The Chronicle stops the presses- Play offers new twist on classic story
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Graduate student channels classic horror in thesis film - Alumnus creates mobile gallery
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- Personnel File: New staff members join SCAD-Savannah
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- Baseball takes series from St. Thomas
- Women’s basketball wraps up second place in Florida Sun
- Athletics updates for Feb. 15
- Baseball off to best start in program’s history
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Class in the Spotlight
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Alumnus finds home at alma mater
 Photo by Dane Sponberg Greg Eltringham painted a birds-eye view of the countryside surrounding SCAD-Lacoste when he taught there during Summer 2006. By Monique Bos Published: Friday, March 9, 2007 Greg Eltringham (M.F.A., painting, 1990) and his wife, Angela Burson (B.F.A., painting, 1991), met as students at the Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2005, several states and two children later, they found themselves full circle — back in Savannah, where Eltringham now teaches courses in the college’s foundation studies and painting departments. “It’s funny, because we ended up buying a house a block from where I lived in graduate school,” Eltringham said. “We’re three blocks from Anderson Hall. I can walk to work.” On a 2004 visit to Savannah, a friend gave him a tour of the college’s facilities. “I was completely stunned, especially when he showed me the painting department,” he said. “The facilities here are amazing. When I was a student, painting shared Henry Hall [now Eckburg Hall] with fibers.” At the time, Eltringham and Burson were looking to move. After living in Florida for several years, they had relocated to Centralia, Mo., when Burson’s grandmother died and they purchased her home there. After they moved to the area, Eltringham found a job serving as one-person art department at a community college in Moberly, Mo. — “the only Moberly in the world,” he said — that drew students from 16 counties in northeastern Missouri. “My orders were to grow the department,” he said. “They had renovated a gymnasium into a two-floor art complex with a gallery, so they wanted someone with gallery experience.” He had a background in both teaching and curating, having worked as a gallery director in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and an adjunct professor at Broward Community College, where he taught art appreciation, drawing, painting and 3-D design. “I basically talked them into letting me teach almost everything,” he said. That diversity served him well in Moberly, where his courses covered an array of topics, including survey, drawing, painting, 2-D design, color theory, ceramics, sculpture and photography. He also developed video and digital photography courses, as well as an off-campus cultural studies and art course. Howeveer, after eight years there, Eltringham and Burson grew tired of Centralia, population 4,000, and they wanted to live somewhere that offered good public education options for their two children. “We were looking for a change,” Eltringham said. “There were very few places I could envision moving to, but I knew Savannah was a place we loved living.” The change has been good for the whole family, he said. “My son and my daughter are both going to Charles Ellis, and we’re really psyched about that. How many Montessori public schools are there?” he said. “Being in Savannah, I think, has really been stimulating for Angela, too. You can meet so many people here.” For Eltringham, being at SCAD has not only afforded him opportunities to teach courses he loves, but also to travel. His teaching load has included 2-D Design, Color Theory, Drawing I and II, and Life Drawing in the foundation studies department. This quarter, he also is teaching Intermediate Painting and Portrait Painting through the painting department. During Summer 2006, he had the opportunity to teach painting and drawing courses at SCAD-Lacoste. “It’s an outstanding, unbelievable place,” he said. “I love going places and exploring, and to get a group of students in a passenger van and take them somewhere is just great.” He took students to Paris, where they visited the Louvre, and Nimes, and led shorter, weekly trips around the local countryside. He also spent a lot of time with his Landscape Painting students just working in the rich environment of Provence. “It was so nice to work with students all day, and then at night, after dinner, go to the painting studio or sit on the terrace and talk,” he said. “I really love to be in a place with students, working with them. I could do that all the time. It was like teaching, and it was like camp.” He also got to indulge another passion: bicycling. “I’ve got cycle fever,” he said. “It’s truly a biker’s paradise. While I was there, I rode to the top of Mont Ventoux, which is on the Tour de France route. It’s sort of like a pilgrimage spot for French cyclists.” One of the rewards of teaching both foundation studies and painting courses is watching students progress through their academic careers, Eltringham said. “I can look at them in the foundational courses and nudge them toward painting, if they aren’t sure what they can do with the degree,” he said. “Two students who went to Lacoste last summer are in my Portrait Painting class now, and there are two others whom I previously had in class, so that’s nice to see.” Eltringham also continues to create and exhibit his own work, and has shown in galleries in Atlanta, New Orleans and Kansas City. He has an exhibition scheduled in SCAD’s Pinnacle Gallery in September. “I’m looking forward to working on that,” he said. One of the series he’s planning to develop for the show consists of large-scale landscapes inspired by a vacation he and his family took in Europe just before he taught at SCAD-Lacoste. In fact, he created an 8-by-6-foot landscape of Lacoste and the surrounding area while he was in France. Eltringham said he and his family remain happy with their return to Savannah. “We have so many opportunities here,” he said. “We’re really glad we came.”  |
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