Grads

Grads

I have some good news and some sad news. The first good news is that portrait artist Phyllis Nemhausser (MALS’03) recently exhibited her artwork at the AVA Gallery in Lebanon, New Hampshire, andher impressive works filled up the walls of a very large room. Phyllis had found that growing up in New York City in the sixties was exciting, and she was sure she would grow up to change the world. Everyone around her seemed to believe inthe imminence of fame and fortune. She sent her first poem to The New Yorker when she was 11 and as an adult her MALS degree was in creative writing. She feels she made peace with the world when she began to draw, carve wood, work with clay, and found that pencils were the most direct connection to the fact that everything was not actually known. Everything was yet to be discovered. For Phyllis, life became art and art became history. She has managed drawing groups for the past 20 years, including Our Town, which is a small group that has been drawing and painting local residents for the past 10 years.

As a portrait artist, Phyllis has shown her work internationally in both Canada and Japan. In the United States she has exhibited in New York City and Woodard Gallery and Cooper Gallery in Rhode Island in addition to Dartmouth and the AVA Gallery here at home. She feels that the AVA Gallery has been an essential part ofher balance and discovery and describes it as “a lighthouse of inspiration.”

Teresa Lust’s (MALS’95) exciting news is that she has written a new book, published by Pegasus Books. A Blissful Feast: Culmary Adventures in Italy’s Piedmont, Maremma, and Le Marche is a book not just about food and recipes, but as described by Kirkus Reviews, is also “a celebration of the relationship between family and food.” Her writing developed as she traveled around Italy visiting relatives and asking questions. Teresa’s new book follows her first, Pass the Polenta and Other Writings from the Kitchen. When she isn’t cooking or writing she teaches Italian at the Dartmouth Rassias Center for World Languages.

And now for the sad news. Joan Kersey (MALS’95) died last summer, just a month after a cancer diagnosis and two weeks before her 92nd birthday. When I first entered the MALS program a fellow student, Maggie Montgomery (MALS’99), asked me to attend an eveningpoetry reading that her friend Joan was giving. What I remember from that long-ago night were Joan’s poems about her first three children, all daughters, who had died in theiryouth from cystic fibrosis. Yetthe poems were not about the pain of death. They were about the joy of their short lives. The joy and love that was shared with Joan. The light, not the darkness, and the love and laughter, not the grief and the hurt, were inthe poems. The strength of this made quite an impression on me.

Joan spent the last year ofher life at the Genesis Center in Lebanon. Maggie would visit her at least once a week with her little dog, Miss Penny. There was a mutual enjoyment between Joan and Miss Penny. When Maggie couldn’t go, I went, also with Miss Penny, who loved the occasions. She would charge through the front door to the elevator, charge out again when we reached our destination, run down the hall to Joan’s room, stopping only to be petted by the entire Genesis staff, and jump up on her bed. Joan would be more than veiy pleased to see her and with a smile on her face would feed Miss Penny from abag oftreats. Maggie kept Joan supplied with the treats, which Miss Penny would not come near, let alone eat, when she was at her own home. It was obvious that Miss Penny appreciated and shared Joan’s embrace of the love of life. Joan spread it to all of us around her. So it is Joan’s smile, her embrace of life and love, and her strength in accepting what her life presented that I will always remember when I think of her. —Jane Welsh, 175 Greensboro Road, Hanover, NH 03755; (603) 643-3789; m.jane.welsh.gr@ dartmouth.edu

CLASS NOTES

Grads-Deaths

Jane Welsh