photos by Cenn Hall
The Hartmann Center is not just a place where stories unfold on stage. It’s also a building that is currently home to an art exhibit with portraits and still life, and each piece having a meaning to creator Donna Carr Roberts.
The art exhibit “Faces” showcases 37 pieces of art created by Carr Roberts, artist-in-residence at the Slane College of Communication and Fine Arts and wife of university president Gary Roberts. She said she was approached by Erin Buczynski, director of university galleries, exhibitions and collections, who suggested Carr Roberts put up an exhibit of her art.
When coming up with the theme of the exhibit, Carr Roberts said her and Buczynski struggled to think of a single theme because her art is a “hodge-podge,” but Carr Roberts said she landed on the idea of exhibiting portraits.
“I said, ‘Let’s do faces,’ because I love doing [artwork of] people and animals,” Carr Roberts said. “I like the eyes because they really speak to the soul of the person, whether it’s an animal or a person. We decided to do faces because it’s faces of people, faces of animals, all kinds of faces.”
Carr Roberts said, when picking the pieces, she wanted to choose artwork she was happy with and ones that held a special meaning to her.
“Almost every painting here has a story,” Carr Roberts said. “And my paintings are very personal to me.”
For example, Carr Roberts said one of the pieces at the exhibit, “Margaret at age 5,” was a piece done in charcoal of her grandmother when Carr Roberts was a child.
“The charcoal is actually from a locket … like an inch-and-a-half tall that my mother had since she was a little girl,” Carr Roberts said. “I’d always wanted to recreate the image [of my grandmother], and I don’t normally work in charcoal, but I was just experimenting, so that meant a lot to me.”
Carr Roberts has been creating art since her childhood but said she pulled away from it to pursue her business career. After many years of not making art, Carr Roberts said she picked it back up out of curiosity.
“It was about 15 years ago,” Carr Roberts said. “I thought, ‘You know, I wonder if I can still do this,’ and it was just sketching. And I found a wonderful art group who showed me how to work with watercolor paint, and it just took off from there.”
Since then, Carr Roberts said she has been constantly improving and hopes to continue to grow as an artist in the future.
“If you’re going to enjoy life, you’ve got to always be learning and changing and taking what you know and making it better,” Carr Roberts said.
“Faces” will continue to be displayed in the Hartmann Center until Feb. 23.
