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HWS News

10 October 2024 • Alums • Faculty The Art of Mentorship By Paige Cooke

Tom Swanston ’78 and Jeff Mather ’79 reflect on the legacy of Professor Alvin Sher.

Even before college, Tom Swanston ’78 and Jeff Mather ’79 felt called to make art. They attended the same high school in Connecticut and arrived at Hobart and William Smith hoping to develop their craft, but neither could have imagined the impact that Professor of Art Alvin Sher would have on their work and their lives.

“I was talented but I didn’t really have a lot of drive — that’s where Alvin came in,” Swanston says. “He pushed me along to do things and go places and have experiences that I would not have otherwise done.”

A member of the HWS faculty from 1968 to 1981, Alvin Sher taught sculpture, drawing, design and art history and established programs for visiting artists and off-campus study. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Art in, he earned an MFA from Indiana University and was later a Fulbright grant recipient and an artist-in-residence at Cite des Arts in Paris. In his early teaching career, Sher taught art at Indiana University, the University of London and Kingston College of Art. After leaving HWS in 1981, he directed the New York Arts Program for more than 25 years, playing a critical role in establishing the program’s building and dormitory in Chelsea. A prolific artist, Sher exhibited his work in more than 200 exhibitions, including 25 solo shows during a career that spanned over 60 years. His works are in the permanent collections of the Lyman Allyn museum, the Worcester Art Museum and numerous municipalities and college campuses throughout the United States.

Sher was a sculptor and early adaptor of computer-aided design, and Mather recalls his openness to the “experimental,” which extended to taking a chance on students. When Mather showed up for Sher’s 3D design class during his first year, the roster was full. Nevertheless, when he made his case to stay for the semester, Sher agreed.

For both Swanston and Mather, Sher’s encouragement and hands-on approach to education was a powerful incentive, helping them hone their technique and inspiring in them the confidence to pursue art as a career.

“He was a stickler for technical expertise, especially as a sculptor,” Swanston says. “Learning the craft was super important, knowing how it worked and making sure it worked every time — that is part of being a professional.”

As he challenged his students to push their crafts in new directions, Sher also wanted them to experience all aspects of the process. Mather, who had been making experimental films and sculpture since high school, had the chance to collaborate with a guest artist, filmmaker and photographer Rudy Burckhardt, who Sher had brought to the colleges to serve as visiting artist for a semester.
 
“I built a staircase on wheels, like a sketch version of the staircases that roll out to meet airplanes,” Mather says. “We pulled it behind Rudy’s station wagon and took it all over town and attached it to different buildings in Geneva.” The resulting animation project, Vehicle for Escape, created an optical illusion, depicting the sculpture sucking people "not out of a door or a window, but straight out of the walls.”
 
Now a community-based public artist, environmental sculptor and teaching artist based in Atlanta, Mather says that as a student, working with a practicing artist on that level helped show him what was possible.
 
“Alvin swung the door open to that realization early,” he says.
 

 

Mather and Swanston studied with Sher in off-campus programs in New York City and London, respectively, and drew on his support to explore the integration of the visual arts with dance and theatre. After graduation, they moved to New York, where they roomed together and, again with Sher’s encouragement, found their paths as artists. Swanston followed Sher’s advice and enrolled in graduate school at Parsons School of Design, while Mather, with Sher’s recommendation, was hired as an assistant to French sculptors Anne and Patrick Poirier.
 
Sher, who died in 2022, stayed in touch with Mather and Swanston throughout their careers, exchanging letters and emails and reconnecting during visits to his home in Connecticut.
 
“He valued these relationships beyond having been my Intro to 3D Design teacher when I was a freshman,” Mather says. “We got to know each other. He told me the last time we had a full conversation that at some point our connection went from professor-student, mentor-mentee, to being just really good friends.”
 
That sense of friendship, and the power of art to bring people together, is evident in the work that Swanston and Mather are making today.
 
Swanston and his wife Gail Foster, whom he met at Parsons, have developed successful careers as fine artists. Also based in Georgia, they recently renovated an old Masonic lodge for their studio, office and exhibition space, Studio Swan, where they invite artists to show their work.
 
“We’ve shown everything from contemporary Korean ceramics to a writer from New York who also focuses on exotic women’s footwear,” Swanston says. “We are just trying to bring an elevated sense of art making and art viewing to the community.”
 
Mather has served as the lead artist, co-founder and board president for the Atlanta Partnership for Arts in Learning. He coaches the designing and building of large-scale architectural sculptures. He is a member of Alternate ROOTS and several of his community-based public art projects have been funded by ROOTS’ Community/Artist Partnership Program. He is also the lead artist for the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Access Program in northern Utah, a program with a full inclusion mission of working with students with disabilities, and the STEAM Artist-in-Residence at Drew Charter School in Atlanta. 
 
Thinking back on his own education, Mather notes that alongside the studio art and art history classroom experiences, “it’s the relationships that you form that propel you into your career.”
 
The sentiment was clearly important to Sher, who before he died, asked his wife Patty to give Swanston and Mather each one of his iron sculptures. After he passed, she had two — very heavy — sculptures shipped to Georgia.

 

Top: Jeff Mather ’79 and Tom Swanston ’78 pose with a sculpture created by their late mentor, Professor Alvin Sher.