Interview on the occasion of the 125th anniversay talk

http://www.winchesterthurston.org/cf_news/view.cfm?newsid=398

Renowned Installation Artist Catherine Widgery ’71 Inspires WT
Posted 10/28/2011 05:51PM Article by Kathleen Bishop

“I’m trying to shift people’s consciousness about what art can be,” says renowned installation artist Catherine Widgery ’71, whose return to WT in October was a highlight of Reunion and the school’s 125th anniversary celebration. In a special 125th Anniversary Lecture to students, faculty, and alumnae/i, Widgery blended images of her work with a mesmerizing lecture that was equal parts autobiography, art seminar, and the candid sharing of wisdom gleaned from a life richly lived, addressing themes of passion, failure, rejection, the manifold gifts of taking risks and seeking new beginnings -- even the importance of eating right and exercising. Not only did she inspire the community with her messages, Widgery also thew herself wholeheartedly into Reunion activities, installing an exhibition now on display in the Art Gallery, attending the Friday luncheon and cocktail party, and strapping on shin guards for the ritual and hotly contested alum/student field hockey game on Saturday morning.

“Catherine Widgery is an internationally acclaimed artist. It meant so much to our entire school community that she was willing to elevate our 125th Reunion Weekend with a presentation on her extraordinary work and life,” says Head of School Gary Niels. “Our students and alums also deeply appreciated her candor and openness as a human being.”

“Catherine serves as a role model for our students,” adds Gaylen Westfall, Director of Development and Alumnae/i Relations. “Realizing that WT students can advance in their fields to be recognized and honored is an important step in stoking the aspirations of our students. Catherine was especially interesting in that she talked about not conforming and her willingness to experiment, break the rules, and explore. Her artwork utilizes new, different, and unusual technologies, and much of it is big—really big.”

Widgery’s works, including more than 30 site-specific public art projects across the U.S. and Canada, are woven into the environment, and they aren’t simply observed – they are experienced. Take Tidal Song, an interactive pedestrian bridge in New Rochelle, NY, immersing visitors in glorious waves of light, color, and sound through programmable LED lighting, motion sensors, speakers, and mouth blown glass. Or Light Storm, commissioned by the Mesa Center for the Arts in Mesa, AZ, in which more than 35,000 stainless steel discs pave an outdoor area spanning 30,000 square feet. The effect is transporting--swirling patterns revealed through light, emerging as if blown there by the wind--and so striking that upon meeting Widgery, an usher exclaimed, “Oh, you’re the artist! (Working here) is like walking in the Milky Way!”

Such reactions delight Widgery. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to make public art: bringing it to people who might not otherwise see art. I want to make people more alive in their awareness of their surroundings -- of the natural world, of the movement of invisible energies of light and wind, the changing time of day -- through interacting with my work. I want people to have a greater aliveness to them and with the world around them.”

Whether it’s project proposals, personal creations that nourish her soul and “provide the soil” for public works, or award-winning projects gracing the covers of Sculpture, Landscape Architecture, Espace, and World Sculpture News magazines, the person who demands the most of Widgery is Widgery herself, upholding standards instilled at WT.

“I learned the idea of rigor at Winchester Thurston, rigor of discipline and intellectual rigor. I’m the judge first and foremost, and (I ask myself), ‘Have I been lazy, a little sloppy? Have I really done it with enough rigor?’ I went to Yale,” says the cum laude graduate. “I went there equipped with the tools I needed. I didn’t feel as though I had to scramble to catch up because I’d been with such top-level people here: in terms of teaching, in terms of fellow students, in terms of guided excellence.”

Even today, Widgery credits – and carries with her – the legacies of influential teachers, including her own mother, Jeanne-Anna (Jan) Ayres Widgery ’37.

“My mother was one of my favorite teachers. She was amazing, and it gave me insight into something else about her that I never had seen until I was sitting as a student in her classroom. The deftness of her teaching…she would seem to say so little; she would just ask a question, and she would guide us so subtly toward thinking for ourselves.

“Ann Peterson. What she opened up for me was art history and the extraordinary way of seeing things that were done a very long time ago, and to feel them as immediate and alive for us today, even if it was done on a cave wall. To think about all art as being alive and about essential human experience, no matter when it was done, by whom or in what place. To become an artist after having had that experience… I still feel that way about good art--that it is a gift to humanity.

“From Sue Hershey and Susan Brownlee I learned there were not simple answers to any question. Whether in literature (Hershey) or history (Brownlee), questions could be interpreted in many different ways; there was no single right way to see or understand literature or history. It was about learning to think, which was true in my mother’s class as well. A great teacher gets you to do your own thinking, and that’s what I felt was so inspiring. And in the case of the “two Sues” – they were wonderful role models. They were young women, closer to my age, with humor, warmth, humanity, intelligence, and intellectual rigor. It was the idea of the kind of adult you wanted to become.

“I felt I could do anything,” continues Widgery, on what she learned at WT. “I thought there weren’t limitations on my future that were based on my being a woman. And that saved my life, I think, out there in the world, because I was able to not feel limited.”

Thus empowered, Widgery went on to Yale--where she graduated cum laude with Special Distinction in Fine Arts and the Walker Prize for outstanding artistic achievement--and the Tyler School of Art in Rome. In addition to Italy, the dual American and Canadian citizen has also lived in England, and currently divides her time between Boston, Montreal and Antigua, Guatemala. Throughout, Widgery consciously re-invented herself and her art, relishing the inspiration and new opportunities borne by each new beginning.

“We all need to be beginners at intervals,” asserts Widgery. “Learning a new language makes you a beginner again. We limit ourselves out of fear: fear of being a fool, fear of being embarrassed. Oh! Those things are so unimportant compared to the gifts you can receive, the experiences you can have, if you take the risks of being a beginner.

“In Guatemala, I was a beginner again,” she says of her 2003 move to Central America. “I felt like a child trying to communicate, and it felt marvelous! Tremendously liberating. At 55, I decided I wanted to take up rowing—and talk about feeling foolish. The recreational rowing group I went to join, they were like…you’ve never rowed? What are you doing here? This middle-aged woman shows up!” she laughs. “So I swallowed my pride, and now—what a feeling of empowerment to then be able to row. So each time when you’re a beginner, and you manage to (succeed)—you’re empowered to try it the next time. So that’s why it’s a good thing to be a beginner because it gives you the courage to try something else.”

And if failure or rejection follows? That’s valuable too, Widgery points out.

“There’s so much rejection in life, and the more you take risks, and the more you stretch to be in places where it’s not easy, you’re not comfortable, you’re not sure of yourself, you’re exposed to a lot of rejection-- you have to learn how to somehow let it flow over you and go by you, and you go on to the next thing.”

Today, Widgery spends half of each year in Guatemala. Besides rowing on Lago de Atitlan, she lives and works in a home she designed herself, nestled amidst lush vegetation just 30 kilometers from Volcán de Fuego (“Volcano of Fire”), one of two volcanoes she can see from her bathtub, and one of the most active volcanoes in the world. “Sound moves at one kilometer per second,” notes Widgery, “so when it erupts, I feel it 30 seconds later. Everything in Guatemala is geologic. This is why it’s so inspiring. The physical surroundings—there’s a kind of energy and beauty, a kind of vibration that’s exciting. I can see the night sky in a way we very rarely experience in North America. I see depths of stars—and it’s not flat, it’s dimensional. You don’t know how many stars are up there until you see it without light pollution. I can’t wait to get there and recoup and regenerate!”

It’s these lessons, and glimpses into her life, that Catherine Widgery eagerly, openly shared upon her return to WT: a gift for her enthralled audience (notes Visual Arts Department Chair Sally Allan, “It was special that students had a chance to hear her thoughts given that, as she said, ‘I sat in the exact chairs you sit in now.’ She was very generous with her time, volunteering to speak to Lower and Middle School classes before her lecture, as well as afterward to individual Upper School students interested in art. She even offered to keep in touch with them as they figure out their future plans to pursue art in college and as a career”) that she feels honored to have given.

“These are going to be the leaders who are changing and shaping our world, and I can’t say enough how honored I was to be chosen to speak during the 125th anniversary celebration and reunion weekend. This is a gift to me to share what I do, what my life has been. If that gives anybody even the slightest bit of inspiration to think out of the box for their own lives or their own careers… I thought it very important whenever I would hear someone talk about a life that sounded different. Because you don’t know what your life is going to be.”

See Catherine's work at www.widgery.com