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On April 25, faculty, alumni, and students gathered in Paul Creative Arts Center to celebrate the first 25 years of the bachelor of fine arts program with workshops, a slide show, and an exhibition opening, featuring 10 new B.F.A. graduates along with 35 of the University's fine arts alumni.

As a student Arthur Ganson '78 loved the old sculpture coop. It was a casual place and on a damp day, he recalls that you could still smell the chickens. One winter, during a blizzard, he holed up in the coop and made sculpture for the duration of the storm. His teachers understood.

Upon graduating Ganson continued to make sculptures, though initially he worked as a carpenter and then started a toy company with two partners to manufacture Toobers (long foam tubes) and Zots (various small shapes that fit together and onto the tubes). But sculpture that integrated his interests in gesture, dance, music, machines, and engineering prevailed.

"The first impression I have of any piece is nebulous. I'll have a feeling about the way something may move or what its feeling is. Usually, I'll have no idea how it's going to be built mechanically," says Ganson. "Very gradually I'll make the object, and it often goes through a long period of fighting against mechanics and physics, because the idea is not bound in the real world."

This year Ganson won the UNH Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts. He is artist-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where his exhibition, Gestural Engineering, is on permanent display.

For her senior B.F.A. thesis Cynthia Katz '83 created narrative photographs of nude males and clothed females in interior spaces. "It's kind of funny now," says Katz who also minored in women's studies. "Although it wasn't when I doing them as an undergraduate."

Subsequently Katz earned her M.F.A. degree and now teaches at the Concord School in Massachusetts. Her current work began with a phone call.

"My friend said, 'How would you like to photograph me without my hair?'" says Katz.
"I figured what that meant was she needed me to photograph her without her hair.
"And I said, 'Sure.'"

This invitation resulted in an 11-month photographic documentary of her friend's experience with chemotherapy following surgery for breast cancer. For Katz, no single image tells the story. "It's a body of work really. That way it's fairer, more human. For Deb having the pictures made was cathartic," says Katz. "Plus I think it's really strong work."

Katz's recent exhibits include: Dreams and Visions: Three Artists Respond to Breast Cancer at the Gelb Gallery in conjunction with the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.

Around seven years ago Logan became interested in beadmaking at the famous Pilchuk Glass Studio in Washington state. After watching someone make beads with a portable torch, she thought, 'If I could do that, I could go anywhere.' In a sense, "have beads, will travel" became her motto.

"At first I was very self-conscious about it," she recalls in a Lapidary Journal interview. "I had been working with things on a much larger scale and tiny, to me, meant not that important, mere trinkets."

Recently, Logan achieved financial independence through her work and teaching. Her beads sell from $4 to $ 250 per bead. This year she is also curating and organizing a glass bead exhibit for the Toyota Ceramics and Folk Craft Museum in Japan.

The bachelor of fine arts program tries to honor each individual's calling while insisting on a rigorous core curriculum and senior thesis. The program is, as one artist put it, "humbling." At the daylong celebration Arthur Balderacchi, artist, faculty member, and emcee commented aptly that "UNH has a reputation for being a very conservative group, but you all seem to do what you want to anyway."

And so they have.