“Energetic,” “exotic” and “eccentric” are all terms one could use to describe the stereotypical art teacher. But when you start describing one as “terrifying,” “always wearing a long black velvet dress,” and a “Gothic pixie,” you can only be referring to Professor Maureen McCabe. Although this image may appear frightening to an outsider, these are all loving descriptions of Professor McCabe from her appreciative students. She has taught at Connecticut College for the past forty years and is known to almost everyone here as a teacher, a colleague and a friend.
To cap off her four decades of teaching, Professor McCabe’s work is on display in Cummings Art Gallery until March 4h. The show, entitled Swan Song, is a tribute to her artistic accomplishments as well as the end of her formal teaching career.
The show features a sampling of her work from the 70s, 80s, 90s and her most recent work in the 2000s. All of her pieces are mixed media or framed collages. Despite the fact that her mediums have remained constant, McCabe’s subject matter is extremely varied. Her work from the 70s and 80s have a distinctly more personal focus. The most striking is a series called Things Just Fell Apart, which is dedicated to friends who have passed away. Each of these pieces contains an abacus showing the number of years an individual had lived before he or she died, a stark visual statement as most of these people were only in their early thirties.
Her later works display significant research and focus on broader topics such as mythological tales or personal identity. One such piece, made in 2010, is called Mermaid and features a red haired figure combing her hair among a mystical background of rich purple fabric. This work may seem to be her representation of the classic Disney movie, but this is not the case. Instead, it is derived from the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, a story much darker than the children’s film. As she said in her opening remarks at the reception on February 23, “The movie is not right, the little mermaid dies at the end…and her feet are cut off.”
Background knowledge and investigation such as this transforms some of these later pieces from simple collages to complex and emotionally rich works. McCabe doesn’t just work off mainstream ideas; she digs deeper to find truth in her subject.
This unique attention to detail has helped make McCabe well known to many of her colleagues in different fields. Professor McCabe and her collages themselves embody the interdisciplinary ideal: she never failed to call on members of another department for help. In Maureen’s words, “You need some info? Just call up the Botany Department! Call up Classics!”
She demonstrates that art is not confined to just the studio, there is potential for artistic work in every discipline. With professors from numerous departments in attendance at the opening, McCabe clearly followed her own advice.
Professor McCabe has also been the go-to person for many students, especially when it came to critiquing art. As Emma Weeks ’11, a student in McCabe’s Drawing III class, said, “The word of McCabe was always the-end-all-be-all. We all contributed in assessing each others works, but when McCabe would scratch her head full of massive black curly hair and say, ‘Well, you’ve really screwed this up, yeah, it just isn’t doing anything at all.’ You’d just nod your head, accepting defeat.” But she wouldn’t just leave her students hanging, she always had a suggestion and new way of looking at a piece that somehow sparked new inspiration and could transform a mess into a masterpiece.
Ellen Liech ’74 recalled that one of the best things McCabe ever said to her was: “Well, Ellen, you can’t hit it right every time. It’s time to move on,” a sentiment Liech has followed in her artistic and personal life.
Even more importantly, McCabe’s advice extended beyond art and into the real world. Hillary Ellison ’86 said, “Professor McCabe taught us about art but also how to be an artist.”
Her classmate Pamela Butler ’86 added that McCabe taught her how to continue to do art after college, how to find those ideas and drive yourself to create work once one is no longer given formal assignments. “Her class taught us how to make art in the evenings after your day job” Butler added, “how to create something when you only have the weekend.” As many of her students expressed, not a day goes by where they do not think about McCabe in some context.
Despite her retirement from Connecticut College, Maureen McCabe will never stop being a teacher; it is just as much a part of her as creating art. As Liech recalls, she was visiting colleges with her daughter four years ago and stopped at McCabe’s house to catch up. While she was there, the phone rang and McCabe picked it up only to say “I can’t talk to you right now, I’m with a student.”
Andrea Wallace ’81, a professional graphic designer, tells a similar story. She visited McCabe at her home and brought along some paintings, as she had recently been exploring the medium again. Their conversation quickly turned into a two-hour constructive critque of Andrea’s work.
It is this love of teaching that is represented in the second half of the Swan Song exhibit. In the main gallery the walls are almost entirely covered by letter of congratulations and thanks from forty years of Professor McCabe’s students. These letters range from heartfelt to funny, sophisticated to simple and many are accompanied by recent examples of what the alumni have been creating. Swan Song is not just an exhibit of the amazing work that Maureen McCabe has produced over the years; it is a testimony to her incredible teaching and the impact she has had on countless
lives. •
This is a very nice tribute to a person who has devoted her life not only to advocation but to vocation as well.
It can be clearly seen from this that the author has done considerable research.