This information about the Hazel Sandford Art Gallery and Hazel Sandford is provided in the dedication program:
Hazel Sandford Art Gallery:
"Located in the Marwick-Boyd Fine Arts Center on the mezzanine above the auditorium foyer from which it may be approached by stairways or elevator, the Hazel Sandford Art Gallery is an area lighted and equipped for the display of work in painting, sculpture, ceramics, and other media by students, faculty, and guest artists. Conveniently accessible to those who may be attending lectures, plays, and concerts in the auditorium, the Sandford Gallery often affords a pleasant diversion for moments before a program or at intermission. Yet, removed as it is from direct contact with studios and classrooms and the flow of "workaday" traffic, the gallery is wel adapted to serious and contemplative study of exhibitions. The Sandford Gallery is open to the public much of the time. Plans call for annual exhibition of the permanent collection made up of works donated by alumni, former and present faculty, and friends of the college, and a limited number of works purchased with a grant from the Clarion State College Foundation. There have been ten exhibits during the current year, which have included showings of the works of Robert Hobbs, La Verne Grant, John Mahlman, Herbert Olds, Clarion Art Department students, and the Art Department faculty. "Gloucester Still Life," painted by Hazel Sandford, for whom the Gallery is named and donated by her to the permanent collection, is presently hanging in the Gallery."
Hazel Sandford:
"Professor Hazel Sandford came to Clarion State College in 1927 when the institution was still known as Clarion State Normal, and for the next twenty-eight years she was Head of the Art Department of the College. Indeed, for many years she taught all art courses, developed new curricular offerings, supported instruction for children in the Thaddeus Stevens Laboratory School, and serviced the art needs of the various college departments and activities. It was a busy and demanding life, but it was one to which Miss Sandford gave herself with a verve and sense of humor, an effectiveness and enthusiasm that made her a favorite with students and earned for her the respect and affection of her colleagues. When Miss Sandford retired in 1955, she closed a professional career of thirty-six years of elementary, secondary, and college teaching enriched by a broad and varied professional preparation. She earned her first teaching certification at Fredonia State Normal in New York, then went on to her Bachelor's degree at Cornell University, and later her Master of Arts at New York University. But she never really stopped her education either between degrees or following completion of her Master's. She took extensive work at Columbia, Carnegie, Parsons, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pennsylvania. She studied in Europe in 1928, then at the Thurn School of Modern Art in Boston, and during five summers between 1945 and 1951 she studied at Chautauqua under the New York University Art Director. A teacher who was constantly a student in her field, Miss Sandford has since retirement continued her lively interest in the world about her and in her art, completing more than a hundred paintings and sketches since she left the college. Her creativity is warmly embodied in one of her oils, entitled "Gloucester Still Life," begun in 1938, and completed in 1969, which she has donated to the permanent collection of the Hazel Sandford Art Gallery."
