By Laurie Morrissey

Some people who viewed last fall’s exhibit at the Chapel Art Center found the paintings a little, well... weird. They contained starkly realistic animals and objects in seemingly random juxtaposition—a practically life-size nude woman next to a boar; a horseshoe crab beside a dead blue jay. Off-the-cuff reactions included “interesting” and “shocking.”

Those who toured the Wade Schuman exhibit alongside the center’s director, Fr. Iain MacLellan , O.S.B., came away with a deeper appreciation of the work. During an afternoon Director’s Tour, a group of staff and faculty members looked beyond Schuman’s representational images to an array of questions. Are woman and pig really in the same room, or could they exist in two different realities? Is the dog in “Red Couch (Aftermath)” a dog, or something imagined? “That’s not a dog; it’s a Wade Schuman dog. There’s not a man’s-best-friend look about it,” Fr. Iain said. Animals and objects in a painting’s dark corners, unnoticed at first, suddenly became obvious... and enigmatic.

“Schuman breaks from whatever category you want to put him in,” Fr. Iain marveled before a five-foot- high painting. “He wants to invite the viewer to think about many things, to make associations that are more open than closed.”

It is one of the many times a day that Fr. Iain’s artist, teacher, and director/curator roles overlap. As an artist specializing in the human figure, he recognizes both the painter’s technical mastery and his distinctive way of presenting meaning. At the same time, the teacher in Fr. Iain warms to the task of opening someone’s eyes more fully to what art offers; instructing visitors in what he calls “the discipline of looking.” This, he says, is his greatest challenge and most important responsibility. And, as the center’s director, he is experiencing the end of a long process. It starts with the business of scouting out and acquiring an exhibit, and includes designing display space, creating invitations and wall texts, supervising 20 students and two staff members, and hanging each painting at just the right height—in exactly the right order—and against precisely the right color.

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