Exploring all the Creative Angles

As an EXCEL Scholar this summer, Jeb Madigan '04 worked with Ed Kerns (left), Eugene H. Clapp '36 Professor of Art, doing everything from helping to market ties and scarves designed by Kerns to making polyurethane casts of foot-long fish and suspending the resulting translucent amber sculptures above a lighted mechanic's pit.

A double major in art and English, Madigan spent spring break as a research travel assistant to sculptor Jim Toia, director of community-based teaching and the Grossman Gallery. Madigan helped develop and install a temporary sculpture in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains at Grass Valley, Calif.; helped collect, photograph, and analyze mushrooms that Toia uses in his artwork; and worked with gallery directors, artists, and environmental groups.

This fall, the Quadrant Book Mart & Coffeehouse in Easton displayed 11 of Madigan's oil paintings in a solo exhibit. Two other shows are scheduled at restaurants in Easton and Binghamton, N.Y.

Madigan, who also proofread a 350-page manuscript for an English professor this summer, is working on an honors thesis in studio art. He competes on the golf team and in intramurals for Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, where he has served as vice president and scholarship chair. Other activities have included serving as a teaching assistant in art and as an English department assistant, and working as a legal and historical research assistant at Binghamton University and as a company's legal and marketing assistant.