Life at Vassar often bears an uncanny resemblance to a board game. Students are constantly moving, pursuing goals, all with an effort to reach the end successfully. Artist Rachel Lenihan ’13 was motivated by this vision when she came up with the idea for an installation that anyone on campus last year will instantly recall: life-size pieces from the game Candyland, placed at various points around the school.
“I also wanted to see Vassar in a new way and also cause everyone else on campus to see Vassar in a new way and introduce an element of surprise into everyone’s day. And to bring a childhood dream into reality (being inside a game),” Lenihan wrote in an emailed statement. “But on the more serious side, I was starting to feel, about college in general, as if I had no control over my everyday motions of going to class, going to my dorm, going to ACDC, go to my campus job, going to the library...After being accustomed to the same schedule my movements around the campus seemed monotonous. Similar to how I’d imagine game pieces might feel being moved from space to space.”
The nature of this in-your-face piece contrasts sharply with the artist’s personality—decidedly humble and soft-spoken. Last year, Lenihan’s memorable work evoked interesting reactions from students, who were naturally a little confused when they expected their walk to the College Center to be relatively normal. “I felt like God for two days,” Lenihan said. “I knew this inside story that everyone was talking about.”
Lenihan’s interest in formally studying art is a fairly recent discovery. She was an artistic child. However, she didn’t really realize her talent until high school. Her initial inspiration was low-key—it took off after she got a book on how to draw cats. She furthered her talent in high school art classes until she came to Vassar with the intent of honing her skill. She currently prefers a different medium, sculpture, as her highly visible work last year suggests. After taking a sculpture class at Vassar, she found it much more liberating than painting. “With sculpture it’s more personal,” Lenihan said.
Lenihan acknowledges the nerve-wracking experience of first going to a major’s critique. There, students can display their independent artwork and receive input from fellow students as well as faculty. “The first major’s critique I went to was intimidating, first off, because it was the first time I was in the same room with all of the studio art faculty, not to mention all of the upperclassmen art majors,” Lehihan wrote. “It was like I stumbled into a secret communal gathering.” By now, Lenihan is able to shirk any inhibitions and get the most from these critiques.
Lenihan’s academic focus at Vassar is not solely art; she also majors in psychology. This has had a distinct effect on her experience as an artist. Her alternative perspective allows her to see meaning in her own art as well as in others’ which she wouldn’t otherwise. “A lot of times when I make something, I don’t know what it means, but if I think about it, is has to do with past memories or some psychological aspect... [that] I wouldn’t normally be aware of,” Lenihan said.
Lenihan draws upon surrealist artist Salvador Dalí for inspiration, among others. “Dalí was the first artist that really interested me because his work showed so much creativity and invited the viewer into so many potential worlds. I liked to see paintings of things that I couldn’t see in everyday life,” Lenihan wote. “In addition I found it
interesting how he included human figures or parts of human figures in his work, but they were usually strangely morphed, and all of the inanimate objects in his paintings appeared to be alive.”
Lenihan knows for certain that her artistic work is far from over, and plans to make a career out of it. She doesn’t expect it to be easy. “I know it’s a really hard world for artists out there,” Lenihan noted. Be that as it may, Lenihan feels that as long she works hard, the good fortune that art has endowed her with will continue. Currently she is thinking about what to do in her senior year at Vassar. She was eager to cite a phrase she once heard that helps define her own identity: “Art isn’t just a career, it’s who someone is,” she said.