VSU ArchivesIrene Dodd taught art at Valdosta State from 1967 through 2002. She donated artwork to VSU Archives earlier this year. The Irene Dodd Collection is open to the public in Odum Library.
By Dean Poling dean.poling@gaflnews.com
When former VSU art professor Irene Dodd donated several pieces of her art and art she has collected from other VSU art professors and students, Davis discovered a recently cleared hallway in the Odum Library.
Davis transformed the hallway into the new gallery for the Irene Dodd collection.
The works are primarily abstract paintings, prints, etc. They share a glimpse into the talent that has fueled Valdosta State’s art program from the past to the present.
The collection includes canvases by University of Georgia art professors Howard Thomas, Madeline Gekiere, Samuel Adler; VSU art professors Karin Murray, Stephen Lahr, Lanny Milbrandt; former VSU students Earl McKey, Chris Wilson, Anne Coyle, Chaya Levy.
The collection also includes four Dodd works. Dodd’s works are also exhibited in VSU’s Lamar Dodd Collection named for her father and the Valdosta Artists Collection.
Irene Dodd is a retired Valdosta State University art faculty member, working with the school from 1967 through 2002.
The daughter of famed artist Lamar Dodd, who founded the University of Georgia art program, Irene Dodd has spent her life developing as an artist.
She has headlined approximately 70 solo exhibits, ranging from Valdosta shows to exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the High Museum of Atlanta, the University of Georgia, etc.
Painting and being an artist is always a work in progress.
“It’s never finished,” Dodd said in a past artistic statement. “If you painted the perfect painting, why continue? There are times to continue with a certain work and a time to stop, but the painting is never absolutely finished. New experiences, past experiences, your attitude on a given day, they are all reflected and each painting is only a fragment representing a larger statement.”
Davis said the Irene Dodd Collection includes a signature piece of recurring themes throughout the artist’s career.
“Florence triptych” represents Dodd’s love for travel, especially to Italy; the use of gold throughout her paintings; and a canvas that straddles the abstract with the observed.
Dodd has painted Italian scenes throughout a career that has produced numerous paintings from European nations. She calls these paintings “Euroscapes.”
“My work is usually the outgrowth of sensory responses to an event something like an epiphany,” Dodd has said. “Because I have mastered the needed techniques to do that they seem natural, my approach is intuitive. As the work takes form, I move between the instinctive act of painting and the analysis of the emerging product. The resulting work should embody life experienced by the artist and recreated to the viewer.”
The Irene Dodd Collection is on view and open to the public on the lower floor of Odum Library, Valdosta State University campus.
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