DREYFOOS REUNION
Former students, teachers exhibiting at Cultural Council
Some artists have a difficult time leaving the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts.
Of the 41 past and present faculty exhibiting 71 works in Educators and Artists at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County in Lake Worth, a hefty proportion attended the magnet arts high school in West Palm Beach. Contributors range from teachers who helped found the school, which opened in 1990, to recent graduates.
“I keep saying that eventually the Dreyfoos school will be taken over by students,” said Kristin Lidinsky, executive director of the Dreyfoos School of the Arts Foundation, the school’s support group. “Almost all the artists-inresidence are former students and many teachers are.”
The exhibition, which spans paintings, sculptures, prints, photography, installation art and more, honors the council’s 40th anniversary and the bond between Alexander Dreyfoos and the school. Dreyfoos founded the Cultural Council and in 1997 donated $1 million to the school, then the largest private donation to a public school in Florida.
Chelsea Odum, of Lake Worth, graduated from the school in 2006. She was a visual artist-in-residence there from 2010 to 2015. She’s now the education and program coordinator at the Resource Depot, a nonprofit organization in West Palm Beach that redistributes unwanted items for creative re-use.
Like most of the art in the show, Odum’s “This Too Shall Pass” is a recent work. It’s an image of a nude young woman in profile with her hand outstretched, her body shadowed by sun rays and twining flowers and leaves.
The nasturtiums decorating the figure are an homage to a former Dreyfoos teacher, Marsha Christo, who died recently and used the flowers often in her art.
“The whole idea behind the piece is that we may not be here forever,” Odum said.
The sunprint owes its rosy color to beet juice, which reacts to the sun because of its acidic properties. Like humanity, the print has a limited life span.
Christo’s “My Mother’s Chair: How I Love Nasturtiums” and other works by her are included in the show.
Jane Grandusky, who retired in 2013, was the school’s founding dean of visual arts, a position she held until 2003 when she stepped down to become visual arts coordinator. Grandusky’s late stepfather, Jake Boyd, was Palm Beach’s town manager in the 1950s.
Grandusky’s mixed-media drawing has an unappetizing title — “Eating Old Gray Rabbits” — but there’s an interesting story behind it.
Grandusky, who has “a huge attraction to old stuff ” and surrounds herself with reminders of her childhood, said the illustration is a memory aid for the word “geography.”
“As a child, I learned to spell geography by saying ‘George eats old gray rabbits and paints houses yellow,’” she said. In the drawing, a lifelike rabbit’s head overlays a plate. A house floats above the plate and the figure of Georgie Porgie from the Mother Goose nursery rhyme dashes through the top.
“We were building a school like none other in Palm Beach County,” Grandusky said of the school’s early days. “It was an experiment — it was awesome, an experience of a lifetime.”
Peter Stodolak succeeded Grandusky as dean of the visual arts department and then went on to found and head the digital media department. He retired this year after 19 years with the school.
He has two infrared photographs and a video installation in the show, and he figures in at least two pieces made by other artists.
An image of Stodolak dances in Melissa Glosmanova’s animation “The Party Has Just Begin.”
“Peter Not in Black,” a circular painting that resembles a board game spinner by Constance Rudy, features four portraits of Stodolak attired in a white shirt. The piece’s title is an inside joke.
Stodolak always dressed in black — except on the night of the foundation’s fundraiser Dreyfoos in White.
His customary black “evolved because of darkroom chemistry,” Stodolak explained. “I didn’t like wearing an apron and didn’t like getting chemistry stains on my clothes.”
He shot his infrared photographs last summer in Italy, one of his favorite places, when he traveled the countryside with three cameras — set up for digital, film and infrared — in the back of his car.
As a teacher, he strove “to provide opportunities” for his students to advance along their own paths, he said. “I’ve had a lot of great students. I feel blessed.”
That’s a feeling shared by many the school’s past and present teachers.