By Keegan Pyle
Barbara Neulinger of Northampton is about to start a new job — as a theatrical prop master at the University of Massachusetts Amherst — and she’s both excited and terrified.
The job description sounds enticing enough, she says, but also a bit intimidating: Being a prop master involves knowing at least a little bit about nearly everything artistic — from carpentry to painting. It also requires the ability to get things (and people) organized, while managing “creative” types.
It is as much about focusing on the tiniest of details — say, a specific color tone for a prop — as it is about seeing the large picture of a fully staged production.
Although she’s never been a prop master, she says, she thinks she’s up to the task.
For most of her life, Neulinger has been an art teacher. In New York, she taught at Brooklyn public schools; she taught painting at William Peterson College; and she led art classes for adults and children at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. She’s also an oil painter, who exhibits her work regularly at local colleges. Her last exhibit, a solo one last April, was in the Hampden Gallery at UMass.
So, even as she walks into foreign territory, she says, her professional background should serve her well.
“Though I’ll be taking on a lot of things I’ve never done before, there are certain areas where I have 25 years of experience: working with students, explaining things in such a way that empowers students to be creative on their own. So, I’m doing it. I’m taking on this challenge,” Neulinger said. “I’m really excited that, at the age of 52, theater managers see that age and experience is a plus. That feels great.”
Neulinger came to the Valley from New York City, where she attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, graduating in 1982. She got a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Skidmore College in 1986, and a master’s degree in fine arts from Indiana University. By then, she says, she felt ready to take on the world.
“I thought I was going to be on the cover of Art in America,” Neulinger said with a laugh.
Instead, she became a struggling artist.
“It was really hard living in New York as an artist,” Neulinger said. “There came a point where, surviving in New York and teaching all those hours to make a living — and I was still painting in my studio — was just too much.”
She bemoans the fact that she was too busy to take full advantage of New York’s bustling art scene.
“I just didn’t have the energy or time to attend the openings, and meet everyone in the art world, and I didn’t put myself out there like that,” she said. “I was just working too hard.”
Then, when she was 30, she met John Solem. They married, had a child, Lucas, and moved to Northampton.
“We were hoping for a life where we could afford more time doing what we love,” she said.
Lucas, now 16, is a student at Northampton High School; John works as a photographer at UMass; and Neulinger is an art teacher at the Northampton Montessori School.
Last year, Neulinger accepted a contract position as a “scenic charge” to paint the backdrop for a UMass production of “Peter Pan.”A year later, when the prop master job opened up, she applied, knowing, she says, she had all the tools.
She will continue to teach at the Montessori school, but will put her personal painting on hold … for now. It’s something, she says, she will miss.
“Not having the time to work in my studio makes me feel a little uneasy, but I know that it will still be here when I return,” she said. The changes, she adds, are producing an intoxicating mixture of fear and joy.
“I know that every week I’ll be asked to create, to make something that I’ve never made before — but figuring stuff out, and learning new things, is very exciting,” she said. And, she added with a smile, “They wouldn’t have asked me to do it unless they believed I could. And I wouldn’t have accepted unless I knew I could.”