Andrew Fournier, an alumnus from Westford Academy and a graduate of UMass Lowell, was fortunate enough to have his artwork displayed in one of the UMass Lowell buildings. Fournier who has a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts was chosen out of several student art portfolios to make a photo exhibit for the new business building, Pulichino Tong Business Center, on North campus.
Andrew Fournier makes art with a bright light and a digital camera. COURTESY PHOTO
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He started his piece in November 2018. It went through several revisions until he made his final draft in June or July of 2019. The piece called “River” will be displayed at UMass Lowell for years to come.
“It is kind of surreal,” Fournier said. “Most of us want to go to (UML) to show your work in the future and right out of college I was able to do that, so it’s crazy.”. Having succeeded in displaying his artwork in a public space, Fournier says his inspiration is his former photo professor, Pavel Romaniko.
“My senior thesis, I did paintings but then [Romaniko] encouraged me to work more on one of the projects I did…so he really pushed me to do that,” Fournier said, “and I definitely switched more from wanting to do painting to photo as soon as I had a class with [Romaniko]”.
Fournier works with light drawing photos. He explained the process of the “River” saying, “I do the light drawing photos by having the camera’s aperture open for a long exposure photo with all the lights off in the room, and as I move with a bright light in my hand the camera captures all of the movement into one photograph.”.
Today, Fournier is looking forward to what the future holds.
“I want to be able to have my own art practice on the side and also teach art, he said. “I want to have art in my life going forward.”. At the moment, Fournier is subbing at Westford Academy to get more experience in the teaching field. He said he would like to teach high school level art and give back to the Westford community.
