Posted by SMAD September 11, 2006
By Flip De Luca

The fruits of a SMAD professor’s one-semester sabbatical are on display in an art gallery at nearby Bridgewater College. Dietrich Maune, an associate professor, has about two dozen works on display at the Miller Gallery in the Kline Campus Center. The works include photographs, paintings and drawings. Maune spent two months near St. John’s, Newfoundland, in the fall of 2005 as an artist in residence through the James Baird Foundation. “The experience there was fabulous. The people there are fabulous,” Maune said September 4 during an artist’s reception at Bridgewater College, which was attended by BC art students, SMAD faculty and friends.

Maune, who estimates he took about 3,200 pictures during his two months in Newfoundland, said this is his first time exhibiting photographs. “For me, it was finding those subjects that stood out,” he said. One such subject was an abandoned fishing dory that lay beached on the sand. Using a photo he took of the boat, he also painted the same scene on canvas. He did the same thing with photos he took of a Great Northern Gannet, a gull-like seabird but with a 6-foot wingspan, and of small fishing shanties. The photographs are on one wall of the gallery, with the corresponding paintings on the opposite wall. “I’ve always used photos to start,” Maune said, recalling his undergraduate and graduate schooling at East Carolina University. He said he liked the idea of looking at a broad landscape and then focusing in on a single element.

Much of his opening-reception talk focused on the island of Newfoundland itself. “The main engine of the economy is cod fishing,” he explained to the approximately 50 people in attendance. But because of over-fishing, the boats now have to travel 200 miles out into the North Atlantic for their catch. “The most shocking for me was that there is no one on the water (in St. John’s), he said. “The government allows you just two days a month to fish.” He said being in Newfoundland and seeing the seabirds reminded him of a previous experience. “I was 38 days on a 46-foot sailboat going across the North Atlantic from North Carolina to England.” That was in 1993.

Newfoundland is a 350-mile-wide island along the eastern coast of Canada. It is more than 2,000 miles northeast of Harrisonburg. The roads are so rugged that he had to buy a new set of tires for his car while there. “Thank god there’s a Wal-mart,” he said, only half-joking.
Maune’s residency was actually in Pouch Cove, about 10 miles north of St. John’s. “It’s way out there,” he said. “It’s actually closer to Ireland than it is to Virginia.”

One of the aspects that made applying for the residency appealing, Maune said, was that his wife, Audrey, and young daughter, Gretchen, could accompany him during the two months. Maune, who teaches interactive multi-media and web design, said the competitive residency program hosts between six and 10 artists at any given time.

The exhibit, titled “Art from the Edge: Images of Newfoundland,” will run through Oct. 4. Admission is free.

Photos by Flip De Luca
CLICK ON THE IMAGES FOR LARGER VERSIONS

Visitors to Bridgewater College's Miller Gallery view photographs taken in Newfoundland by SMAD professor Dietrich Maune.	SMAD professor Dave Wendelken goes face-to-face with a Canadian moose painted by Dietrich Maune during his Fall 2005 sabattical in Newfoundland.
SMAD professor Dietrich Maune explains his methodology to a patron at a reception Sept. 4 at Bridgewater College.	SMAD professor Dietrich Maune describes his photographic technique during a gallery reception Sept. 4 at Bridgewater College. Maune's exhibit runs through Oct. 4.
Focusing on just one of more than a dozen photos in the exhibit, SMAD professor Dietrich Maune describes the barren terrain of eastern Canada.