April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
FINE ARTS
Siena staffer fills college with art
When René Molineaux' son and daughter were growing up, they often raided his creative space in Albany for project materials.
"He's a great collector of stuff," said his wife, Maureen.
Most artists keep a supply of canvases, paints and brushes in their studios. But Mr. Molineaux' work has also called for plastic molding, wood pieces, car parts, screws and foam packaging.
Art isn't even his profession - but the lifelong parishioner of St. Vincent de Paul Church in Albany calls art his vocation and his passion, second only to his family.
"I feel good about what I'm doing," he told The Evangelist. "There's that link between spirituality and work - God being the grand creator of everything. If you're creating something, there's a bit of responsibility there."
Mr. Molineaux is the lead instructional technologist at Siena College in Loudonville, an institution that has encouraged his artwork in big ways. The college's creative arts department has borrowed two of his large assemblage pieces; Siena's library commissioned an installation piece that took him eight years to complete. A colleague commissioned another piece that now hangs in an office in the library.
Making time
Mr. Molineaux works on his art during lunch breaks, nights and weekends. Now that their children are grown, he and his wife recently moved to a new home in Albany. His studio already takes up three-quarters of its basement.
Mr. Molineaux can trace his art calling to the age of seven, when a teacher asked his fellow second-graders at Vincentian Institute in Albany to draw objects found on an altar.
One boy went to the chalkboard "and started drawing the outline of a cross - not just two lines crisscrossing each other," Mr. Molineaux remembered. "That just kind of blew me away. He taught us that there are different ways of looking at things."
Mr. Molineaux took to drawing. He eventually attended Fordham University in New York City and earned a degree in liberal arts with an emphasis on fine arts. He also attended the Arts Student League of New York.
The artist did audiovisual work at schools in New York City before moving back to Albany to open a silkscreen studio with his father. His commercial signs and posters were exhibited at local museums and libraries and on nine CDTA buses.
Mr. Molineaux met his wife around that time and decided to pursue a more stable income before starting a family. He earned a master's degree in information science and started at Siena College's technology help desk.
Today, he maintains the college's website, as well as department and faculty websites, and trains others to edit webpages.
After 16 years, Siena holds a special place in his heart.
"Your spirituality [is] a part of your whole being," he said. "It's important to have that kind of influence at work."
His artwork has evolved as much as his professional career. For the piece commissioned by Siena's library, he built a 16-foot-wide installation in small portions to mimic the accumulation of books.
He named it "Shaker Seeds," planning to use only cedar shakes, but it morphed into an assemblage of cedar, oak, pine, pressure-treated lumber, picket fencing from his yard and wooden toys, which represent elements of Shaker heritage.
"Some stuff, I don't know what it is," Mr. Molineaux admitted. He also used a short ax to split portions of wood to expose the grain: "You could say that I've been painting with an ax."
What they like
The piece sits in a windowless teaching lab, so the wood won't fade. People tend to interpret the subtle symbols differently each time they view it: "He doesn't like to define those for people because that's very limiting," Mrs. Molineaux said.
She prefers pieces that are easy to understand, like his silkscreens with nautical themes. She also likes the rabbit he made out of an egg-shaped pulley from a wooden sailboat and the insect he constructed out of a Volkswagen car shock absorber, copper wire, lamp sockets, barbecue parts and a paint bucket handle.
"Some of the more abstract things, I find challenging," she said.
Some of Mr. Molineaux' personal favorites have involved boats and crucifixes. His plank cross series was sold at auction to benefit St. Vincent de Paul's "Bread for the World" project.
The artist looks forward to retirement, when he plans to connect with galleries in New York City.
"If I had my choice, this is what I'd be doing full-time," he said of his art.
Mrs. Molineaux said she's "very happy that he'll be able to pursue this passion. The passion is something that's a gift. Not everybody has that."[[In-content Ad]]
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