Family Farms - Moravian College

iurro, “Manhattan avenue,“ oil on canvas
February 7 –
March 16
Displaced/Interventions
PAYNE GALLErY • Artist Grace Graupe-
Pillard creates paintings and digital images that
explore social and political issues. Her recent
works use implanted images and eccentric
colors to form a visual dialog on the human
costs of war.
The Secret Lives of Painters
Artists are supposed to be good with colors
and shapes, maybe not so good with cold
numbers and scientific facts. But as with
all stereotypes, counterexamples abound.
Like Jiri “Iurro“ Stavovcik ’97, who came to
Moravian from the Czech Republic. At Mora-
vian he earned an M.B.A. and then a second
bachelor’s degree in accounting. When his
promising business career hit a temporary
snag, Iurro decided to take time off to paint.
He’d always been an
accomplished artist;
according to family
lore, he began drawing
at age three. Soon his
lively colors and play-
ful energy attracted
enough attention in
the Washington, DC
area to enable a full-
time vocation. Captur-
ing the ever-changing
face of urban archi-
tecture holds a special
appeal. “I love high-
rises,“ he says, “I could
paint and draw them
all day.“ Iurro sees
Meet the Dean
“You go into teaching to learn,“says Gordon weil, moravian’s
new dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs.
no big deal in a career path that meanders
from number crunching to color mixing. “My
father started his first business at age 67
and it was very successful; both my parents
were trained in classical music and piano,“
he says. “I learned that there are many kinds
of successes in life.“
“Art and science are really about be-
ing creative in different ways,“ notes Brett
Weber ’91, who majored in both art and
biology at Moravian. Brett had just earned
his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Temple Univer-
sity when he was diagnosed with multiple
sclerosis; his art became a means of coping.
“My roommate said, ‘You’ve done all these
paintings, why don’t you start showing
them?’“ he recalls. He’s since exhibited in
Philadelphia, New York City, and interna-
tionally in Greece and Bosnia. Brett titles
his abstract works after quotations by the
likes of Gandhi and Einstein, though some
works seem to suggest their own names to
him--such as “Prayer,“ which he completed
while on his knees, or “Moment,“ which has
a raised texture produced by grass clippings
dragged across the canvas by helper dog
Sophie. “Painting is like a dialog I have with
the unconscious part of myself,“ he says.
“You learn from your colleagues and you learn from your
students.“ which is why dean weil, who’s taught everything
from economics to tennis, makes it a priority to connect with
students as well as faculty. “I don’t want to cut myself off from
half of my source of learning,“ he says. Before coming to moravian this past summer, dean weil served as
associate provost at wheaton College in Norton, massachusetts, where he helped found the Center for
Global Education, and taught seminars in international relations and poverty in a global context. He also
chaired and served on numerous committees aimed at diversity and inclusion. “I welcome the opportunity
to try to have an impact on diversity at moravian,“ he says, “not just the on numbers represented by
students, faculty, and staff, but also on the climate in which they work and study.“
FALL 2007 MORAVIAN COLLEGE MAGAZINE
photo By John kish iv