Christopher Reiger '99
"When I think of W&M, the sundial often comes to mind..."
| . . . As an art major, I spent many hours on the steps of Andrews Hall, chatting with other art students, reading, and smoking (a habit long since abandoned). As a lover of libraries, I spent a lot of time in Swem. Naturally, I traversed the space between these two buildings with regularity, and the sundial was a fixture of my student days. But it was also a player in my W&M nights. During my freshman and sophomore years, a large group would gather at the sundial for epic, late night Capture-the-Flag battles. Some of my fondest W&M memories involve clamoring over walls, hurdling over hedges (sometimes not making it), and army crawling alongside the area's buildings—experiential learning!” -Christopher Reiger |
About the Artist
Christopher Reiger is a writer, artist, and curator living in San Francisco, California. Originally from the rural Delmarva Peninsula, Reiger attended William and Mary, then moved to New York City, where he lived and worked for the next decade. He graduated from the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts (NYC) in 2002; since that time, his paintings and drawings have been included in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and South America.
Reiger has contributed art criticism to a number of print and online journals, including ArtCat:Zine, NY Arts Magazine, and Art Practical. Essays and short-form pieces about art, natural history, and miscellany are published on his long-running blog, Hungry Hyaena, which has been featured on multiple "best art blogs" lists. Additionally, he has contributed essays to exhibition catalogs and books, and more book projects are forthcoming. Reiger teaches art classes at Root Division, an arts education non-profit in San Francisco's Mission District, and at the Sharon Art Studio, in SF's Golden Gate Park, and has presented guest lectures at SUNY Purchase and the Art Center College of Design about art's relationship to ecology and ethics.
"There is a lot of beautiful and compelling artwork produced and exhibited today, but it generally lives apart from popular culture," says Reiger. "We - that is, those of us active in the fine arts - are complicit in this ghettoization because we're content to carry on a conversation among ourselves. Moreover, because we've come to preference our tribe's voices over others, there is a surplus of insider commentary and critique passed off as art. Almost all of this work and wordiness is irrelevant to the world outside the ghetto walls and, because young artists are educated in this context, with little or no pedagogical emphasis on disciplines other than art theory, the art and commentary become, over time, increasingly provincial. The wellspring of this contemporary predicament is as old as modernism. Artists need to make art that connects to common human experience, and both artists and art writers need to communicate more effectively with the general audience."
Learn more about Christopher and his work.
