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WEST
WINDSOR, N.J. -- Friends, students, colleagues and former students
turned out in large numbers at Mercer County Community College’s
Gallery April 29 to join in paying tribute to artist and long-time
MCCC professor of art and art history, Mel Leipzig. The special
event also kicked off a new fundraising drive for a student art
gallery.
As
part of the tribute to Professor Leipzig, a former student, photographer
and staff member at MCCC, Mike Dill, presented a special gift to
the college -- a framed photographic portrait of Professor Leipzig,
and a collage made up of a combination of Dill’s photography
and a line drawing by MCCC student Ryan Lawyer. Both prints will
go on permanent display at the college’s West Windsor campus.
Copies of the artwork are also available as donor gifts for those
who contribute toward a new student art gallery, which is now in
the planning stages.
According
to MCCC President Patricia Donohue, the student art gallery will
be a place dedicated to changing exhibits of student art, and where
students can learn how to plan and curate exhibits.
Dill,
who is director of facilities at the college, said he is very appreciative
of what Professor Leipzig has taught him, especially about the appreciation
of art, and he wanted to give something back to the college in Leipzig’s
honor that would be a permanent testament.In brief remarks Leipzig
said how honored he is to teach at MCCC. “Mercer has the best
art department in the state," he said. “People ask me
if today’s students are different from those 30 or 40 years
ago. They are not, they are just as bright and committed, and very
talented.”
Leipzig,
a much-heralded painter, has garnered a multitude of awards and
honors for his work. A participant in numerous one-man and group
shows in the U.S. and abroad, his paintings are included in collections
at the White House, the Whitney Museum, the Yale Art Gallery, the
Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Montclair Art Museum and the New Jersey
State Museum, among others. Leipzig often depicts MCCC faculty,
staff, students and locations in his realistic art.
Currently
Leipzig is featured in two concurrent shows at the New Jersey State
Museum entitled: Professor Leipzig’s “Selected Works”
and “Artist as Curator,” which will run through September
6. For the latter exhibit, Leipzig has selected paintings from the
museum's collection of American art. According to museum curator
Margaret O'Reilly, "Through all of Mr. Leipzig's work is the
extraordinary chronicle he has created of his life and the lives
around him. It has become an expanding memoir of time, place and
the characters that have been allowed to weave themselves into Leipzig's
world."
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