Faculty

• Christopher Archer

  

  Assistant Professor, 3D Studies
  Phone: 603.428.2614
  Email: carcher@nec.edu
  Professional website: chrisarcherartist.com

  View CV

  Awards
  In 2019, the Socièté Académique Arts-Sciences-Lettres de France in Paris awarded Chris the Medaille d’Argent (Silver Medal) for his achievement and leadership in his studio practice, teaching, and community-based art advocacy.

  Educational Background
  MFA in Interdisciplinary Practice, Maine College of Art
  BFA in Ceramics with K–12 Art Education Certification, SUNY Alfred, College of Ceramics, School of Art and Design

  Research interests

  • Creative community building
  • Contemporary craft
  • Pedogogies of Bauhuas and Black Mountain College

   

  Bio
  Chris Archer is an artist, art educator, and art advocate. His studio practice traverses across functional pottery, sculptural forms, arrangements, site-specific installations, and events. Through a diverse range of delivery systems, Chris’ practice considers the significance of material engagement as a means of critical thinking.

  Chris’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, earning multiple awards, and is in the collections of the San Angelo Museum of Art (San Angelo, Texas) and Tokyo Geidai (Tokyo, Japan), as well as multiple private collections. His work has been published in a series of Lark Books publications and he has written for Studio Potter Magazine.

  Teaching has been an integral part of Chris’s career. In addition to teaching regional and national studio workshops, Chris served on the faculty of New Hampshire Institute of Art from 1998–2014, teaching a range of courses in the BFA, MFA and MAAE, and community education programs. He then served as Associate Dean of Community Education, overseeing a range of continuing studies programming while having created an executive education certificate program in Creative Placemaking and an interdisciplinary youth arts program.

  Chris is an active member (and former Trustee) of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen with whom he collaborates on strategies to highlight the relevance and vital importance of craft as well as redefining that organization’s standards and educational programming. He also is an active member of the Steering Committee for the New Hampshire Creative Communities Network, actively working with a range of state agencies to promote, stimulate, and support the regional creative economy and cultural capital. Chris continues to lecture, serve on panels, and co-facilitate projects around the state and the region focused on community-based and social-based practices as well as the importance and potential in collaborative efforts between creative and other professional sectors.

• Glen Scheffer

  

  Associate Professor, Photography
  Phone: 603.428.2655
  Email: gscheffer@nec.edu
  Professional website: glenscheffer.com

  Educational Background
  MFA in Photography, New Hampshire Institute of Art

  Bio
  Glen Scheffer uses the language of photography to describe the world around him. Whether using the studio to create photographs linking science and art or photographing indirect social connections made within the landscape, Glen strives to make art that will stir conversation about how we interact with each other and the world. Glen uses large- and medium-format cameras to construct his interpretations and cultivate his vision. Glen’s work is finished through the darkroom as gelati silver prints, digitally as large archival pigment prints, as well as published books. Glen has exhibited his work regularly locally and nationally. Most recently, his work was part of a traveling exhibition of film-based artists. The work traveled to the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, Canada; SF Camerawork in San Francisco; and The Reference Gallery in Seoul, South Korea. Glen’s work is also part of Everything Is Narrative, a publication of landscape photographers. The book is an anthology of contemporary photography exploring the open-ended nature of photographic storytelling. Showcasing images from 162 artists, this book was published in the spring of 2021.

• James Chase

  Associate Professor, Printmaking
  Phone: 603.428.2601
  Email: jchase@nec.edu
  Personal website: neverfading.com

  Education Background
  MFA in Studio Art Printmaking and Painting, Texas Tech University
  BFA in Interdisciplinary—Printmaking/Painting and Photography, New Hampshire Institute of Art

  Bio
  James Chase is a mixed-media artist currently living in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he previously was an arts commissioner. Chase has had solo exhibitions at the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, New Hampshire, and Launch Art Gallery in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and has co-led pop-up exhibitions during the Chinati Foundation Open House weekend in Marfa, Texas. Chase has also been part of collaborative projects such as Tower of Babble at The Print Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the “BFT and the Wolfbat Railway,” at the Old Iron Works in New Orleans, Louisiana.

• Karen Hillson

  

  Associate Professor, Art and Design
  Phone: 603.428.2648
  Email: khillson@nec.edu

  Expertise and Awards

  Expertise:
  19th- and 20th-century art

  Awards:

  • Frank Maria Fund, NEC
  • Rockefeller II Fund, NEC
  • Faculty Development Fund, NEC
  • Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship

   

  Educational Background
  PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara
  BA, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

  Research Interests

  • French Romanticism, particularly the art of Eugène Delacroix
  • Women artists

   

  Bio
  Dr. Hillson was born in Willimantic, Connecticut, and grew up in Los Angeles. Her dissertation research in Paris on the art of Eugène Delacroix was supported by a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship. She lived for 10 years in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to New Hampshire in 2007. She has taught at the University of Southern California, the University of Arizona, St. Anselm College, and Rivier University. She was Chair of Art History, the Parliamentarian of the Executive Committee, and Faculty Representative on the Board of Trustees at the New Hampshire Institute of Art before joining the faculty of NEC. She created a diverse Art History curriculum that covers all major geographic regions: Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Americas, and Islamic lands.

  When she is not teaching, Dr. Hillson enjoys observing the flora and fauna in her native perennial garden, which has been certified as a Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. She and her husband, Jim, also tend a prolific vegetable garden.

• Patrick McCay

  Professor, Fine Arts
  Phone: 603.428.2611
  Email: pmccay@nec.edu

  Educational Background
  Post-graduate certification in Education, St. Andrews University
  MFA, University of Notre Dame
  MFA, Glasgow School of Art
  BFA, Glasgow School of Art

  Bio
  Patrick McCay’s national and international exhibitions record includes The Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts; The Edinburgh International Festival; London’s Royal Academy; The London Institute; Sydney College of Fine Arts, Australia; Leila De Pintura, Rue Miguel, Lisbon, Portugal; and the Irish College for the Humanities.

  He is the recipient of numerous juried awards, grants, purchase prizes, and scholarships, including Andrew Carnegie Trust Award; Scottish Arts Council Traveling Scholarship; and the David Carghil Award, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Arts.

  Public and private collectors include Royal Bank of Scotland, Baldwin Piano Corporation, HRH Princess Margaret, Zurich RE Insurance Co., Georgia Council for the Arts, Westin Hotels Inc., and the Irish College for the Humanities.

  He is an active academic artist and lecturer with 25 + years of experience at the college level, including leadership positions in American International School of London, SCAD, College for Creative Studies, and the New York School of Visual Arts.