From staff reports
HUNTINGTON — The Marshall University community continues to grieve this weekend after the unexpected death Wednesday of longtime art professor Stanley Sporny.
 

“I learned a lot from him, and I’m going to miss him because I think he had a lot more to teach me,” said Erin White, a graduate student who had taken a number of Sporny’s classes.
 

Sporny's latest exhibit can still be seen at the Callen McJunkin Gallery, 219 Hale St. in Charleston, through Nov. 8. The paintings explore the intricate qualities of surface tension between air, water and submerged matter.
 

According to Sporny's Web site, he remembers wanting to be an artist as early as age 11.

Sporny attended the Philadelphia College of Art, and he earned his master's at the University of Pennsylvania, studying under celebrated artists such as Neil Welliver, Red Grooms, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Elaine de Kooning, James Brooks, Paul Georges and Larry Poons. He attended the Skowhegan School during the summer term of 1972.
 

From there, Sporny traveled on a Fulbright Grant to Sri Lanka, where he resided for nine years. In 1994, he received a $20,000 Federal Art-in-Architecture Grant for 12 waterscape paintings located in the Veterans Hospital in Huntington.
 

He won the Governor's Purchase Prize at the West Virginia Biennial, the Best of Show at the 63rd Allied Artists Juried Exhibition and First Prize at the Members Juried Show at Southeastern Conference of Art Colleges in 2000.
 

His most recent award is the West Virginia Commission on the Arts 2006 Artist Fellowship.
 

According to his site, his collections include The National Museum of American Art, Utah Museum of Fine Art, AT&T, Leukin Company, Senator and Mrs. J.W. Fulbright, Arthur C. Clarke, Hodding Carter & Pat Derian, The Roger Ogden Collection-New Orleans.
 

He’ll be dearly missed in the art department, said White, who aspires to do gallery work and who took painting, figure drawing and murals with Sporny.
 

Not only was he an accomplished painter but a teacher who was open, honest and helpful — in art and in life, White said. He urged his students to shoot for larger goals, she said.
 

“He gave more than he had to,” she said.
 

White said she wasn’t required to go to class Friday, but she did.
 

“We sort of got together and caught up. (Thursday) was pretty somber — everybody respects Stan a whole lot,” White said. “Definitely gone too soon. He was one of my top three mentors. I’m pretty heartbroken about it.
 

“I might not have always agreed with him, but I knew what he was telling me was for the best. He had a perspective that was not like anyone else.”
 

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Stanley Sporny

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