Image by Ed Brennen After donating 18 paintings by her late father, mechanical engineering alum Paul LaCroix '71, Danielle Meserve, left, sees them on display at Perry Hall as she walks alongside Senior Director of Development Carolyn Brooks and Campus Planner Stephen Cadigan.
Danielle Meserve noticed the bare hallway walls as she walked through Perry Hall during a campus tour with a group of her high school students.
Meserve immediately imagined the walls filled with the colorful geometric paintings created by her late father, Paul LaCroix ’71, a mechanical engineering graduate of Lowell Technological Institute.
“I went home that night and said to my husband, ‘Wouldn't my dad’s artwork look really cool here?’” recalls Meserve, a school counselor in Hopkinton, New Hampshire.
The next day, Dan Meserve searched the UMass Lowell website for someone who might help make it happen.
Image by courtesy Paul LaCroix '71, who passed away in 2020, was an engineer by trade who also built a body of artistic work that included photography, sculpture and painting.
Visitors to the first and second floors of Perry Hall are now greeted by 18 vibrant geometric paintings by LaCroix, an engineer, artist and lifelong Lowell resident. Donated by his family, the collection transforms the corridors outside biomedical and chemical engineering laboratories and classrooms into a gallery celebrating the connection between mathematics, engineering and artistic expression.
“I know my dad would be completely tickled to think that his art is being displayed in the city where he lived his entire life, and in the place where he got his start as an engineer,” Meserve said during a recent dedication ceremony attended by more than 50 family members, friends and university supporters.
For LaCroix, who passed away in 2020, engineering and art were intertwined.
After earning his mechanical engineering degree, he worked for and consulted at several engineering companies before following his lifelong passion for art. He enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he built a body of work that included photography, sculpture and the large geometric acrylic paintings that became his signature.
Image by Ed Brennen Reception guests admire a geometric painting by the late Paul LaCroix '71 that's now on display at Perry Hall.
The finished works were distinctive for their bold color palettes — a remarkable feat given that LaCroix was colorblind.
“Some of the colors didn't make sense to me, but they made perfect sense to him because he was colorblind,” Meserve said.
Bringing the collection to Perry Hall required months of collaboration.
After Dan Meserve contacted Senior Director of Development Carolyn Brooks ’01, university officials visited the family’s New Hampshire home to view dozens of LaCroix’s paintings and determine which pieces would best fit Perry Hall. Campus Planner Stephen Cadigan coordinated the installation, while support from the Joanne Yestramski ’76 Art and Exhibition Endowment funded the transportation and professional installation of the artwork.
Image by Ed Brennen Francis College of Engineering Dean Susan Roberts greets Nicholas Meserve, a grandson of the late Paul LaCroix, while Danielle and Katelyn Meserve look on.
Francis College of Engineering Dean Susan Roberts said Perry Hall is a fitting home for the collection because LaCroix’s life demonstrated that engineering and creativity can go hand in hand.
“His story tells students that they do not have to choose between being analytical and being creative,” Roberts said. “Their technical abilities and their creativity can strengthen one another.”
Among those attending the dedication was Michel El-Ashkar '88, who earned a civil engineering degree from the University of Lowell and became one of LaCroix’s closest friends.
Image by Ed Brennen Civil engineering alum Michel El-Ashkar '88 pays tribute to his late friend Paul LaCroix '71 at the Perry Hall reception.
“He was the greatest true artist I ever knew,” El-Ashkar said. “He was a true Renaissance man.”
For Meserve, the dedication was more than the unveiling of her father’s art collection. Because LaCroix died just before the COVID-19 pandemic, the family never had the memorial service they had envisioned.
“This kind of served double duty,” she said as family members and friends moved from painting to painting, admiring her father’s work.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Meserve added. “But I’m ecstatic to see his work on display.”
Image by Ed Brennen The Meserve family, from left, Danielle, Dan, Katelyn, Timothy and Nicholas, stand in the first-floor hallway at Perry Hall where Paul LaCroix's artwork is now on display.