Fairfield University: DigitalCommons@Fairfield

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Fairfield Unversity Art Museum

Installation image of the exhibition To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home

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Fairfield University Art Museum

Fairfield University 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield 
Ephemera Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut 
Spring 2025 
Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut - Wall Labels 6x2 
Fairfield University Art Museum 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/tonalism-ephemera 
Recommended Citation 
Fairfield University Art Museum, "Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut - Wall Labels 6x2" (2025). 
Ephemera. 1. 
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/tonalism-ephemera/1 
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DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights-
holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is 
permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain 
permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license 
in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@fairfield.edu. 
Joseph Frank Currier (American, 1857-1928) 
Two Trees, ca. 1880 
Oil on panel 
Private collection, New York
Arthur Hoeber (American, 1854-1915) 
Twilight, ca. 1910 
Oil on canvas 
Private collection, New York
Leonard Ochtman  
(American, 1854-1934) 
Summer Meadow, ca. 1910  
Oil on canvas 
Private collection, New York


English

Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut - Wall Labels 6x2

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Installation image of the exhibition Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut

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Fairfield University 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield 
Ephemera To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home 
Spring 2025 
To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home - Intro Vinyl 
Panel 18x36 
Fairfield University Art Museum 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/commonhome-ephemera 
Recommended Citation 
Fairfield University Art Museum, "To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home - Intro Vinyl Panel 
18x36" (2025). Ephemera. 4. 
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/commonhome-ephemera/4 
This item has been accepted for inclusion in DigitalCommons@Fairfield by an authorized administrator of 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights-
holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is 
permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain 
permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license 
in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@fairfield.edu. 
Mary Mattingly (American, born 1978)
 
According to Mattingly, the climate crisis isn’t an
apocalypse, it is a “slow violence.” Through her
work in social practice, collage, sculpture and
photography, she seeks to inspire a perception
shift in viewers and challenges them to take on
the weight of responsibility.
Mattingly had a rural upbringing in New York,
where the drinking water was contaminated with
agricultural runoff. She says, “water was my first
subject.” She studied science and geology in
college and later became interested in
publications ranging from Renewing the Earth to
the Catholic Worker. These influences - along with
dreams and recent experiences – inform the
ongoing series Spring of an Ebb Tide (2023-
present). In these works, weather phenomena and
ancient water rituals collide with a recent interest
in glacial spaces. 
In 2022 Mattingly’s ground floor New York City
apartment flooded during an extreme rain event.
She was then haunted by a recurring dream in
which she “navigated the maze of a
deconstructed apartment building that was
dripping, leaking, and overgrown.” The still life on
view here - rich with a watery blue background -
evokes these occurrences. Other works
incorporate her projects with water clocks. Dating
to ancient Egypt, water clocks are clay vessels
with a hole in the bottom. As it slowly drains out of
the vessel, the water leaves marks on the vessel’s
inner wall recording the passage of time. With the
fate of our environment in mind, Mattingly
poetically encourages viewers to imagine
alternative futures.
Tyler Rai (American, born 1991)
 
Referring to the climate crisis, interdisciplinary
creative Rai says, “losing Earth is a grief-based
loss.” Working across the worlds of performing
and visual arts and ritual practice, Rai
simultaneously mourns and celebrates the
environment. 
A rigorous researcher, Rai’s interest in time and
the Jewish calendar brought her to the Yiddish
Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. There
she learned about an Ashkenazi (Eastern
European Jewish) spiritual practice that takes
place in the last month of the Hebrew calendar
(Elul) when the veil separating the living and the
dead thins. Women known as feldmesterin use
cotton string to measure entire cemeteries and
the individual graves of their ancestors while
reciting Yiddish prayers traditionally delivered by
women (tkhines). The thread later became the
wicks for hand-dipped “soul candles” (neshome
likht), some for the living and the others to be
burned in memory of their ancestors on Yom
Kippur. Here a video documents Rai’s feldmestn
and offering neshome likht to a section of the
Chesapeake Bay shoreline in Maryland, which is
imperiled by climate change. As Rai says, “we
need nature to enact ritual and we have to do 
it now.”
Rai presents not only the video made as a result 
of the performance, but also a notebook. An
extension of a practice enriched by collaborative
community engagement, she encourages
audiences to record their own tkhines in it. 
Athena LaTocha (American, born 1969)
 
Landscapes shaped by both natural and human
forces inspire LaTocha, whose childhood in Alaska
influenced her “perception of place and locating
oneself.” There she was aware of the uniquely
“massive perspective,” allowing her "to look down,
to look across and to see great distances.” On a
return trip she went off-the-grid at a whaling
camp on Kodiak Island where her work took an
abstract turn. Today she creates by placing
massive sheets of paper on the floor to obtain 
an aerial perspective as she works. As seen in 
the variety of scale presented here, LaTocha’s
interests range from the microcellular to 
the cosmic.
LaTocha’s site-responsive, process-driven practice
involves taking field notes, documentation,
artifacts and raw materials from the landscape
back to her studio. For some of the works on 
view here, LaTocha collected materials in New
Hampshire. Decaying pine branches were burned
to make charcoal. She extracted full sheets of
prismatic mica from the depths of a private mine
and crushed them in her hands. From a gravel
washing pond at a quarry, she took a large bucket
of sediment to scatter. Her encrusted, corrosive
surfaces heave rather than lay flat. LaTocha
manifests the “human desire to maintain stability
on something that’s always shifting.”
Additionally – and informed partially by her
indigenous heritage – LaTocha comments on 
the politics of place. For instance, soil from
Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery was used for
small scale works on view that carry memories 
of the city’s dead, but also of the Lenape people
who first inhabited that land.


To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home - Intro Vinyl Panel 18x36

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Fairfield University 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield 
Ephemera To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home 
Spring 2025 
To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home - Add'l Pull 
Up Banner BLM 
Fairfield University Art Museum 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/commonhome-ephemera 
Recommended Citation 
Fairfield University Art Museum, "To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home - Add'l Pull Up 
Banner BLM" (2025). Ephemera. 7. 
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/commonhome-ephemera/7 
This item has been accepted for inclusion in DigitalCommons@Fairfield by an authorized administrator of 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights-
holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is 
permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain 
permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license 
in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@fairfield.edu. 
Environmental threats and
climate change are urgent
matters of concern at Jesuit
universities, where
conversations on this topic
often take place in reference
to two documents by Pope
Francis: Laudato Si’: On Care
for Our Common Home
(2015) and the 2023 update
Laudate Deum. To See This
Place presents work by
Athena LaTocha, Mary
Mattingly, and Tyler Rai,
three contemporary artists
whose outlook resonates
with the themes of Laudato
Si’ and Laudate Deum.
Visit the Walsh Gallery
in the Quick Center 
for the Arts: 
What’s on in… 
TO SEE THIS PLACE
Awakening to Our 
Common Home


To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home - Add\u27l Pull Up Banner BLM

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Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut - exhibit brochure

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Fairfield University 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield 
Ephemera Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut 
Spring 2025 
Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut - Exhibit BLM front hall 
banner 
Fairfield University Art Museum 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/tonalism-ephemera 
Recommended Citation 
Fairfield University Art Museum, "Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut - Exhibit BLM front hall banner" 
(2025). Ephemera. 20. 
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/tonalism-ephemera/20 
This item has been accepted for inclusion in DigitalCommons@Fairfield by an authorized administrator of 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights-
holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is 
permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain 
permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license 
in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@fairfield.edu. 
DAWN & DUSK
 Tonalism in Connecticut
January 17 – April 12, 2025


Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut - Exhibit BLM front hall banner

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https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/tonalism-images/1008/thumbnail.jp

https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/tonalism-images/1012/thumbnail.jp