An exhibit of artwork by Sweet Briar College alumnae Eleanor Dickinson and Holly Wilmeth will open Thursday, Jan. 18 in the Babcock Fine Arts Center Gallery at Sweet Briar.

The exhibit, featuring prints by Dickinson and photographs by Wilmeth, will be on display through Feb. 25.

An opening reception and gallery talk by Dickinson will be held at 4:15 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26 in the Babcock Gallery. The public is invited and admission is free.

This and other prints by Dickinson will be on display Jan. 18 through Feb. 25 at the Babcock Gallery. Dickinson graduated from Sweet Briar in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in art history. After graduation, she dabbled in the medical field as an emergency room volunteer and a veterinarian’s office intern.

In 1997, she was a post-graduate student at the University of Arkansas, studying to be a doctor. But her heart wasn’t in it.

“While I was at Sweet Briar I should have majored in studio art because that was where I excelled,” Dickinson writes in her artist’s statement. “I was introduced to printmaking when I took Laura Pharis’ stone lithography class. I absolutely loved it and never forgot it.”

In 2002, Dickinson says she was “feeling directionless” when her path suddenly became clear. “It came to me in a dream: Me in my apron making prints in a studio surrounded by artists.”

So it was settled. Printmaking – more specifically a master’s degree in printmaking – was in her future, but there was one thing standing in her way. “When I realized I wanted to apply to a master’s program in printmaking I did not have a portfolio and I had only taken that one printmaking course at Sweet Briar,” she says.

Dickinson contacted Pharis and asked for a favor. If she could use Sweet Briar’s lithography presses for one month, she could build a portfolio and make her dream a reality. “Miraculously, [Pharis] was on sabbatical for the semester so her studio was all mine,” she says. “It was perfect; I printed ten lithos from stones in about three weeks.”

Armed with her portfolio, Dickinson was accepted to the University of Tennessee’s Master of Fine Arts program in printmaking. She will graduate in May. “Because of Sweet Briar’s generosity and Laura’s encouragement I was able to accomplish what I set out to do … I will always be appreciative of [Sweet Briar’s] support,” she says.

Pharis is excited about seeing her former student’s work on display. “Eleanor is really … extremely cool,” she said, “and I’m really proud of how well she’s done at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, an excellent school but a super printmaking department. I can’t wait to see her work.”

In this photo by Wilmeth, a group of Guatemalan children gather around the one family rooster that was saved from Hurricane Stan.
Wilmeth, a 2000 graduate of Sweet Briar, also credits a faculty member with helping her to pursue her passion. While spending her junior year in Spain, she met Paige Critcher, assistant professor of photography at Sweet Briar.

“I met Paige while I was studying abroad in Seville,” Wilmeth said. “She was up there shooting and we briefly met. It was a combination of her work but more her own passion for photography and her determination in following her path that really inspired me.”

Back at Sweet Briar for her senior year, Wilmeth took Critcher’s photography class and fell in love with the camera. The budding photographer also started to question her direction in life, a dilemma she discussed with her mentor.

“When she fell in love with photography she talked to me about changing her direction,” Critcher said. “I basically told her that it was okay to go for it, as I could tell she was having a crisis, and that she should follow her heart. It is very clear to everyone that she has done that, and done it really well.”

Critcher, who called Wilmeth the “most talented, hardworking student I ever had,” said, “I guess sometimes the best thing to do for a student is to ask them to set aside their preconceived notions of how the world works based on observation, and concentrate instead on how they can figure out what they need to be happy.”

Both Dickinson and Wilmeth also have a zeal for world travel that has greatly influenced their artwork. Dickinson has traveled to Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Turkey and India. She says her journeys have influenced her artwork, which she describes as “often quirky, colorful and playful.”

“The content of my work comes from travel experiences, hence an elaborate travel log,” Dickinson says. “In simplifying, abstracting and extracting the visual elements remembered and documented from my travels, I reinterpret them in a personal context, a cyclical meta-narrative that is both a portrayal of home and a picture of the world.”

Wilmeth, who triple majored in international affairs, Spanish and German, has visited more than 45 countries, from the Tibetan mountains to the Saharan desert. The daughter of a farmer, she grew up in Guatemala, where she shuttled between the city, jungle and agricultural countryside.

Now a freelance photographer based in her native Guatemala, Mexico and Upstate New York, Wilmeth’s lens is usually focused on people who aren’t often the subject of photos – patients in a dreary Guatemalan mental hospital, Honduran boys playing soccer on the beach, a bus crowded with sugar cane workers, the poor and oppressed.

“I do have a purpose … with the stories I choose to focus on, and that is to bring a voice to those that generally live in circumstances that don’t allow them to be recognized,” she said. “People that live on the margin of society. And I suppose this stems from growing up in Guatemala, surrounded daily by the realities in life.”

Wilmeth’s work has been featured in National Geographic Adventure, Time magazine, the Christian Science Monitor and other publications. For the next year, she will be traveling the world, telling stories through her photographs. “That’s the plan for now, starting off in South America so I won’t be able to attend the opening unfortunately,” she said, adding praise for her co-exhibitor, “Eleanor is amazing! I love her work.”

Wilmeth’s photographs also can be seen on her Web site www.hollywilmeth.com.

Gallery hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Monday and Friday and 1 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. Admission is free. For more information, contact Rebecca Lane, Sweet Briar art galleries director, at rmlane@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6248.

– By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer