For most of the year, the Gooding Gallery displays a variety of student works, giving members of the Bolles community an opportunity to see their peers’ creativity. While these quarterly shows spotlight student pieces, the gallery hasn’t featured faculty art until this year.
Shortly before the school year began, during faculty pre-planning, the art teachers from all four Bolles campuses came together to set up their work in a faculty art show.
“It was really fun,” said Ms. Kuonen, who teaches two-dimensional art at the upper school. “I think most of our colleagues haven’t seen our own work. They see our student work all the time, but they haven’t seen our work.” 
Kuonen creates what she calls “PLAYNTINGS,” making art through experimentation and exploration. “It’s kind of the excuse that it doesn’t have to follow the exact rules of painting per se.” Whether a different material or process, Kuonen likes to “mess around” throughout her creative process to create visual depth and engaging pieces.
Alongside Kuonen, upper school teachers Mr. Hicks, Mrs. Gonzalez, Mr. Dickson, and Ms. Westerlind were featured in the show.
“I think that Mr. Dickson probably wins the prize for most people being shocked,” said Kuonen. “Stone carving is a big, impressive surprise for a lot of people.” As an English and Art History teacher, Dickson was able to showcase his studio skills through his sculptures. After starting sculpture classes six years ago to gain studio experience while teaching Art History, Dickson is learning about the properties of stone and its sculptural qualities.
“Working on a scale of abstraction, where some works clearly represent actual things, and others push beyond representation just to make intriguing shapes,” said Dickson in his artist statement, “these sculptures are a pleasure to make, and hopefully enjoyable to see.”
Dickson’s art wasn’t the only surprise—despite teaching photography, Westerlind opted to include watercolor pieces in the show. According to her artist statement, Westerlind practices a variety of mediums, utilizing nearby materials to express herself when “the need to create strikes.”
Having spent the summer swimming and strolling the local shore, Westerlind appreciated the fluid quality of watercolor and its ability to reflect such moments. The set of pieces featured in the faculty art show are “fragments of a visual journal of sorts,” capturing the essence of certain parts of Westerlind’s summer.
Gonzalez, the upper school three-dimensional art teacher, displayed several intricate sculptures. “Clay is made of yesteryear’s giants, the rocks that have succumbed to the forces of water, weather, time and the organisms that once occupied the earth,” said Gonzalez.
“Clay reminds us to look long into the past to see the future.” Gonzalez’s pieces reflect this sentiment, capturing the desire for permanence and acceptance of the present and its fragility through her impressive sculptures.
Hicks, the current gallery director and another two-dimensional art teacher, helped set up and organize the show. His work included a variety of mediums and series, ranging from vivid pastel cloudscapes to more abstract, geometric pieces.
Hicks expresses “the emotional climate” through his art by drawing, printmaking, and specific mark-making. He depicts the “inner landscape with wind, rain, and clouds,” translating his inner dialogue into work that will “bring clarity, inspiration, and calm under dense clouds.”
While Kuonen, Gonzalez, and Hicks have displayed art together in off-campus shows in the past, the faculty art show was the start of what will hopefully become a tradition that allows teachers to share their work with a broader Bolles community.
According to Kuonen, the gallery is primarily a space dedicated to student work. “But this is a new initiative that we’re hoping to do every four years. That way, in the four year cycle of students, they’ll see it at some point in their journey.”
