Professor Spotlight: Daniel Devine Sculpting a career
Photo Courtesy of Aoife Maher-Ryan
Daniel Devine, professor of fine arts, design and art history, has wanted to make art since his second grade teacher told him that he “drew well.” However, it wasn’t until he was a teenager that he seriously started creating.
At the time, Devine was working at a small motorcycle shop. While there, he started racing them. “My shop recommended me to the importer. I did well racing,” Devine said. “I was sponsored by the manufacturers of motorcycles from Czechoslovakia, which was a communist country at the time, so it was really part of the government.”
Devine ended up racing motorcycles professionally for about 10 years in the 1960s across New England, New York, Pennsylvania and Canada. He still rides motorcycles today and has a small business repairing and restoring the vehicles.
His first real, recognizable artwork came in 1962. Many of his pieces revolve around nature and industrial design. His inspiration has remained the same. “Well, it was very different in the 1960s, but my work is still about nature and environmental issues,” Devine said.
The art world has changed significantly from how it was when Devine started. “It’s become much more commercial than it was in the 1960s; most of the art schools teach you to make art that is sellable because that’s the medium right now,” he said.
Devine has been a part of numerous one-person and selected group exhibitions over the course of his career. His most recent exhibition, titled “Impact,” was displayed at the Thompson Giroux Gallery in New York earlier this year. The exhibition included sculptures of white plaster molded from old auto body parts disfigured in accidents, giving them an ice-like quality. The sculptures show the impact of metal crashing together, but also act as a statement on the impact humans have on the environment.
Devine started teaching in the late 1980s. “I had so many friends who were doing well in the art world and had to travel to be in shows, so they would ask me to fill in for their classes. Eventually, I had a long list of places that I had taught. When a job opened up at Hofstra I applied for it and ended up being selected.” His first year as a full-time professor was in 1994.
Since Devine has been teaching, he has seen Hofstra grow. “It was mostly Long Island families that had children coming to Hofstra, but I think that has changed, now it is much more international. People are coming from all over. They’ve added [...] a medical school, changed their sports programs,” Devine said.
As the chair of the sculpture department at Hofstra, he also works on putting together exhibitions at the Rosenberg Gallery in Calkins Hall. His own sculpture, The Secret of Las Meninas, made out of pigmented concrete, is featured on campus and in the collection of the Hofstra Museum.
He communicates to his classes that art has more purpose than just decoration or financial incentive. “It’s actually an intellectual endeavor, you have to create an understanding of the world,” he said.
When Devine is not teaching, he continues to make more art.
“My wife and I work on industrial design projects; we make lighting fixtures and other things. I also have my business of restoring and modifying older motorcycles,” Devine said.
Devine will be on sabbatical next spring, when he plans to create more artistic works,with the goal that it will be exhibited in the near future. “I know a number of dealers and museum people that would be interested, so if that all falls together it will happen,” he said.
