The Ohio State Faculty Club welcomes “The Ohio Wanderers,” a new exhibition highlighting paintings from three Ohio-based artists. Credit: Courtesy of the Ohio State Faculty Club
The Ohio State Faculty Club welcomes “The Ohio Wanderers Collection,” a new exhibition highlighting over 50 paintings from three Ohio-based artists of landscapes of areas surrounding Columbus.
Featuring artists Tim Hawk, Terry Welker and Ruth Gless, the Club will host an opening reception with refreshments Friday from 6-8 p.m. and an artist talk Feb. 7 from 3:30-5 p.m. The exhibit is running through March.
The artists are fellows of the American Institute of Architects — a collective voice of architects — and started the work featured in the exhibit during the COVID-19 pandemic. The artists said in order to practice their creativity safely during lockdown, they traveled to nearly every Ohio county within an hour drive from Columbus to paint architecture and landscapes.
“All of us are of an age where our doctors were advising us to stay away from people because we’re more vulnerable,” Hawk, president of WSA Studio, said. “We started painting in April of 2020, and I remember Ruth and I often would drive because we were driving from Columbus to meet Terry, and we were fully masked in the car with one another.”
An Ohio State graduate with both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of architecture, Hawk said he remains local to Columbus and has served on the national board of directors for AIA for the last five of his 17 years with the institute. Weller, the longest-tenured AIA member of the three, has been with the organization since 1982 and resides in Kettering, Ohio.
Gless joined the institute in 2000 and was awarded the Ohio Gold Medal in 2021. She currently sits as the chair of AIA Columbus Fellows Committee.
“I think painting in the company of other architects is different from having the company of other painters. I think we have a certain point of view about the city,” Gless said. “I have spent a lot of time in my studio by myself. I don’t have to be with other people, but I like being with Tim and Terry when I paint because they’re useful.”
Hawk said although the trio began their travels in April 2020, some of the pieces in the show were created as recently as November 2022. The group painted in a style categorized by the French word “en plein air,” meaning painting outdoors with the subject in full view, Hawk said.
“It was very important to us to paint outside using what we saw in the natural light instead of doing it in a studio environment,” Hawk said. “When you paint on-site, your art is very unique compared to taking a photograph and then doing it in the studio.
Gless said because of the change in lighting throughout the day while they were painting, they could see the Earth move.
Due to painting nearly every weekend for the last three years, Hawk said they were able to distinguish each quadrant of Ohio and its architecture by the end of their journey: northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest Ohio.
“When you’re in the Appalachian district, it feels more Appalachian. When you’re in northeast Ohio painting, let’s say in Mansfield, it feels much more like Connecticut,” Hawk said. “The same can be true of all the different districts. To me, even though people think of Ohio as a homogenous state, we saw incredible complexity in the architecture from each of the areas that we went to.”
Robie Benve, Ohio State’s Faculty Club art coordinator, said the artists had over 200 paintings and sketches to choose from for the exhibition but collectively chose 57 works to feature.
“We really selected the best pieces that were the most cohesive,” Benve said. “These are all smaller towns and showcase specific artistic buildings or architectural constructs in the city. It also highlights some landscapes that didn’t have an architectural presence, but are still very beautiful.”
The Ohio State Faculty Club’s “The Ohio Wanderers Collection” is free to attend through March 17.
