Tom McKone
MARSHFIELD — Creating art and helping others to do the same are parallel threads that have dominated Montpelier resident Joy Spontak’s long career as an artist and art teacher.
“We’re yearning to express ourselves,” Spontak said in an interview at her solo retrospective show at the Jaquith Public Library in Marshfield. “Poetry and art and writing seem to be easy ways to get to feelings and those things that people keep storing up and not expressing. That’s what people need in this world.”
Spontak’s love of art began when she was a child, and blossomed when a middle school teacher recognized and encouraged her passion. She then was accepted into New York City’s High School of Music and Art in Manhattan (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts).
High school was a “life-changing experience” that first put her into an art community. She went on to earn a bachelor of fine arts degree from City College of New York and a master of fine arts in visual art from the Vermont College of Norwich University.
Although Spontak has worked in and taught many mediums, her favorites are oil, pastels, acrylic, pencil, charcoal, and collage, all used in the 34 works in this show.
Jaquith library director Susan Green described Spontak’s work as “accessible, beautiful, and spiritual” and “otherworldly in some ways, very realistic in others.”
Several of Spontak’s works focus on families, mothers and babies, or troubled couples. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Spontak was inspired by a story on National Public Radio about a mother trapped in a flooding attic who saved her baby by holding the child above her head. She found a local woman to model holding her baby above her head for her “Hurricane Katrina” painting. She added rising waters behind them.
“Dreamscape” shows “troubles between a woman and a man,” with a woman interior and a man exterior. She used a strong, confident young woman who was actually a welder as the model for “Welder,” a painting for the touring Vermont Works show in the 1990s.
The exhibit includes collages that highlight her appreciation of Japanese art and a series of tarot images. “Premonition,” a collage she created after the 2017 presidential inauguration, shows Washington in disarray, including the capitol turned upside-down; after the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, she renamed it to match the moment. The retrospective even includes a 1959 pencil drawing of Spontok’s from high school called “Shoes.”
Spontak, 81, taught for 49 years, from 1966 to 2015. She taught every age group — from little kids to senior citizens, in schools, colleges, and nursing homes. Like many artists, she wove together a series of part-time jobs to make ends meet. At one point, she taught in three different schools at once. She said she especially liked teaching college students, and she enjoyed, over time, being an adjunct instructor at five Vermont colleges.
A past president and current board member of the Art Resource Association, Spontak has lived in Montpelier since 1972. She has had solo and group shows across the state, including the Wood Art Gallery in Montpelier (now the T.W. Wood Museum), the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, and several Burlington galleries.
Spontak’s exhibit at the Jaquith Public Library, 122 School Street, Marshfield, runs through July 15. It is open during library hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 6 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m.; and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
