Two Erie-based sailors provided three.
Hertel tacked one of the sails to the wall in the former ceramics studio area on campus and began painting in early 2016.
Shaevitz said the pair collaborated in the past, with him teaching about the properties of light to help Hertel's art students improve their drawings and paintings that require shadows.
“It provided them formal content knowledge, and it did it in a teaching, experiential way,” he said.
Amy Eisenberg, executive assistant of Bayfront Maritime Center, said, “We had wanted to do something with the Tall Ships Festival.”
“Our Porcupine project which is a reconstruction of the schooner Porcupine wouldn't be done in time,” Eisenberg said of the Sept. 8 through 11 Tall Ships event.
“Heather had the idea of incorporating art. She is an avid sailor and wanted to collaborate on a project turning sailcloth into art,” she said.
Eisenberg said the sails will be displayed both inside and outside the center, a nonprofit, community-based organization that uses boat building, navigation, environmental science, sailing, rowing and paddling to teach students.
Hertel said, “I sail and I paint. I get a flying, freeing feeling when I sail, and I just want to share that with people.”
Special events
From 1 to 2:30 p.m. Sept. 10 and 11, Slippery Rock University dance students will perform a dance piece composed by Ursula Payne, professor and chairman of SRU Dance Department, at the Bayfront Maritime Center.
SRU music student Chase Upchurch will perform a musical composition based on “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the exhibit's opening reception Sept. 1 at the center.
