UPDATE: Sculpture by Art Professor Alastair Noble Debuts at New York Exhibition Saturday

A group of professors and EXCEL Scholars will travel to New York Saturday to attend the opening of an exhibition that includes sculpture created by an art professor and installed by a recent graduate.

Held under the Brooklyn Bridge, the 21st Annual Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Outdoor Sculpture Show includes a piece by Alastair Noble, assistant professor of art, that reflects various phases of the bridge’s construction. The exhibit will run through Sept. 14. Sandra Furnbach ’03 (Matawan, N.J.), who received a degree in civil engineering in May, installed Noble’s sculpture as one of nearly 100 students participating in Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program this summer.

In EXCEL, students collaborate with faculty on research while earning a stipend. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.

Furnbach also has been using a computer program called AutoCAD to design an entranceway for the 9th Street New Jersey Transit Light Rail station in Hoboken, N.J., and to create a web site to showcase Noble’s installations, sculpture, and public art.

She was part of a Lafayette student team that took first place for its design paper and earned an honorable mention in the 2003 Pennsylvania-Delaware Region of the National Concrete Canoe Competition in April at Lake Galena near Doylestown, Pa. She served this past year as competition fundraising chair for the student chapter of American Society of Civil Engineers. She also was cast for the Marquis Players production of Sugar this spring, which raised more than $3,500 for six local charities. The 18 musicals produced by Lafayette’s Marquis Players have raised about $67,000 for charity.

Last semester, Noble led his Principles of Studio Art students in creating collographs — prints made from low-relief collages — that were displayed in downtown Easton at Quadrant Book Mart and at the Williams Center for the Arts (see related story).

In the fall, his Fundamentals of Sculpture students created abstract plaster forms inspired by clay figures they based on live models. Selections were displayed in a Skillman Library exhibit (see related story).

Noble has displayed his sculptures and other works in solo exhibitions at Robert Pardo Gallery, N.Y.; Center for Visual Arts Gallery at Brookdale College, N.J.; View Gallery, N.J.; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton; Anderson Gallery, Richmond, Va.; Nerlino Gallery, N.Y.; Stux Gallery, N.Y.; and Marian Goodman Gallery, N.Y., among other venues. His work has been featured in dozens of group exhibitions, including a show last year at Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy.

Noble has written reviews over the past several years for Sculpture and has produced other published articles as well, including a piece in Journal of Architecture.

He was visiting professor of sculpture at Cornell University, and has also taught at Cedar Crest College and Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, N.J., among others. He holds a master of fine arts degree from Rutgers University and a bachelor of arts from Hull College of Art, England.