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News & Events

• Trenton Doyle Hancock to lecture Feb. 22
• Alumnus and Hamblet winner Eric Ehrnschwender returns to Space 204 for Solo Show
• Will Rigby, Hamblet Merit Award Recipient, Gives Back
• Past Exhibitions and Events

Trenton Doyle Hancock to lecture Feb. 22

Wildly imaginative multi-faceted artist Trenton Doyle Hancock will lecture on his past and future work at 7 pm on Wed., Feb. 22, in Stephenson Center, Room 4327, on the Vanderbilt campus. This lecture is part of Vanderbilt University's StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series 2011-12. All StudioVU lectures are free and open to the public.

Perhaps best known for his cast of fantastical characters who play out an epic saga of good versus evil in a mythical underworld, Hancock gives voice to his imagination and ideas through his prints, paintings, collages, installations and performances. Among his characters are Mounds, half-animal/half-plant beings who are preyed upon by Vegans, ant-like characters who ferociously hate meat. Then there's Torpedo Boy, Lloyd and Painter.

Twice a Whitney Biennial artist, Hancock's work is included in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many other top art museums across the nation. Additionally, he was commissioned to do a massive mural in the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium and created a mixed media installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. He is also a part of the PBS Series Art 21. A resident of Houston, Texas, he is represented by the Talley Dunn Gallery in Dallas,Texas.

Hancock's work will be included in the Frist Center for the Visual Arts' new exhibition, Fairytales, Monsters and Genetic Imagination, which opens Feb. 24 and runs through May 28, 2012. In addition to his StudioVU lecture, he will join artists Saya Woolfalk, Kate Clark and Meghan Boody, and moderator Mark Scala, chief curator at theFrist, on Sat., Feb. 25, from 10 am to Noon in the Frist auditorium for the artists' panel: Hidden Meanings/Invented Bodies: Fables for our Times. For more information on this free event, visit the Frist's website at fristcenter.org.

For more information about the lecture or StudioVU, contact the Vanderbilt Department of Art at (615) 343-7241.

The Department of Art would like to thank the Frist Center for theVisual Arts for its assistance in coordinating this event.

Alumnus and Hamblet winner Eric Ehrnschwender returns to Space 204 for Solo Show

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art is proud to welcome an exhibition of sculptural ceramics by Vanderbilt alumnus Eric Ehrnschwender, recipient of the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award in 2010.

By Self and Others will be exhibited in Space 204 from Thursday, Jan. 12, through Friday, Feb. 17, 2011. An opening reception will be held Thursday, Jan. 12, from 4 to 6 pm, at the gallery which is located on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th Avenue South and Garland on the Vanderbilt University campus.

All Space 204 exhibitions are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm.

As recipient of the Hamblet award, Ehrnschwender's prize provided for a year of art research and travel, culminating in a solo show in Vanderbilt's Space 204. During the past year, Ehrnschwender participated in the three-month long Samband Íslenskra Myndlistarmanna (SÍM) artist residency program in Reykjavik, Iceland. While there, he began working on a series of introspective ceramic pieces, work which continued after his return to the States and his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. This work culminates in his solo show, By Self and Others.

"I am an artist who works from the inside out," says Ehrnschwender. " I am interested in giving psychological phenomena a physical form; isolating those facets of self and others that are often overlooked in an attempt to ask questions about our inner workings and the necessity of social norms. I make work about coping with and hiding emotions, about measures taken to feel safe in a world that is not, and about relationships, especially those in which power is uneven. The world is a very interesting and strange place, and our environment is more a part of us than most are willing to admit. In my work, the world in which these insecurities exist is conceived with the hope that our own reality will be reconsidered."

 

Will Rigby, Hamblet Merit Award Recipient, Gives Back

Vanderbilt's Department of Art recently received a generous gift of welding equipment from Will Rigby, Vanderbilt alumni and the 2011 Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Merit Award recipient. Will approached Mel Ziegler, chair of the Department of Art, with his wishes to "give back to the department that gave me so much." The Gift in Kind included a MIG welder, an oxy-acetylene welder and additional equipment that will allow the department to set up a special welding area inside in the sculpture shop. Will, the son of Lee Kaaren and Judi Rigby of Irvine, CA., is currently doing post baccalaureate work in sculpture and performance art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Thanks, Will!!

 

 

PAST EXHIBITS IN SPACE 204

Mara Sprafkin and Justin Braun Installations

Two captivating installations were on display the fall of 2011 in
Vanderbilt's Space 204. Mara Sprafkin's installation She Would Have Thought Twice, Possibly Three Times and Justin Farris Braun's they see themselves from the inside were exhibited from October to December of 2011.

Sprafkin's installation, She Would Have Thought Twice, Possibly Three Times, includes more than 1600 prints and drawings, large and small, new and older. Sprafkin's reoccurring theme of femininity is further enhanced through the use of materials such as scrapbooking, fashion magazines and romance novels. A native of Brooklyn, NY, Sprafkin has exhibited her work throughout the US in solo and group shows, most recently the Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia. She received her MFA from Columbia University and her BA in Visual Arts from Bowdoin College.

The process of collecting and orchestrating fragments, materials and experiences is the basis for Justin Farris Braun's installation they see themselves from the inside. In this large scale work, Braun contrasts drawings and backlit photographs with a larger installation of "entangled systems." Exhibiting nationally and internationally, Braun's work encompasses design, two and three dimensional drawings, photography, object making and installation. Born and raised in the Midwest, Braun received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and his MFA from The Ohio State University.

Zineb Sedira: Memory Keepers

Studio VU:The Department of Art Lecture Series 2011-12 welcomed internationally acclaimed artist Zineb Sedira on Nov. 3, 2011. This public lecture was sponsored by the Department of Art and Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and was held in conjunction with Art Papers Live! the premier contemporary art lecture series. An artist reception and Art Papers issue launch was held at the Zeitgeist gallery.

More info on Zineb Sedira, including interviews, press + video clips, visit: www.artpapers.org

Zineb Sedira's work expands the conceptual, historical, and spatial
parameters of photography and videography. Over the last 15 years, her work has purposely and poetically constructed an archive of revolution. This archive posits memory as a distributed, living resource. It also casts Sedira, her numerous collaborators, and visitors to her exhibitions as memory keepers. Staging the artist and her family, Sedira's early work mobilized the documentary to explore language and storytelling. In 2003, Sedira returned to Algeria after 15 years of absence due to the civil war. This took her work in a new direction. Since then, the Mediterranean Sea and the landscape, architecture, and complex history of Algeria—sequencing the colonial era, the Algerian War, the civil war, and the struggles of migrant youth—have consistently played major roles in her production.

Born in Paris to Algerian parents in 1963, Zineb Sedira lives in London and works in Algiers, Paris, and London. She was named Chevalier des Ordres des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Ministry of Culture.

Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Photographer's Gallery (London, 2006), Wapping Project (London, 2008), New Art Exchange (Nottingham, 2009), Pori Museum (Pori, Finland, 2009), BildMuseet (Umea, Sweden, 2010), Kunsthalle Nikolaj (Copenhagen, 2010), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2010), [mac] musée d'Art contemporain of Marseille (2010), and Prefix - Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto, 2010).

Her work was also featured in group shows at Tate Britain (London, 2002), Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2004, 2009), Mori Museum (Tokyo, 2005), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, 2005), Musée d'Art Moderne of Alger (2007), Brooklyn Museum (New York, 2007), Mathaf - Arab Museum of Modern Art (Qatar, 2010), Contemporary Art Center (Thessaloniki, 2011), as well as in biennials and triennials, including the Venice Biennale (2001 and 2011), the triennial for photography and video at the Institute of Contemporary Photography (ICP) in New York (2003), the Sharjah Biennale (2003 and 2007) and the Folkestone Triennial (2011). She is represented by Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris.

 

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, in collaboration with the Vanderbilt Senior Art Majors and other volunteers participated in a new campus art project Oct. 17, 2011

Imole Blue

Participants planted 4,400 grape hyacinth bulbs mapping out the Cuban hometown of acclaimed artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. The project look place at the northeast corner of Kennedy Center on the Peabody campus.

This project is made possible through the Hamblet Project Series, which is supported by the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Fund. This event is in conjunction with a week-long residency jointly sponsored by the Department of Art, Center for Latin American Studies, Department of History of Art, Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Program in African American and Diaspora Studies, Atlantic World Seminar, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy, Neil Leonard, and the College of Arts and Science. Special thanks to Deputy Vice Chancellor Judson Newbern, horticulturalist Laura Barker and crew.

 

 

Appalachian Center for Craft Show – Aug. 25 to Oct. 7, 2011

Fiber, glass, wood, clay and metal met fine craftsmanship in a group exhibition, Imagine by Hand: Faculty and Artists in Residence from the Appalachian Center for Craft, which ran from Aug. 25 through Oct. 7.

Imagine by Hand features work by the five Appalachian Center for Craft professors: Jeanne Brady, Curtiss Brock, Robert Coogan, Graham Campbell, Vince Pitelka, as well as the six artists in residence: Bryce Brisco, Chad Cully, Trey Gossett, Amanda Ross, Linda Tien, and Jason York.

"The Appalachian Center for Craft asserts an important separate identity for craft artists, reflecting a commitment to a skill-building discipline based in traditional craft materials and functional forms," according to exhibition curator Ward Doubet, who serves as director and a professor at the center. "Contemporary craft has developed a unique vocabulary for these materials and processes, and has opened new avenues of creative effort in contemporary art. The work presented here represents the finest efforts of eleven contemporary craft artists pursuing these avenues."

A satellite campus of Tennessee Tech University, the Appalachian Center for Craft is located near Smithville, TN. with 87,000 sq. ft. of facilities located on more than 500 wooded acres overlooking Center Hill Lake. The center houses BFA program concentrations in clay, fiber, glass, metals and wood, an artist-in-residence program, exhibition and sales galleries, workshop programs, K-12 outreach programs, conference facilities, and student residences.

 

My mind is telling me know but my body is telling me yes

My mind is telling me know but my body is telling me yes, was on display from Aug. 25 through Oct. 7, 2011 and featured the work of local artists and educators Jes Owings, Cliff Tierney, Terry Thacker, Kristi Hargrove, and Ruth Zelanski.

Coop Curatorial Collective is comprised of area artists and educators working together to bring challenging exhibitions by emerging artists from across the country to Nashville's downtown Arcade.

Taking a cue from Nashville's historic status as the "Athens of the South" and the university affiliation of many Coop members, My mind is telling me… situates Raphael's School of Athens with its rational architecture, Euclidean geometry, and centrality of vision as a point of departure, according to exhibition curator Willard Tucker.

"These works explore the limits of the rational by disrupting a Cartesian delineation of the senses with materials such as bourbon, sassafras, graphite, and wasp nests. Rather than eye candy or food for thought, these artists vibrate the whole nervous system with multisensory alignments that open up into new forms of embodied knowledge. They speak in experimental fragments and indeterminate processes that seldom resolve into the kind of conceptual reductions rewarded by academia," continued Tucker.

All Together Now, curated by Adrienne Miller, June 2011

All Together Now, a group exhibition of prints, collages, paintings, and mixed media works by 19 artists from across the country, was displayed from June 30 through August 5, 2011. The show focused on the growing trend of pattern and proletariat influence in contemporary art and drew together works "not by concept or message," according to curator Adrienne Miller, "but through form, color, materials, and the repeated mark."

"Elements of "lower art forms" are sneaking back into contemporary art in significant ways," further explained Miller, a local artist and staff member in the Department of Art. "Artists are using methods such as silkscreen printing, hand lettering, collage, and other unlikely material combinations with an awareness of current trends and culture. This type of work bridges the gap of playful, yet intelligent, having experience and personality without becoming pedantic. The rise of the rock poster, the influence of folk art, graffiti, craft elements and commercial design are infiltrating traditional gallery shows and should be seen as significant influences for the upcoming generation of fine artists."

The 19 artists included Laura Baisden, Kelly Bonadies, Will Bryant, AndrewBurkitt, Chris Cheney, Gregory Scott Cook, Ann Flowers, Tate Foley, Alyson Fox, Clare J. Bowers, Chad Kouri, Bryce McCloud, Michelle Ramin, Stacey Reason, Sonnenzimmer, Brad Vetter, Betsy Walton, Lindsey Warren, and Lulu Wolf.

 

Art from the Antipodes

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art welcomed Art from the Antipodes into Space 204 from May 26 to June 17, 2011. This exhibition showcased works on paper from 11 renowned artists from Australia and New Zealand, on loan from the collection of Wayne Roland Brown and Marilyn Murphy.

 

Art from the Antipodes featured a diversity of approaches toward creating an image, from Elizabeth Cumming's richly colored expressionistic landscapes inspired by her memories of southern Queensland, to the immaculately drawn realism of Sydney artist, Michael Kempson. New Zealander Reg Mombassa, an artist, musician and designer for Mambo Graphics, was represented by several whimsically-edgy prints and pastel drawings. The intricate designs of three senior Aboriginal artists from the Papunya Tjupi Arts movement in the Western Desert region of Central Australia were also included, as well as the elegant abstractions of John Coburn.

More about the artists:

Elisabeth Cummings (1934) was born in Brisbane and attended the National Art School in Sydney. She spent 10 years studying and travelling throughout France and Italy and studied with Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg. She then taught at the National Art School from 1969-2001. Her work is distinguished by the scarred, heavily worked surfaces with a complex color palette. Her paintings and prints are often landscapes based on memories of the terrain in southern Queensland.

John Coburn (1925-2006) is known for his elegant large-scale abstract paintings, tapestries and vivid prints. He is perhaps best known for his designs for two large tapestries for the Sydney Opera House curtains, and a series of seven for the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, Washington. His work is represented in the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, all state and regional galleries in Australia as well as the Vatican Museum in Rome.

James Timothy Gleeson (1915-2008) born in Sydney was an important Australian surrealist artist. He was also known as a poet, critic, writer and curator. He played a significant role in the Australian art scene, including serving on the board of the National Gallery of Australia. His work is influenced by the writings of psychologist Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Michael Kempson (1961-) Head of Printmaking at the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Kempson is also Director of Cicada Press. His immaculately wrought images often have complex underlying meanings. As a master of the visual metaphor, his handling of everyday elements is imbued with a symbolic presence. His work is widely exhibited from Pakistan, China, and Egypt to France, Germany and Slovenia. His prints are included in all the major museum collections in Australia.

Greg Whitecliffe (1954-2001) was an artist and educator born in Wellington, NZ. A social realist, Whitecliffe created figurative work that reflects his Maori heritage and issues in contemporary society. In 1994 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Britain. He and his wife, Michele co-founded the Whitecliffe College of Art and Design in Auckland, NZ.

Ron McBurnie (1957-) is a professor of art at James Cook University, Townsville located in the northeastern tropics of Australia. He is also the Director of Monsoon Publishing, a printmaking and Book Arts studio. Exhibiting widely, his work is in major museum collections in Australia. McBurnie has also been an artist in residence at Carleton College, the Cite International des Artes in Paris and at Centrum Belgium. Specializing in printmaking, his work reflects his droll sense of humor, his fascination with the history of art and the suburban experience.

Reg Mombassa (Chris O' Doherty) (1951-) was born in Auckland, New Zealand and moved to Australia with his parents in 1969. His popular band, Mental as Anything released 11 albums and 27 singles with 20 songs in the top forty. As a free lance artist, he worked with Mambo graphics to create the designs for unforgettable Hawaiian-style shirts. He designed the 'Hero's 'segment for the Sydney 2000 Olympics Closing Ceremony. The designs included twelve 19' high inflatables, two 65' helium filled dirigibles, 3 stages and 16 inflatable crowd balls. He also helped to create a design for a 142' long Federation Tapestry in the Melbourne Museum. His artwork is included in the permanent collections of The National Art Gallery, Canberra Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. The wind, semi-professional birthday clowns, heavy machinery and the behavior of domestic animals inspire Mombassa's images.

Stella Brown Boyd (1919-2006) born in Auckland, New Zealand and was the granddaughter of Fanny Osborne who was a creator of superbly crafted of botanical images and was an important New Zealand suffragette. An inventive clothing designer, Brown Boyd was a self-taught painter. Her images were inspired by her visions and her love of landscape. Her paintings and prints of her work can be found far and wide across Australia and New Zealand.

Valerie Lynch Napaltjarri (1970-) is an Aboriginal artist from Papunya Tjupi, an art center in the remote Northern Territory in the Western Desert region of Central Australia. She creates designs representing body painting, ground sculptures and the sand hills that form wave-like formations across the desert. Her work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

Michael Nelson Tjakamarra (1949-) is the winner of the 1984 National Aboriginal Art Award and the 1993 recipient of the Order of Australian Merit. His paintings have been exhibited in Australia, London, Mexico and New York.

Martha McDonald Napaltjarri (c.1940) is an elder of the Papunya Tjupi Arts movement. Her father was a member of the founding group of artists in 1971. Her Intricate designs echo the landforms and symbolically describe Aboriginal dreamings from the time of creation.

 

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Vanderbilt's Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award recipient for 2011: Jean Kang of Columbia, Maryland

Vanderbilt University Department of Art is pleased to announce the recipient of the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award. This year's recipient is Jean A Kang, daughter of Dae and Sung Kang of Columbia, Maryland. Kang will receive a $25,000 prize, allowing her a year of art research and travel, culminating in a solo show at Vanderbilt in one year.

Described as psychological landscapes, Kang's etchings were selected for the award following a juried competition, involving exhibition, interviews and written proposals.

The $10,000 Merit Award was presented to Will Rigby of Laguna Beach, CA.

Kang's and Rigby's art can be viewed as part of the 2011 Senior Show now on display in Space 204, second floor gallery of the Department of Art. The exhibition includes a diverse approach to art making from the 15 graduating studio art majors.

Other students exhibiting include Rachel Bachtel, Elizabeth Bell, Ashley
Carter, Melissa Caspary, Michelle Cohen, Kathryn Edwards, Nathan Galvez, Kathryn Ganz, Taylor Hanlon, Candice Jones, Matthew Pagan, Emily Schneider and Patrick Smith.

Senior Show 2011 was on display in Space 204 until May 13. The gallery is located in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th and Garland on the Vanderbilt campus.

The Department of Art has supervised the awarding of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award since 1984. The award was established by Clement H. Hamblet in honor of his wife, whom he met while she was studying abroad. The Hamblet Award is meant to provide the means for travel and independent art activity for one year, culminating in an exhibition at Vanderbilt.

Jurors selected to serve for the competition are all distinguished artists
and educators. Jurors this year included Dan Massad, currently a professor at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA; Loren Schwerd, Professor of Art at LSU in Baton Rouge, LA., and Professor Nicole Hand of Murray State in Murray, KY.

 

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615-343-7000

"Idle Chatter" is an audio sculpture that invites students and from all over Vanderbilt campus, and audiences from all over the world, to participate.

Participants are invited to call a prescribed number – 615-343-7000 – at anytime and from anywhere. This telephone number, provided by the university, connects callers to an extension inside Space 204 in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center of the Vanderbilt Art Department. When connected, the voices of these callers are broadcast live throughout the gallery space from digital answering devices set on speaker mode. Callers may say or do anything they wish. They are in control, they are the exhibition, this is their soapbox. The providing a cacophony of chatter.

"Idle Chatter" plays with the ubiquity of telephones in everyday life, especially with the proliferation of cellular telephones and their use by young students. The materials of this sculptural arrangement are the ephemeral voices of the callers which are transmitted from remote locations to the exhibition space. The intention is not to create a dialog, The devices in the gallery space will not be formatted to be used by gallery visitors. Nor is the purpose of "Idle Chatter" to demonstrate the sophistication of the technology. Rather, it is to create a social sculpture, an electronic soapbox, a situation in which the art is shaped and determined by the audience using everyday materials and techniques.

» Read More

 

Wylie explores Route 36 in new Space 204 exhibit

Route 36, a series of engaging photographs by William Wylie documenting that two-lane stretch of Kansas highway from the Missouri River to within view of the Rocky Mountains, will be on display at Vanderbilt's Space 204 from Thursday, Feb. 17 to March 18, 2011.

An opening reception will be held on Thursday, Feb. 17, from 4 to 6 pm.
Wylie will present an artist talk that day at 3 pm in the gallery, which is
located on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th Avenue South and Garland on the Vanderbilt University campus.

Four years in the making, Route 36 investigates the state of an American landscape with remarkable acuity, raising questions of land use, architecture, ecology, transportation, regionalism and aesthetics. Wylie has published four books of his photographs, all concerned with landscape and place: Riverwalk, Stillwater, Carrara and Route 36. A professor at the University of Virginia and past Guggenheim Fellow, Wylie is a renowned photographer who has shown his work extensively both nationally and internationally.

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Internationally-acclaimed creative activists The Yes Men

Whether it be roasting Former President George W. Bush, or skewering major corporations such as Dow Chemical, the work of The Yes Men consistently draws international attention. The Yes Men's Mike Bonanno will bring the duo's unorthodox political satire to Nashville on Wednesday, March 16, with a lecture at 7 pm in Room 103 of Wilson Hall, located on the Vanderbilt campus. This lecture is part of StudioVU: The Vanderbilt Department of Art Lecture Series 2011-2012.

The Yes Men are an activist duo consisting of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike
Bonanno, who have "gained acclaim and notoriety for exposing dehumanizing business practices and helping to keep critical issues in the international spotlight," according to their website. Through their two documentary films (The Yes Men, 2004, and The Yes Men Fix the World, 2009), fake websites and elaborate pranks, they have become legend by creatively protesting what they consider to be problematic social issues.

"What we do is a bit like a mash-up between Borat and Michael Moore. It's a form of public political satire. Creative Protest. We have pompously come up with a more specific term for it: Identity Correction. Unlike identity theft, which small-time criminals practice with dishonest intent, Identity Correction is the art of impersonating big-time criminals to humiliate them for conspiring against the public good," according to the pair's artist statement.

Live presentations by The Yes Men may include discussions of their legendary hoaxes and "identity corrections" through storytelling and multimedia, often featuring props used in the pranks and unreleased footage from their recent and classic exploits.

All Studio VU lectures are free and open to the public

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Hamblet Winner returns for solo exhibition in Space 204 – Jan. 13 through Feb. 11

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art is proud to welcome a video art exhibition by Vanderbilt alumnus Carmen Mims Noel, recipient of the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award in 2009.

Re-move will be exhibited in Space 204 from Thursday, Jan. 13, through Friday, Feb. 11, 2011. An opening reception will be held Thursday, Jan. 20, from 4 to 6 pm, at the gallery which is located on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th Avenue South and Garland on the Vanderbilt University campus.

All Space 204 exhibitions are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm.

As recipient of the Hamblet award, Noels' prize provided for a year of art research and travel, culminating in a solo show in Vanderbilt's Space 204. A member of the cross country and track teams while at Vanderbilt, Noels' winning video – Where We Go When We Tire - focused on the isolation and repetition of running. She has since studied stop motion film and the intricacies of repetitive motion, captured that motion on film, and restrung those images into action for this latest work. Re-move captures the repetition and persistent nature of running, but looks more deeply into issues of reliability, invariability and the perpetual.

The Art Guys bring their "mad swirl" to Vanderbilt Jan. 26

StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series presents a lecture/performance by The Art Guys on Wed., January 26, at 7 pm in Wilson Hall 103 on the Vanderbilt campus. The Art Guys: Open The Floodgates Or How to Succeed at Whittlin¹ and Whistlin¹ will focus on the first duo¹s first 25 years of collaboration, during which they have amused, irritated, enchanted and befuddled viewers with their deadpan humor and irreverent antics.

Described in the New York Times as "a cross between Dada, David Letterman, John Cage and the Smothers Brothers", The Art Guys have been called ³the court jesters of the postmodern age² by presenting a blend of performance, conceptual and visual art that explores the absurdities of contemporary life. Defying categorization, they represent a kink in the art historical continuum a hiccup, a scratch that can't be itched.

The Art Guys performance is a part of the Studio VU lecture series, sponsored by the Vanderbilt University Department of Art.

 

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Works by Faculty and Staff Now Exhibited at Fine Arts Gallery

October 21 - December 9, 2010
The Department of Art returns to its old stomping grounds at Cohen Hall with a lively exhibition by the faculty and staff. Works range from ceramics by Susan DeMay and TJ Edwards, to printmaking and video art by Mark Hosford and Amelia Winger-Bearskin, drawing and painting by Marilyn Murphy and Ron Porter, mixed media by Adrienne Miller, photography by Vesna Pavlovic and Diane Acree, sculpture by Mel Ziegler, chair of the department, and Michael Aurbach, and experiments in collaborative pyrotechnics by Don Evans.

What Are They Doing in There? Recent Works by the Department of Art is organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Joseph S. Mella, director.

 

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Large Scale Print Show opens in Space 204: Koichi Yamamoto

Memory, the sublime, light and history are among the topics explored in Koichi Yamamoto’s large-scale monotypes, featured in Space 204’s newest exhibition. “MAMONO GRAFI GA” will be on display from Thursday, Nov. 4, through Friday, Dec. 10. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. An opening reception will be held from 4 to 6 pm on Thursday, Nov. 4.

From meticulous metal engravings to large-scale relief and intaglio prints, Yamamoto’s representational landscapes uniquely merge the traditional and contemporary. His current work in large-scale monotypes, included in the Space 204 exhibition, exemplifies a contemporary, international aesthetic influenced by his upbringing in Japan and his education in Canada, Denmark, Slovakia, Poland and the United States. Currently an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Yamamoto has also taught at Utah State University and the University of Delaware.

 

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Dana Hoey to Lecture November 4: StudioVU

Dana Hoey has examined what it means to be female through her photography for more than 20 years. Hoey will discuss her work in a lecture, Experiments in Living Female, on Wednesday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m. in Wilson Hall 126 on the Vanderbilt University campus.  All lectures are free and open to the public.

In exploring issues of gender and culture, Hoey, a resident of upstate New York, uses both staged and directed photography. She began her work photographing friends in a narrative manner, including a twist on the common female trait of fighting physically instead of primate backstabbing. Since then, Hoey said she has expanded her vision.  She described her last show, Experiments in Primitive Living, as an “imagined world ruled entirely by old women. Some disaster has erased all infrastructure, and knowledge of crummy, little, typically female jobs becomes power. The photographs show new leaders, plastic tools, and strange wildlife…”

Currently a professor in the graduate programs at Columbia University and Bard College, Hoey received her BA in Philosophy from Wesleyan and her MFA in photography at Yale.  She has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in galleries and museums throughout the world, including a solo show at the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and a recent exhibit and catalog presented by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in Baltimore. Her work is represented by the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York.

 

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Great Attendance for Visual and Graffiti Artist Barry McGee's Lecture October 6

Nearly 200 people turned out to hear StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series opening lecturer Barry McGee.  McGee, a visual and graffiti artis also know as Twist, lectured Wednesday, Oct. 6, in Wilson Hall 103 on the Vanderbilt University campus.  All StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series lectures are free and open to the public.

Renowned for his work in the street, and acclaimed for his painted installations in galleries, museums and art festivals around the world, McGee crafts a unique visual language inspired by contemporary urban culture.

A leader within the street art community, McGee has been creating art on the streets of his native San Francisco since the mid 1980’s. His work as been described as taking graffiti art to a whole new level, and his unique graphics, geometric patterns and faces endure on walls and other surfaces throughout the city. McGee has said his influences range “from the Mexican muralists, tramp art, the graffiti artists of the 70’s and 80’s, and the San Francisco Beat poets.”

Although he initially resisted showing his work in museums and commercial galleries, McGee has displayed his painted installations in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world, including most recently the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, at Deitch Projects in New York, and the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan.  

The recipient of numerous awards, McGee received his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in Painting and Printmaking in l991 and continues to reside in San Francisco.

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Two Exhibitions by Vanderbilt’s Art Faculty on display through October 22nd in Space 204

Conceptualizing the slide archives of one family’s 1960s vacation, and a dreamlike musical environment created through sound and video will highlight two new exhibitions opening Thursday, Sept. 2, in Space 204.  The Department of Art is pleased to welcome the work of two of its faculty:  Vesna Pavlovic: Transparencies and Amelia Winger-Bearskin: Transformation Opera. An opening reception will be held Thursday, Sept. 2, from 4 to 6 p.m. Both shows will be on display through Friday, Oct. 22.

Space 204 is sponsored by the Department of Art and is located on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th Avenue South at Garland, on the Vanderbilt campus. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.

VESNA PAVLOVIC: TRANSPARENCIES

A group of vintage slides depicting one family's travels around the world in the 1960s is the starting point for Vesna Pavlovic: Transparencies.  Pavlovic’s work explores the materiality and obsolescence of photographic technology and its relation to visual tourism.  The exhibition presents slides as both appropriated photographic prints and installations. 
 
An assistant professor of art at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches photography and digital media, Vesna Pavlovic , originally from Belgrade, Serbia, obtained her MFA degree in visual arts from Columbia University in 2007. She is an assistant professor of art at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches photography and digital media. Her projects develop as anthropological studies, analyzing different cultures and their visual representations through particular phenomena. She has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Museum of History of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA.  She has been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Tennis Palace Art Museum in Helsinki, Carinthian Museum of Modern Art in Klagenfurt, Austria, Photographers’ Gallery in London, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, and FRAC Center for Contemporary Art in Dunkirk, France. Most recently, her work has been included in the publication “Reframing Photography” (Routledge, UK, fall 2010), and Photobiennale 2010 in Thessaloniki, Greece.  She is the recipient of Robert Penn Warren Fellowship at Vanderbilt University and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation grant and artist residency in Taos, NM in 2011. Her exhibition “Vesna Pavlovic: Projected Histories” will be presented in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville in June 2011.
 
AMELIA WINGER-BEARSKIN: TRANSFORMATION OPERA

Transformation Opera is a sound and video project by Amelia Winger-Bearskin in which music generated from four different video works merge in the center of the gallery. Personal and Public figures are captured by video during moments of transformation, and then projected as slow moving loops. Sleepwalkers, Italian arias, trash TV, and tragic love ballads are warped to create the dreamlike musical environment. 

Winger-Bearskin is an assistant professor of art at Vanderbilt University where she teaches video and performance art, as well as new and interactive media.  Her undergraduate studies were in opera and performance art, her MFA is in time based media art (transmedia) from the University of Texas in Austin, 2008. She was in the group show Art in the Age of the Internet at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2007 and was a featured video and performance artist at Basel in Miami, Scope at the Lincoln Center and other art fairs consistently since 2007 as an artist at large for the perpetual art machine [PAM]. Recently, she has been focusing her performances primarily on regional Asian performance art festivals, including the 10th Annual OPEN ART Performance Art festival in Beijing, China, The Performance Art Network PANAsia '09 in Seoul, South Korea, and the TAMA TUPADA 2010 Media and Performance festival in the Philippines.  She will be returning to Asia again this fall. She also has solo shows planned for Antena  in Chicago and the Twist Gallery in Nashville.

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Impacts and Aspects: Thursday, June 3, until Friday, July 12, 2010

Attempting to control the uncontrollable is the theme of a new exhibition opening in Vanderbilt’s Space 204 gallery. "Impacts and Aspects" by local printmaker and educator Jennifer Stoneking-Stewart will be on display from Thursday, June 3, to Friday, July 12, 2010 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the gallery, located on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th and Garland, on the Vanderbilt campus.

Gallery Hours:
Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
All Space 204 exhibits are free and open to the public.

"Uncontrollable phenomenon in life, like change, passage of time, growth, and death, become the events in my work that I attempt to control through the printmaking process and the use of geometric grids and structures," Stoneking-Stewart writes about her work.  "The struggle of organic versus structure, and the desire to control the uncontrollable, is the unending battle that I am depicting."

Currently an instructor of art at Belmont University in Nashville, Stoneking-Stewart will assume the position next year of Assistant Professor of Art at Lander University in Greenwood, SC. Active in numerous printmaking and academic organizations, she has exhibited works nationally in both juried, group, and solo shows. Recent shows include Arts in the Airport, The Emporium in Knoxville, TN, Belmont University’s Gallery 121 in Nashville, the Renaissance Center in Dickson, TN, and The Arts Council in Greenwood, SC.  She received the “Best in Show” award at the 41st Annual Appalachian Arts Show in Kingsport, TN, and in 2007, was named the Artist of the Month through the Arts Electric, Inc. co-op in Anderson, SC.  She has prints in various private collections, archives, and public collections across the nation.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Vanderbilt University Department of Art.  For more information, call 615-343-7241 or visit vanderbilt.edu/arts.

 

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Ceramic sculptor Beth Cavener Stichter welcomed April 7

Renowned for ceramic sculptures created “to pry at those uncomfortable, awkward edges between animal and human,” Beth Cavener Stichter lectured on her dynamic and emotionally-charged figures in April at Wilson Hall 103 on the Vanderbilt University campus.

The lecture was part of the StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series 2009-2010 season.

Stichter’s figures are “feral and uneasy, expressing frustration for the human tendency towards cruelty and lack of understanding. Entangled in their own internal and external struggles, the figures are engaged with the subjects of fear, apathy, violence and powerlessness. Something conscious and knowing is captured in their gestures and expressions,” according to her artist statement.

Her unusual method of working begins with a solid mass of clay, often over 2,000 lbs., and then hollowing each part of the sculpture down to the skin. Currently a full-time professional studio artist working in the state of Washington, Stichter received her BA in sculpture from Haverford College and her MFA from Ohio State University. She was awarded the Artist Trust Fellowship in 2009, the Jean Griffith Foundation Fellowship in 2006, the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council in 2005, and the American Craft Council’s Emerging Artist Fellowship in 2004.  She has also been an Artist-in-Residence at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia and the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT. She has exhibited nationally (at such institutions as the Smithsonian Museum) and is currently represented by the Claire Oliver Gallery in Chelsea, New York.

For more information, contact the Vanderbilt University Department of Art at 615-343-7241.

 

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Food Fight mural project at Rand Dining Hall

A mural depicting an epic battle between junk food and healthy food has transformed a large wall of Rand Dining Hall, following a week-long mural workshop this February.  

All students (anyone interested!) were invited to participate in the creation of the Food Fight mural, while learning to create murals from concept to completion from professional muralists, OK Mountain Art Collective.

The mural workshops were held each day the week of Feb. 22, 2010. Additionally, OK Mountain gave a public lecture on murals and their work.

"Food Fight is a tongue-in-cheek, site-specific depiction of the eternal battle occurring when anyone sits down at the dinner table.  Utilizing the form and visual references from historic war scenes in art history, (the mural) will draw the line in the epic clash between good and evil.  Who wins is up to the viewer to decide,” according to a statement by Okay Mountain.

Formed in 2006 and based in Austin, TX.  Okay Mountain is a collective consisting of nine artists who live and work in Austin, Boston, Chicago, and Oakland.  All members exhibit as solo artists as well. Originating as an artist-run alternative gallery space, Okay Mountain evolved into an artist collective when its founding members began creating art together outside of the gallery environs. What began as collaborative drawing sessions during weekly staff meetings has since developed into a wide range of collaborative projects across a variety of media, including drawing, video, sound, performance, prints, zines, murals, and large-scale sculptural installations.

 

 

 

 

 

Their shared artworks reveal the unique perspective provided by a group dynamic, give emphasis to drawing and the artist's hand, and are always leavened by a sense of humor, whimsy, and larger-than-life Texan spirit.  Playing on the conventions and absurdities of contemporary consumer culture and drawing upon pop graphics and styling, their works are scrappy, colorful, and maximal-just like the artists themselves.  Most of the artists are graduates of the University of Texas at Austin, others are graduates of University of California Los Angeles, Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Kansas.  Okay Mountain has exhibited at Galeria Enrique Guerrero in Mexico City, Paragraph in Kansas City, PULSE in Miami, and the Creative Research Lab in Austin.  This spring, in addition to the Vanderbilt mural, Okay Mountain will open a solo exhibition at Texas State University in San Marcos.

This workshop and lecture to Vanderbilt University was made possible by the Vanderbilt Department of Art, with additional support from The Office of Arts and Creative Engagement and the Vanderbilt Dining Services.

 

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Field of Reeds by John Douglas Powers

Simple Complexity: Complex Simplicity, Nov. 11- Dec. 11, 2009

Vanderbilt’s Department of Art welcomed an exhibition by sculptors James Rodger Alexander and John Douglas Powers into Space 204.  Simple Complexity: Complex Simplicity displayed through Friday, Dec. 11, 2009.

Powers draws inspiration from areas as diverse as natural history, architecture, and the history of technology. Vanderbilt’s 2001 Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award recipient, he was recently recognized for his work in a New York Times article and is the recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant and a Southeast College Art Conference fellowship.  He is an assistant professor of sculpture at the University of Alabama.

Trained as both an architect and a sculptor, Alexander’s sculptural installations focus primarily on a single recurring issue: the resolution of the conflict between opposing forces. A Professor of Sculpture and Ceramics at the University of Alabama, he has curated exhibitions and published works on architectural terra cotta, vernacular architecture, political posters as propaganda and the conceptual relationship between architecture and sculpture.  He is the recipient of numerous prestigious grants, including one from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Space 204 is sponsored by the Department of Art and is located on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th and Garland, on the Vanderbilt campus. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.