I hope some of you in the New York area had the good fortune to see Katherine Taylor’s exhibition at the Skoto Gallery in Chelsea. Titled Katherine Taylor: New Sculpture, the exhibition ran from September 11 to October 18 and featured eight sculptures from Katherine’s work during the past year. Her sculptures offer a visual fragment of the familiar: a turtle’s shell, a mandarin orange and part of an elephant’s body. But instead of using the textures from those representations, the surface textures feature tree bark pulled directly from nature. Katherine takes impressions of the bark using silicone mold and shapes and casts in bronze, stainless steel and aluminum.


Katherine feels that her animal-botanical hybrids create the appearance of a state of constant flux, a strange back-and-forth that gives the viewer what she calls a sense of “visual refreshment.”


Katherine keeps busy dividing her time among Houston, New York, and Eibar, Spain. Her work has been shown all over the world, including exhibitions at the National Arts Club in New York and the Hood Museum of Art.


Closer to the Green, Theresa Ellis is serving as the Tucker Foundation’s interim dean. A former member of Tucker’s board of visitors, Theresa, a religion major, was involved with Tucker as an undergraduate volunteer with the Big Brother Big Sister program. 


Also the Gleitsman Visiting Practitioner at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Theresa is leading Tucker at a time of exciting change. The College’s board of trustees recently approved a new structure that will create two centers: one dedicated to religious and spiritual life and one committed to public service.


Theresa told Dartmouth Now in July that the new centers will allow both religious and spiritual life and public service to thrive on the Dartmouth campus, “embracing the fullness of their respective missions.


“As an alumna I recognize that the Tucker Foundation has a rich and storied history at Dartmouth. Many students have been involved in its various programs. I think that this decision creates an opportunity for the College to better serve our students and our community as we move forward,” Theresa said.


The reorganization will ensure that religious and spiritual life has the resources to meet the needs of the Dartmouth community, she said. “And this decision allows both public service and religious and spiritual life to be fully focused on their respective missions, which has been difficult to do under the current configuration.”


A broad search for leaders of both centers is under way and should be wrapped up by the end of the fall term.


“Ultimately, by engaging a broad swath of the community, we hope that these new centers can be part of the effort to improve campus climate,” Theresa said.


Hope everyone is doing well. Please let me know what you’re up to.


—Jason Casell, 10106 Balmforth Lane, Houston, TX 77096; jhcasell@gmail.com