What if walls could talk? This is the question that Professor of Studio Art Sarah Schuster’s retrospective exhibition in the Richard D. Baron ’64 Art Gallery — titled “If Walls Could Talk” — aims to answer.
“I thought, ever since I came here, I could almost hear the faculty and the students over hundreds of years in the walls,” Schuster said. “A gallery is pretty blank and empty until there’s work on the walls. What you’re really trying to do by bringing people in is to develop conversations around the work.”
The exhibit opened Aug. 1, and today at 7 p.m., Schuster, alongside Associate Professor and Chair of Studio Art Kristina Paabus, will host a closing reception at the gallery in honor of Schuster’s retirement and Homecoming Weekend.
Though most of the pieces exhibited in this gallery were not made in Schuster’s classes, they all gathered inspiration from her teaching. One alum whose art is exhibited, Popi Susan Pustilnik, OC ’90, created a triptych entitled “People and Their Pets: Alex and His Alligator Alexander, Ozzie and Her Ostrich Ophelia, Sam and Her Sheep Shoshana.” This piece was created in 2024 but Pustilnik took a great deal of inspiration from the swathe of classes she took with Schuster.
“One thing that I love that Sarah used to talk about was how every time she goes into the studio to paint, she forgets how to paint and has to reteach herself,” Pustilnik said. “While doing that, she has to put her fear aside and just be so honest. What comes out is what she reinvents in herself. Not only do I do that with my own work, but I think I try to help the people that are creating art do the same thing of letting go of the fear, letting the judgment out of the room — pushing it out and just letting yourself be.”
Today, Pustilnik uses what she learned from Schuster in her work as an art therapist for unhoused people.
“I remember the feeling of when I was embarrassed about [a] painting I made,” Pustilnik said. “[When] I walked back into the classroom, I saw it hanging up in the hallway, and Sarah had created a mini show. And I was like, ‘Woah, you thought that was something good enough to actually hang up.’ That’s something I do with the homeless people I create art with. … What [Sarah] would do with me and the others in class is very much how I work when I work with other people [now].”
Schuster fostered a sense of community in each of her classes because she understood its importance. This was imprinted on Pustilnik during her time at Oberlin.
“When people were getting competitive about their art and maybe insecure, she broke those barriers down right away,” Pustilnik said. “She read the room. She saw what was going on. She called us into a group huddle, and was like, ‘What’s going on in here? You guys are artists, and you need each other, and you’re going to be your art community.’”
Other students of Schuster’s share similar sentiments.
“I feel like she actually really cared about all of us,” College second-year Ella Koprivica said. “She got to know us all individually, more than any of my other professors. She remembered my name the second day that I was there.”
College fourth-year Izzy Pfaff echoed this element of community that Schuster cultivated, which left a lasting impact on each of her students over her 35-year career.
“I feel like she’s very important to Oberlin,” Pfaff said. “I think it’s really cool that now that she’s retiring, she can have this [exhibit] to show how important she was to everyone.”
Although the gallery is in Schuster’s honor, the care she shows her students is embedded within its ethos.
“The reason that I had so much meaning in my job was teaching students all over the years, and I just wanted to share [the gallery] with them,” Schuster explained.
Schuster’s former students emphasized the lingering effects she has had on not only their art, but their lives.
“She pushed my boundaries of what I thought I could create or what I thought I could do,” Koprivica said. “I never thought I would be creating anything in 3D ever. Then, in her class she really pushed me to do that and go beyond what I was comfortable with for my final project — it turned into something really beautiful.”
Schuster’s ability to impact students manifests in ways her former students could have never anticipated.
“I was at a party after I graduated [from] Oberlin and I had met this guy there, and turns out he had gone to Oberlin, too,” Pustilnik said. “We’re talking, and it turns out he also ended up taking Sarah’s classes, and we kind of bonded [over] that, and then eight years later we ended up getting married.”
Meeting Schuster altered the course of her students’ careers in more ways than a resulting marriage.
“Video was very new for me then, but a few months later, I got a job in television production and continued with that for 30 years,” Rich Sullivan, OC ’89, wrote in an email to the Review.
His video project “Last Day of Painting Class, Spring 1989” (1989) is the very first work viewers see upon entering the Baron Gallery. It showcases an early critique in one of Schuster’s first courses at Oberlin.
Aside from her unique impact on each of her students, Schuster dedicated years to reshaping the Studio Art department to appeal to the taste of Oberlin students. Because many of her students come from all walks of life on campus with a variety of interests, she tailored her classes to focus on creativity and interdisciplinary practices over formal technique.
“A lot of the artists are really cutting-edge, doing more digital work or installation or performance art,” Schuster said. “Our students in Studio Art are multidisciplinary artists. They take any subject they want and apply it. … One person did a triptych on McDonald’s. Other people did paintings on gems, because they worked in geology. People who were in technology would use more technique from technology. One person did an icon installation of rats and test tubes.”
This interdisciplinary element of Schuster’s teachings has been prominent since the start of her tenure in 1988.
“I may not be an artist, but I am artsy, and Oberlin has always been a place that encourages people to try different things and to be interdisciplinary,” Sullivan wrote.
Schuster extended her openness to all disciplines in the gallery, featuring artworks spanning topics such as climate change, transgender activism, and women’s issues in a variety of media. She says she “decided anybody who felt that art — [regardless of their] profession — had a central purpose in their life” could participate in the gallery.
“If Walls Could Talk” serves as a testament to Schuster’s immense talent as both an artist and educator.
“Sarah’s teaching approach encouraged students to find their own individual voices through the process of making, critical thinking and creative problem-solving,” Paabus wrote in an email to the Review. “Sarah taught painting at Oberlin for 35 years, and her legacy in Studio Art and the College is immense. The department and students will miss her greatly, and we are also looking forward to her next chapter and new paintings.”
