A series of five paintings titled “Lost Entries: The Vowels Series” by Northampton Community College (NCC) Associate Professor of Art Bruce Wall (pictured left) is now part of Lehigh Valley Hospital’s permanent art collection. The artwork is installed at Lehigh Valley Hospital - Cedar Crest. The paintings are on display on the first floor leading to the new Kaysch Family Pavilion.
A 1923 Webster’s illustrated dictionary that Wall rescued from the trash years ago inspired the works in the series. The illustrations accompanied often-arcane definitions which spoke to Wall of a lost and forgotten world of images and ideas. Each of the works is based on one of the five vowels of the alphabet and is framed by hundreds of fragments in the form of black and white photo-collages.
The series caught the eye of Dr. Christine I. Oaklander, the hospital’s arts coordinator, at an exhibition at NCC’s Fowler Family Southside Center in September 2006.
“I thought they were fabulous,” Oaklander says of the artwork. “I tried to buy the “O”, because of my last name, for myself. But as a series I realized that it would be unfair to split them up.”
Almost a year later, she was invited to find regional art for the new Kasych Pavilion and immediately thought of the series. Others at LVH agreed that the artwork was indeed fabulous and the paintings have found a permanent home there.
"I is For. . . "
Wall earned his bachelor of fine arts degree at the University of Texas and a master of fine arts degree at Rhode Island School of Design. He began teaching at NCC in 1993. A past Fulbright-Hayes grant recipient, he was recently awarded the first Cecil and Eleanor Lipkin Endowed Chair in the Fine and Performing Arts at NCC. Wall specializes in painting and multi-media installations, which he has exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad.
“O is For . . . ."
Close-up of “I”
