Video Artist And Teacher Hartley Shearer Dies

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Feb. 8, 2002–Hartley Shearer, part-time lecturer in art at Williams College, died suddenly yesterday at home (202 Pine Cobble Road, Williamstown). He was 57 and had struggled for three years with increasing complications from a stroke.

“Hartley Shearer was a vital member of the college and local community as an accomplished video artist, energetic teacher, lively intellectual presence, volunteer, caring colleague, and friend to many,” Williams President Morton Owen Schapiro said. “He was also an especially devoted husband and father. The thoughts of all of us at the college are with Linda and Ivor at this time.”

As in his ice hockey coaching at Mt. Greylock Regional High School and his year-round mountain biking, he took on every project with intensity and drive. A stylish dresser in an L.L. Bean town, his video art similarly stood out. “He didn’t want to just show something to viewers, he wanted to engage them in the situation,” said Michael A. Glier, assistant professor of art. “He wasn’t didactic, he was trying to create a conversation.”

He deeply immersed himself in new technologies and was one of the first artists to combine theory and practice to integrate video, film, and multimedia. In a course on contemporary art and film, taught with his wife Linda Shearer, director of the Williams College Museum of Art, he used multimedia and computer technology to develop new approaches to the visual arts.

His work has been shown at the Gallery of the School of Visual Arts and at Artists Space, both in New York City, and at the Williams College Museum of Art. It was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sloan Foundation.

He was also highly regarded as an interpreter and critic. “Hartley was a natural skeptic,” Glier said. “He took nothing at face value and nothing went unchallenged. This was an important attribute to have in an academic community, particularly in art.”

In addition to classroom teaching, he advised students on independent study projects and collaborated with other faculty, including those in other departments, on their work.

At the time of his stroke he was pursuing a master’s degree in social work at the State University of New York at Albany. He was committed to working with troubled boys and used video production to engage residents of the Berkshire Farm Center in Canaan, N.Y.

He taught at the School of Visual Arts before beginning at Williams in 1991. While in New York, he did volunteer work with adolescents at risk and, as a landlord, was especially known for his compassion and activism.

Born October 30, 1944 in New York City to Letitia (Roberts) and F. Hartley Shearer, he attended Middlebury College and earned a B.F.A. from New York University in 1968. He married Linda Balding in 1966 in New York City.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, Ivor, a college student.

A memorial gathering will take place Saturday, Feb. 16, at a time and place to be announced. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in his name to the Berkshire Farm Center in Canaan, N.Y.

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Published February 8, 2002