While artist Chris Terry is known for his contemplative interior landscapes, a new exhibition at the USU Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) features the experimental work he was able to create during four sabbaticals throughout his tenure at USU.
The exhibition is called “Chris Terry, On Sabbatical” and traces these periods when he was stretching, creating and testing pent-up ideas that he was finally able to exercise. Chris Terry has lived, worked and taught at Utah State University for 31 years. This exhibition occurs at the end of his last semester teaching at USU and is a celebration of his years as a painter on the USU Department of Art + Design faculty.
Christopher T. Terry was born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1956. He attended Rhode Island College in Providence, RI where he earned a BA in Studio Art in 1978. He continued his education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1981. After moving back to Connecticut, he began exhibiting his paintings in and around the New York area in 1982. Accepting a teaching position at California State University, Long Beach in 1984 brought him to the west coast where he exhibited his work at galleries in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1988 he accepted a position at Utah State University and began teaching painting and drawing there.
We’ll talk with Chris Terry and Bolton Colburn, NEHMA Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, about this exhibition; Essen, Germany, where Chris Terry spent several of his sabbaticals; art in a pandemic; viewing reproductions of works of art versus experiencing the originals; and we’ll even talk about German duct tape!
Even though the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art is currently closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic, you can take a virtual tour of the exhibition here.