See, learn, and get inspired in our space.
From the Usonian aspirations and contemporary lines of the Institute’s architectural design and the tranquil beauty of the surrounding natural landscape and fauna, to works in a growing collection of art and innovative interactive experiences for all ages, there’s something for everyone on view at the Prindle Institute.
Light Puddles (2009)
Barbara Fields Timm, a faculty member in the Art Department, has long-time family roots at DePauw. Her grandparents met while students here in the 1920’s. Her brother and mother also attended. After her graduate training in Philadelphia, she returned to Indiana to join DePauw’s faculty and to study the land that is her home.
An old limestone quarry sits a short distance from the DePauw campus. Operations there were closed in 1977 after 60 years of blasting that left little more a than a steep pit of crushed stones and rainwater. For Timm and other adventurers, a trip to the site had rewards that far outweighed its risks. Nature had slowly begun to creep over the exposed rock as it reclaimed the quarry in the years following its closing. The themes of human impact on the environment and the power of natural regeneration connected on Timm’s canvasses.
Light Puddles depicts ponds of water in the park, reflecting colors of the horizon. The painting, which received the 2008 Wabash Valley Exhibition’s top award, is one of many Timm has painted of the Nature Park and other quarries in the Putnam County area.
“My perception of nature is never singular and it’s never a single window into the world like traditional landscape. When I go to the woods, the light shifts and things are constantly in flux. There are birds and wildlife moving all the time. I never see my surroundings there as still.”
Ituri Series: BIRA (1998)
Margaret Donovan Opdahl has been working in fiber professionally since earning her M.F.A. degree in 1985 from the Hope School of Fine Art, Indiana University–Bloomington. She set up her studio in Greencastle, with a winter studio in Santa Fe, N.M., for several years. She worked at DePauw University as curator of the DePauw Art Collection and as gallery director of the Emison Art Center until 1998, when she decided to dedicate herself full-time to making art.
Opdahl has exhibited her work in juried and invitational shows nationwide and internationally. She is represented in private, public and corporate collections such as the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., the Museum of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Art in Santa Fe and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, among others. Her work, which draws inspiration from living and working in Greencastle, has appeared in various journals and books.
Landscapes by Cynthia O'Dell (2008)
On permanent display at the Prindle Institute is a large collection of landscape photography shot in the DePauw Nature Park by Cynthia O’Dell, Professor of Art in Photography and Video and Digital Imaging. The collection was commissioned by the Institute’s founding Director, Robert G. Bottoms.
O’Dell has been teaching at DePauw since 1998, is a former chair of the Art Department and is the recipient of a DePauw Fisher Fellowship and University Professorship. Her work examines notions of identity in relation to gender, self, memory, place, loss and dislocation.