Bergen Art Professor Is Smithsonian Semifinalist

A career artist and 21-year educator at Bergen Community College, Associate Professor Paul Mindell has carved a unique niche creating photo collage portrait/environments and “LandEscapes.” Shooting hundreds of photos for each of his works, Mindell forms his collages with a subtle and nuanced rearrangement, repetition, sizing and overlapping of fragments of a scene. Each collage remains a portrait of the original images, but represents a significant departure from them as well. The approach has earned him praise and honors, but his greatest achievement could yet be forthcoming.

Mindell’s photo collage “Align Through Time: The Painted Muse, the Pixilated Views,” has been chosen as one of 100 semifinalists in the Smithsonian Institution’s prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009. This national competition, held once every three years, drew entries from more than 3,300 artists. In the coming months, a panel of seven prominent jurors from the art community – including the director and curators from the National Portrait Gallery – will select 50-60 finalists for an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., from October 2009 through August 2010. Finalists will be announced in May 2009.

On his selection as a semifinalist, Mindell said, “It’s an honor beyond compare.”

A full-time faculty member in the Bergen Art Department, Mindell believes it is imperative for him to find a balance between his art and his teaching.

“My students know me as both artist and teacher,” he said. “They see that I am working at my art and talking about the work of contemporary, and not-so-contemporary, artists all the time. In general, I think my students are getting the message: there has to be a seriousness of purpose in what they do. Recently, when I mentioned my acceptance as a semifinalist in the Smithsonian competition, I told them that I have made photo collages for seventeen years, and that it took that long to mature to the point of recognition by the Smithsonian.”

Mindell said Bergen students are the reason he enjoys teaching year after year. His comfortable working environment, West Hall – the College’s two-year-old building dedicated to art, music and mass communication – further cements his appreciation for Bergen.

“I teach painting, drawing, and life drawing, and we have a well-designed, amply-equipped art studio, with a huge north-facing skylight,” he said. “It’s an artist’s, and art teacher’s, dream.

West Hall also houses Gallery Bergen, the College's 2,250 square foot exhibition space. Heralded as an enriching cultural center for the College, county and region and a venue for a broad range of visual and media exhibitions created by students, faculty and artists from throughout the tri-state area and country, the gallery opened in 2007.

Mindell lives in Connecticut. He received a B.F.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.A.T. from Rhode Island School of Design. To learn more about Mindell, or to view his work, please visit www.bergen.edu/facultyhome/mindell.asp

Bergen Community College is a public two-year coeducational college, enrolling more than 15,000 students in Associate in Arts, Associate in Science, and Associate in Applied Science degree programs and certificate programs. More than 10,000 students are enrolled in non-credit, professional courses through the Division of Continuing Education, the Institute for Learning in Retirement, the Philip J. Ciarco Jr. Learning Center, located at 355 Main Street, Hackensack, and Bergen at the Meadowlands, located at 1280 Wall Street West, Lyndhurst. Information about the College is available at www.bergen.edu or by phoning the Welcome Center at (201) 447-7200.