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PAST EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS

Duane Paxson’s La Strega Opening in Space 204, June 10, 2015

Duane Paxson – La Strega
The Vanderbilt University Department of Art is proud to welcome an exhibition by Duane Paxson in Space 204. La Strega will be on display from Wednesday, June 10 – Thursday, September 10, 2015 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

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An close reception will be held Thursday, September 10 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. There will be a gallery talk at 5 pm. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm.

 

John Watson Courtyard Project at the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center

John Watson – Project Statement
I was invited by Mel Ziegler to create a sculptural installation in the courtyard of the Vanderbilt University Art Department. The project seemed like an excellent way for me to work with students in the department. Senior art students painted over 100 plywood panels, and over the course of several weeks, I used those panels to build the installation.

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The piece wraps along a wall in the courtyard, with an added bit across the courtyard that clings to the top of the wall. I was interested in engaging with the art building itself and allowing my work to interact with the existing architecture and architectural features of the building. In the finished piece, the chaotic, teetering geometry of my work juxtaposed against the organized, stable architecture of the building, invites viewers to see the space of the courtyard from a re-imagined and playful perspective.

John Watson received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Webster University. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at HEMPHILL, Washington, DC, Laumier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO, Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, and the Savannah Gallery, Atlanta, GA, among others.

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Working primarily with found wood, Watson creates sculptures that are architectural in reference. The cast-offs of trade and industry or the discarded gems from remodeling projects are collected and repurposed into objects and installations. Watson taught sculpture in the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts at Webster University in St. Louis for 7 years, and he relocated to Nashville, TN where he joined the faculty at Belmont University in August 2012.

Learn more about the artist at jwatson.org

 

Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award Ceremony and Senior Show Opening, April 10, 2015

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art will proudly roll back the massive doors of its galleries on April 10 to reveal the work of its ten graduating art majors.

Senior Show 2015 will open Friday, April 10 and run through Friday May 9, in Space 204, second floor gallery at the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center, 1204 25th Avenue South at Garland, on the Vanderbilt campus.

Gallery hours are 9:00 am – 4:00 pm, Monday through Friday for the duration of the exhibition.

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“It’s an exciting show, with some unique and interesting projects,” said Mel Ziegler, chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Art. We are pleased to see the progress that this group of senior art majors have made throughout the year.

Participating seniors include: Sara Alavi, Christopher Hayes, Liyan Hou, Alexis Jackson, Celeste Jones, Emily Neal, Allyson Patterson, Madeline Santulli, Blair Tramel and Chelsea Velaga.

Art completed this semester by all enrolled students will be on display throughout the art building during the Open House, also held April 10 from noon to 6:00 pm, with a public reception from 4:00 to 6:00 pm. At 5:00 pm during the reception, the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet awards, the Allen P. DeLoach award for Photography, Mid-South Ceramics and Plaza Artist Materials awards will be announced.

All events are free and open to the public.

 

Studio VU: Phoenix Savage Lecture March 25, 2015, at E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, Room 220, 7pm

We are pleased to welcome Professor Phoenix Savage to E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, Room 220 at 7pm as part of the Deaprtment of Art Lecture Series 2014-2015.

Professor Phoenix Savage’s research based art practice is an intersection of auto ethnography and the principles of formalism. She is both a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship via the U.S. State Department and the Being Humans Fellowship, awarded by the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University.

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Savage’s works have been recognized through exhibitions such as the bi-annual Mover and Shakers of Georgia’s Art Scene, hosted by Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCAGA); Ain’t I A Woman organized by the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporian Arts, of Brooklyn, NY (MOCADA); Mississippi Invitational organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art and Secular & Sacred at the University of Florida.

Savage’s works have been recognized through exhibitions such as the bi-annual Mover and Shakers of Georgia’s Art Scene, hosted by Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCAGA); Ain’t I A Woman organized by the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporian Arts, of Brooklyn, NY (MOCADA); Mississippi Invitational organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art and Secular & Sacred at the University of Florida.

The sculpture, Fire in the Belly of God, was recently acquired by the African American Collection of Clark Atlanta University of Atlanta, Georgia and is featured in The Eye of the Muses, the Collection’s catalog. Savage received a MFA in Sculpture from Georgia State University and holds two additional graduate level degrees; an MA in Medical Anthropology from the University of Mississippi, and an MAin Studio Arts from Northwestern State University. Works by Phoenix Savage are largely held in the private collections.

Currently, Savage is Assistant Professor of Art at Tougaloo College, a historically black liberal arts college in Mississippi.

 

Shape of Flight, an exhibition by Suzanne Stryk to open Feburary 26, 2015

Vanderbilt’s Department of Art is pleased to welcome an exhibition by Suzanne Stryk into Space 204. Shape of Flight will be on display from Thursday, February 26 to Friday, March 19 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. An opening reception will be held Thursday, February 19 from 4 to 6 p.m.

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In the title of this exhibit, “Shape of Flight,” both the words “shape” and “flight” have so many possible interpretations. There’s the obvious one, the actual flight of birds and insects. But the images in this show are a layering of many ideas related to “shape” and “flight.” “Shape” suggests the form things take in both the natural world and the human imagination, even art itself. “Flight” suggests ideas about movement, and that movement is not only in space, but also in time, even evolutionary time. Or the span between birth to life to death. It might also suggest movement from out-of-doors to indoors—from nature into our own spaces or minds.

Stryk’s series of drawings, “Genomes and Daily Observation, appears in the Viewing Program at the Drawing Center (NYC); her work was also selected for Clara: The Database of Women Artists at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in DC. She is the recipient of a George Sugarman Foundation Grant, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, and an individual Artist’s Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. To learn more about the artist, please visit www.suzannestryk.com.

 

Vanderbilt University’s Department of Art and Cinema and Media Arts welcomes Asma Kazmi

Public Lecture: Ordinary People and Other Works, February 6, 2015, Wilson Hall 126, 4:00 – 5:00 pm on the Vanderbilt University campus.
(Free and open to the public)

On Saturday, February 7, 2015 – Exhibition Reception at the Coop Gallery, 75 Arcade, Nashville, TN 37219 (6:00 – 9:00 pm)

For more information contact: Jana Harper

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Asma Kazmi is a visual artist who creates transdisciplinary, relational works where people, media, and objects come together. She is the recipient of many awards including the Fulbright Research Award, (CIES) to India; Faculty Research Grant, CalArts; the Great Rivers Biennial by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Rocket Grant, the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Spencer Museum of Art at Kansas University; At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago Award, the University of Illinois in Chicago; and the Creative Stimulus Award, Critical Mass for the Visual Arts, St. Louis. Kazmi has exhibited at venues such as the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City; Queens Museum of Art, NY; Worth Ryder Gallery, UC Berkeley; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; H&R Block Space, Kansas City; Grand Arts, Kansas City; University of Missouri, St. Louis; Hunt Gallery, Webster University, St Louis; Boots Contemporary Art Space, St Louis; The Guild Gallery, New York; Galerie Sans Titre, Brussels, Belgium; and Gallery 400, University of Illinois in Chicago. Kazmi has taught at the School of the art Institute of Chicago, Kansas City Art Institute, and the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, she is a permanent faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. She was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. Co-sponsored by Vanderbilt University Departments of Art and Cinema and Media Arts. Exhibition of Ordinary People at COOP Gallery, 75 Arcade, Nashville, TN.

 

Space 204: Erin Harmon: Forest for the Trees

Vanderbilt University’s Department of Art is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit in the Space 204 gallery. Erin Harmon: Forest for the Trees will open on January 15 and continue through February 12, 2015. Open reception will be held on January 15, 2015 from 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Space 204 is located at 25th Avenue South at Garland in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center on the Vanderbilt campus. All exhibits are free and open to the public.

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Erin Harmon was raised in the suburbs of Southern California where the natural desert is sated by hundreds of miles of aqueducts to produce obsessively groomed lawns. After graduating from San Diego State University with a Bachelors degree in Studio Art, she received her MFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design. Erin currently lives in the verdant and fecund Tennessee Delta where kudzu and coal sludge can swallow everything in their path. She is Associate Professor of Art at Rhodes College and Chair of the Department of Art & Art History. Erin has exhibited her work nationally in both group and solo exhibitions including the Sarah Doyle Gallery, Providence RI; Atlanta Artists Center & Gallery, GA; and The Brooks Museum, Memphis, TN. She is also a founding member of TSA LA, an artists’ run and curated gallery modeled after Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Philadelphia. Last fall, Erin was excited to debut her first theatrical set design for Ballet Memphis’ River Project: Moving Currents.

Artist Statement:

My work is inherently landscape but rather than wild and continuous natural environments, I explore contained collections of fragments that when arranged together, allude to another kind landscape. These collages and paintings are consciously ordered and orchestrated, and ultimately removed from nature. My process often consists of trimming, grooming and pruning shape and pattern into abstracted pieces that are collaged into a discrete space to appear as a whole. In both the paintings and collages, formal choices of shape, color, scale, and speed generate tensely jubilant, stunted surfaces and ambiguous spaces. I am influenced by my observed environment, bonsai trees and ikebana, classic Disney movies, black light posters, and Victorian valentines.

 

Space 204: Hanna Rodgers: Abandon/Perception will open on January 15

Vanderbilt University’s Department of Art is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit in the Space 204 gallery. Hanna Rodgers: Abandon/Perception will open on January 15 and continue through February 12, 2015. Open reception will be held on January 15, 2015 from 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Space 204 is located at 25th Avenue South at Garland in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center on the Vanderbilt campus. All exhibits are free and open to the public.

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Hanna Rodgers is an artist and writer based out of Los Angeles, CA.
A child of the 90s, Rodgers was born and raised in Collierville, TN. For much of her life, her father ran an ill-fated amusement park in Memphis called “Libertyland.” Her mother worked at a Broadway theater. Both influences would instill in Rodgers a passion for playfulness and theatrically that pervade much of her work today.

Rodgers received her B.A in Studio Art from Vanderbilt University in May of 2013. After graduating, she was commissioned to spend six months producing a documentary in Memphis. Upon it’s completion, she packed her bags and moved to the west coast to pursue her writing and art in the cultural mecca of the City of Angels.

Rodgers was the recipient of the 2013 Margaret Stonewall Woolridge Hamblet Award, a grant that has been a phenomenal asset in this past year of self-discovery, giving Rodgers the freedom to experiment with new mediums, to attend interactive art conferences, and to visit museums and galleries across the country. This year of exploration has culminated in the body of work presented in Abandon/Perception.

Artist Statement:

My work is driven by my curiosity for people and the shared human experience. I take interest both in the Jungian archetypal events that define a lifetime, and in the uncertain, transitional lulls between those moments.

My work is highly introspective. Much of it references memories of my adolescence and that fantastic childhood sense of limitlessness that inevitably falls victim to age’s power of petrification. I explore my memories through fantasy, children’s games, and illusion. I enjoy manipulating the shortcomings, trends, and nuances of the human brain as it relates to the different ways we view the world. This often leads to an exploration of the difference in seeing versus perceiving.

Through my work, I seek to reveal dualities in a grey world. As a writer, I often rely heavily on language to express these contradictions. My work is influenced by literature, cinema, and other reflections of modern storytelling, which I believe preserve time and reflect the zeitgeist.

And most of all, through my work, I appease my curiosities. I often explore new mediums and methods of provoking interaction with my work. I despise the static conception of art as something to be contemplated by a detached audience. I enjoy the madcap, the surprise of materials interacting in an unexpected way. For me, art is all about the act of creating. If I don’t continuously try to learn new things, then what is the point?

Studio VU: Penelope Umbrico to speak Wednesday, October 29, 2014, 7pm in Wilson Hall, Room 126

Penelope Umbrico will talk about her photo-based installations, video, and digital media works that explore the changing technologies of image making, and the ever-increasing production and consumption of images on the web. Utilizing photo-sharing and consumer websites as an expansive archive, she navigates between producer and consumer, local and global, and the individual and the collective. Her works question the idea of the “democratization” of photography and media, where pre-scripted images, made with tools programmed to function in predetermined ways, undermine a claim to authorship, subjectivity and individuality. For Umbrico, all images within this emergent environment are evidence of something other than what they depict.

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Umbrico has exhibited internationally and her work is in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a recent Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.

Aperture published her monograph, “Penelope Umbrico “photographs”, 2011. Forthcoming monographs include Range (Aperture); and Out of Order (RVB Paris), both Fall 2014.

All lectures are free and open to the public. Free parking is available in the Wilson Hall lots as well as the parking lot across the street on 21st Avenue and Terrace Place.

 

The Gift: 30 years of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award Opens September 25, 2014

In honor of the thirtieth anniversary of the gift, the Department of Art will showcase works from previous recipients of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award, one of the most prestigious undergraduate awards in studio art. This exhibition was curated by Saralyn Reece Hardy, Marilyn Stokstad Director of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. The seven artists chosen are from such diverse locations as South Carolina, New York and Washington D.C.

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In 1984, Mr. Clement H. Hamblet gave the Vanderbilt art department a remarkable gift which was an award granted to a student who is serious about pursuing art. It has changed the lives of many of the recipients as well as helped to build the studio art program. The generous gift was given in memory of his wife, Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet. Juried by visiting artist professors, it allows a graduate to travel and have time to create a solo exhibition, shown a year and a half after graduation. Happily, in 2002, the department was able to add a merit award as well.

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The opening of the exhibition is September 25th from 5pm to 7pm and will run from September 25th through December 5th. Exhibiting artists include Eric Erhnschwender, Jean Kang, Xin Lu, Kathryn McDonnell, Nicole Pietrantoni, John Powers, and Hannah Stahl. During the opening the reception, Dr. Sarner, daughter of the late Clement H. Hamblet, will be present to accept an honorary award from the National Council of Arts Administrators.

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The opening of the exhibition is September 25th from 5pm to 7pm and will run from September 25th through December 5th. Exhibiting artists include Eric Erhnschwender, Jean Kang, Xin Lu, Kathryn McDonnell, Nicole Pietrantoni, John Powers, and Hannah Stahl. During the opening the reception, Dr. Sarner, daughter of the late Clement H. Hamblet, will be present to accept an honorary award from the National Council of Arts Administrators.

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Space 204: Two Exhibitions by TTU and MTSU art faculty

Vanderbilt University’s Department of Art proudly presents two summer exhibitions by art faculty from area colleges. A group show by Middle Tennessee State University professors Barry Buxkamper, John Donovan, Sisavanh Houghton and Michael Baggarly, as well as a solo show by Kimberly Winkle of Tennessee Technical University will be on display in the Space 204 gallery from Thursday, June 19, through Friday, Sept. 12, 2014.

There will be a closing reception on Thursday, Sept. 11, from 4 to 6 pm.

All exhibits are free and open to the public. Space 204 is located at 25th Avenue South and Garland in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center on the Vanderbilt campus. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. The gallery will be closed for the July 4th holiday. On street parking is available along Garland Avenue and in the nearby parking ramps.

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Kimberly Winkle’s show, Frill, will feature 17 beautifully crafted and painted wood tables and other furniture items and objects. An assistant professor and the art foundations coordinator at TTU, Winkle is widely exhibited both nationally and internationally and much-sought after for woodworking workshops throughout the US. Her work has been included in many invitational exhibitions, international juried exhibitions and national publications, including Fine Woodworking, Woodworker, and American Woodturner magazines, as well as the books 500 Tables and 500 Chairs. She has been awarded a number of artist residencies, Niche Awards and a Tennessee Individual Artist Award. Winkle holds a BFA in Ceramics from the University of Oklahoma and a MFA in Furniture Design from San Diego State University.

In the adjacent gallery, the MTSU group show, Intersections, brings together a wealth of experience and a wide range of media from these four artist-educators.

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Barry Buxkamper‘s work has garnered numerous awards and has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including the Whitney Biennial of Contemporary American Art in New York; the 1990 Mint Museum Biennial, Charlotte NC; and “20th Century Painting in Tennessee” at Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville, TN. His works are also in numerous collections, including the McDonald’s Corporation, Chicago IL; Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, TN; The Bridgestone Collection, Nashville, TN; and Nations Bank, Charlotte NC. A Professor Emeritus at MTSU, Buxkamper taught in the Department of Art there for 23 years. He has also taught at Vanderbilt’s George Peabody College, worked as a graphic designer and owned his own illustration business for more than a decade. During that time, he worked primarily with the music industry, often creating album covers. He received his BFA from University of Texas-Austin and his MFA form University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana. He is represented locally by Cumberland Gallery.

Working mainly in clay, John Donovan brings a sense of whimsy that “belies the frequently grim ideas being explored.” An associate professor teaching 3-D design and ceramics, Donovan has exhibited nationally and internationally in juried and invitational shows, including the Third World Ceramic Biennale in 2005 in South Korea, receiving an honorable mention award: at the Tennessee Arts Commission in 2008; at the Wiregrass Museum of Art, Alabama, in 2011; and the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama for a major solo exhibition in 2012-13. He is also the recipient of multiple research grants from MTSU, the Tennessee Arts Commission has promoted and funded his work, as well as awarding him the 2011-12 Individual Artist Fellowship in Craft Media. Donovan was an artist in residence at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Art, Maine, in the summer of 2011. Donovan received his BFA from Loyola University and his MA and MFA degrees from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. He is represented locally at Zeitgeist gallery, as well as LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans.

Recently recognized as among “The New Superstars of Southern Art” by Oxford American – The Southern Magazine of Good Writing, Sisavanh Houghton is an associate professor teaching advanced painting at MTSU. Her work has been featured in solo, juried and invitational shows in the US, Canada and New Zealand, and has been also featured in the Gwyneth Paltrow blog, Goop, and Volume #1 of Studio Visit magazine. Houghton was born in Laos and grew up in Kansas. She received her BFA from the University of Kansas at Lawrence and her MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. She is represented locally by Tinney Contemporary.

Michael Baggarly is an associate professor at MTSU, teaching sculpture and 3-D design. Michael’s art has been exhibited nationally and internationally in juried and invitational exhibitions. His work has appeared recently in the Red Clay Survey 2012: Contemporary Southern Art, Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL; Positive/ Negative 26th. Annual National Juried Exhibition, Slocumb Gallery, Johnson City, TN 2011; Action: Reaction, National Juried Exhibition, Gloria Singletary Gallery, Lexington, KY; and Art Biologic: International Juried Exhibition, Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY 2009. His works are also in included in the Tennessee State Museum Collection, Nashville, TN; Learning Connexion, Wellington, New Zealand; Museo de Collage, Morelos Mexico; and SUNY, Geneseo, NY. He received his BFA from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY and his MA and MFA in Sculpture from University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA as an Iowa Arts Fellowship recipient.

 

Senior Show 2014

Vanderbilt University Department of Art awarded the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award for 2014 to David Krenz of Spring Hill, TN. As Hamblet winner, he received a $25,000 prize that provides the funds for a year of art research and travel, culminating in his solo show at Vanderbilt in one year.

Krenz’s video installation, World of Sleepers, was selected for the award following a juried competition involving exhibition, interviews and written proposals. The piece includes an original musical score by Krenz, who is also majoring in music at Vanderbilt.

The $10,000 Merit Award was presented to Kelsey Creel of Birmingham, AL.

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Krenz’s and Creel’s art were part of the 2014 Senior Show which was on display April 11 to May 9 in Space 204, second floor gallery of the Vanderbilt Department of Art.  The other graduating art majors exhibiting include Margaret “Elle” Burnett, Lesley Hill, Desiré Hough, Demi Landstedt and Anisha Patel.

Jurors selected to serve for the competition are all distinguished artists and educators.  Jurors included Sergio Soave, professor of art at The Ohio State University: Leticia Bajuyo, professor of art at Hanover College in Hanover, IN, and Ken Gonzales-Day, professor of art at Scripps College in Los Angeles, CA.

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.

 

Vanderbilt Art Department Presents Senior Show 2014

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art will proudly roll back the massive doors of its galleries April 11 to reveal the work of its seven graduating art majors. Senior Show 2014 will open Friday, April 11, and run through Friday, May 9, in Space 204, second floor gallery at the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th and Garland, on the Vanderbilt campus.

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Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, with weekend hours of Noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays for the duration of the exhibition. “It’s an exciting show, with some unique, weird and interesting projects,” said Mel Ziegler, chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Art. “I’m pleased to see the progress that this group has made. I hope everyone has the opportunity to see the exhibition.” Participating seniors include Margaret “Elle” Burnett, Kelsey Creel, Lesley Hill, Desiré Hough, David Krenz, Demi Landstedt, and Anisha Patel.

Art completed this semester by all enrolled students will be on display throughout the art building during the Open House, also held April 11 from Noon to 6 p.m., with a public reception from 4 to 6 p.m. At 5 p.m. during the reception, the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet awards, the Allen P. DeLoach Award for Photography, Mid-South Ceramics and Plaza Artist Materials awards will be announced. All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Department of Art at 615-343-7241.

 

Studio VU Lecture Series: Lane Relyea

Vanderbilt University and StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series 2013-14 featured Lane Relyea, author of Your Everyday Art World on March. 19, 2014.

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Relyea is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University and the editor of Art Journal, a quarterly publication of the College Art Association. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines, including Artforum, Afterall, Parkett, Frieze, Modern Painters, Art in America and Flash Art. He has written monographs on such artists as Polly Apfelbaum, Richard Artschwager, Jeremy Blake, Vija Celmins, Toba Khedoori, Monique Prieto and Wolfgang Tillmans, and contributed to numerous exhibition catalogs including Helter Skelter and Public Offerings for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He has delivered lectures at venues such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He served as editor of Artpaper from 1987 to 1991.

In 2001, after teaching for a decade at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Relyea was appointed director of the Core Program and Art History at the Glassell School of Art in Houston, TX.

Your Everyday Art World, which addresses the effects of communication networks on artistic practice and its contexts, was published by MIT Press in 2013.

 

Space 204: Jana Harper’s You Call It A Cloud

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art welcomed to Space 204 a mixed media exhibition by new faculty member Jana Harper. You Call It A Cloud, was on display from Feb. 13, through March 14, 2014.

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“The main image in the show is a photograph of a lenticular cloud taken by my mother about 15 years ago when she lived in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Colorado,” says Harper. “She was diagnosed with Bipolar I in her late 50s and one of her lifelong obsessions was with clouds. Over a period of three years when she lived in Colorado, she took thousands of photographs of clouds, convinced that each one bore a specific message and purpose. When she left Colorado, she left all of the negatives behind and I had assumed, for the last 10 years, that they were lost forever.”

Harper returned to Colorado recently, both to look for the negatives and to interview local residents about the sky. “The conversations were amazing. I spoke with pilots, meteorologists, a rancher, an environmentalist, a philosopher, and a Southwest historian. Each one had a different read on (my mother’s) cloud photograph, and the exhibition documents excerpts of those conversations.”

“The inspiration for the project is clearly quite personal,” she continues, “but the questions it raises may have universal implications: How do different disciplines describe/define the same object? What is “the truth” about any given form or object, in particular those in varying states of transformation? How do we make sense of what we see with our eyes? How do we form beliefs? How do we determine as a culture what are acceptable behaviors/beliefs?”

“I think my work has tiptoed around her illness for many years and this is the first time I have approached it head on and dedicated an entire exhibition to her. What’s fascinating is how the cloud becomes the central object, not her or her voice. Her voice becomes just one of many discussing the central image.”

Though her first exhibition in Nashville, Harper’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, including a solo exhibition in Italy and group exhibitions in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Lithuania, Germany, and England. Her work is also held in numerous public and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the Sackner Archive for Visual and Concrete Poetry, Proyecto Ace Print Collection, Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Janet Turner Print Collection at California State University, the J.S. Blanton Museum at the University of Texas in Austin, the Turku Art Museum in Finland, the King St. Steven Museum in Hungary, and Lambert International Airport in St. Louis.

A new senior lecturer in the Vanderbilt Department of Art, Harper is also curator of the Urban Books Collection, Olin Library Special Collections, Washington University, a collection of over 250 artists’ books from a wide range of disciplines united by a singular focus on the city as subject. She has participated in several national and international residencies as well, including Cité International des Arts in Paris, Pyramid Atlantic, and the Peaked Hill Trust. She received her MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from Arizona State University and was in the Core Student Fellowship Program at the Penland School of Crafts. For more information, contact The Department of Art at 615-343-7241

 

Index: The Women of Auschwitz by Vanderbilt alumnus Hannah Stahl

Index: The Women of Auschwitz by Vanderbilt alumnus Hannah Stahl, recipient of the art department’s prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award in 2012, was exhibited in Space 204 from Jan. 9, through Feb. 7, 2014.

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As recipient of the Hamblet award, Stahl’s prize provided for a year of art research and travel, culminating in this solo show in Vanderbilt’s Space 204. Over the past year, Stahl participated in a seven week artist-in-residence program at The School of Art at Chautauqua Institution before embarking on a two-month solo trip to 17 cities in Europe. This trip included three Holocaust concentration camps and inspired her to produce her current body of work based on female victims of Auschwitz.

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Grappling with how to best represent these women, Stahl ultimately painted portraits she hopes will “leave a small sting.” A native of Providence, Rhode Island, Stahl graduated from Vanderbilt in 2012 and is a 2015 MFA candidate at The New York Academy of Art. Her artwork has been exhibited at The New York Academy of Art in New York, NY (2013), The Fowler-Kellogg Art Center in Chautauqua, NY (2012), The Hutton Hotel in Nashville, TN (2012-2013), Cummins Station in Nashville, TN (2011), and at Moses Brown School in Providence, RI (2013, 2008)

 

StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series: Charles Long

Vanderbilt University and StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series 2013-14 welcomed internationally renowned artist Charles Long on Wed., Feb. 19, 2014.

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The recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit, Long has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pollock-Krasner Fellowships, two National Endowment for the Arts grants and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant.

Currently Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside, Long studied sculpture at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1988, and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in 1980. His work was included in the 1997 and 2008 Whitney Biennials, and has been featured in more than 40 solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries internationally, such as SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, the St. Louis Museum of Art, Missouri; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; and Fundaço Cultural do Distrito Federal, Brazil.

Currently Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside, Long recently opened a new interactive artwork for the Nasher Sculpture Center as part of their anniversary celebration exhibition, on view until the end of February. A solo survey of his work is currently on display in Berlin at Galerie Jarla Partilager. And in January, he opened an extensive collaborative installation for The Contemporary Austin, Texas and will become part of SXSW in March. Long’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Passing of Professor Emeritus Don Evans

It is with a heavy heart that we share the news of the passing on May 6 of Don Evans, our professor emeritus, our friend and our hero. He was an amazing individual and he will be so greatly missed!!

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» Read more about his life and work.

 

Vanderbilt Department of Art’s Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award recipient for 2013: Hanna Yarbrough Rodgers

Vanderbilt University Department of Art is pleased to announce the recipient of the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award. This year’s recipient is Hanna Yarbrough Rodgers from Collierville, TN. She is the daughter of Kanette Keogh Rodgers and Milton Rodgers.

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As a Hamblet winner, she will receive a $25,000 prize that provides the funds for a year of art research and travel, culminating in her solo show at Vanderbilt in one year. Rodger’s installation, moment/of suspension/of disbelief, was selected for the award following a juried competition involving exhibition, interviews and written proposals. The award announcement was made during the Senior Show reception on April 11.

The $10,000 Merit Award was presented to Helen Robinson of Darien, CT.

Rodgers’ and Robinson’s art can be viewed as part of the 2013 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 eight graduating studio art majors.

Other students exhibiting include Ariela Atwell, Julie Choi, Daniel Litzow, CJ Rhoades, Adriana Salinas and Wenhao Liu.

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Close|Flow by Wenhao Li, 2013

Senior Show 2013 is on display Monday through Friday from 9 to 4 and Saturday and Sunday from Noon to 4 until May 10. The gallery is located in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th and Garland on the Vanderbilt campus.

Explaining her work and plans, Rodgers said, “The show I submitted for the Hamblet award consists of three sculptural pieces. The works are manipulations of relatively commonplace childhood objects – tree swings and kites. I think these objects inspire a visceral reaction first for almost any viewer. But, my hope is that I’ve presented them in a way that establishes a certain playfulness and forces a deeper consideration of meaning through interaction.”

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Wünderkammer by Ariela Atwell, 2013

“With the Hamblet funds, I plan to spend the next year seeking inspiration through my travels. My dad devoted years to working at the amusement park Libertyland in Memphis, TN where I spend countless days as a child. So, I’ve reserved Hamlet funds for travel to various state fairs throughout the country in hopes of rediscovering the sensation I once felt there. I’m fascinated by the divergent thinking that that allows children to effortlessly travel back and forth between the imaginative and real. My hope is that my travels will lead me to a body of work that explores methods of reclaiming play in adulthood.”

Rodgers also plans to attend several interactive art conferences, including those in Sydney, Australia, Oregon and California.

“I’m so excited to begin traveling and creating my next body of work with which I’ll apply to graduate schools next year. This award is going to open so many doors for me,” she said. “I’m so incredibly thankful for the Vanderbilt University Art Department and Hamblet family for giving me this opportunity.”

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 Jenny Schmid, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN; John Jacobsmeyer, professor at the New York Academy of Art in New York, and John Watson, assistant professor at Belmont University in Nashville.

For more information, contact the Department of Art at (615) 343-7241.

 

Nashville Print Revival: A Central Tennessee Printmaking Symposium

The Department of Art at Vanderbilt University collaborated with other local institutions and artists to create an event entitled “Nashville Print Revival: A Central Tennessee Printmaking Symposium.” Participating universities included: Vanderbilt University, Belmont University, Watkins College of Art and Design, Middle Tennessee State University, Austin Peay, and Tennessee State University. Five visiting artists were invited to participate with different local institutions.

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Vanderbilt University invited Tim Dooley and Aaron Wilson of Midwest Pressed to work with our students all week on a three-dimensional screen print project. Tim and Aaron also performed a live record cover screen-printing event at Belmont University during the opening reception for Kansas City based artist Laura Berman. Vanderbilt students aided alongside the artists during the performance.

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An open portfolio event was held at Watkins College of Art and Design, where anyone who works in print could sign up for free to show off their work. Some of our current seniors were able to display their work alongside, staff, faculty and alumni from Vanderbilt and other local institutions. The students were able to make engaging connections and received feedback on their work. The evening was concluded by five artist lectures in the Watkins auditorium.

The most heavily attended event of the revival was a print and poster exhibition organized by Vanderbilt professor Mark Hosford and local artist Bryce McCloud. This exhibition showcased the talented work of many local print and poster artists. The event was hosted at Barista Parlor in East Nashville. The crowd never let up in it’s full three hour window, as the spacious coffee shop became a packed room of print enthusiasts.

 

Vanderbilt University and StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series sponsored a lecture by acclaimed multimedia artist Sanford Biggers

The Department of Art Lecture Series sponsored a lecture by acclaimed multimedia artist Sanford Biggers on Nov. 20, 2013. This event was co-sponsored by The Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center and the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University.

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An LA native working in NYC, Biggers creates artworks that integrate film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music and performance. He intentionally complicates issues such as hip hop, Buddhism, politics, identity and art history in order to offer new perspectives and associations for established symbols. Through a multi-disciplinary formal process and a syncretic creative approach he makes works that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are conceptual. The significance of Biggers’ work within contemporary society has been celebrated through solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center and Mass MoCA. He has participated in prestigious residencies and fellowships including the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany; Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California; ARCUS Project Foundation, Ibaraki, Japan; and the Art in General/ Trafo Gallery Eastern European Exchange in Budapest, Hungary. He has been a fellow of the Creative Time Global Residency, the Socrates Sculpture Park Residency, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World Views AIR Program, the Eyebeam Atelier Teaching Residency, the Studio Museum AIR Program, the P.S. 1 International Studio Program, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency. His installations, videos, and performances have appeared in venues worldwide including Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, the Whitney Museum and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, as well as institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland and Russia.

The artist’s works have been included in notable exhibitions such as: Prospect 1 New Orleans Biennial, Illuminations at the Tate Modern, Performa 07 in NY, the Whitney Biennial, and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Bronx Museum. Additionally, he has won numerous awards including the American Academy in Berlin Prize, Greenfield Prize, New York City Art Teachers Association Artist-of-the-Year, Creative Time Travel Grant, Creative Capital Project Grant, New York Percent for the Arts Commission, Art Matters Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Award, the Lambent Fellowship in the Arts, the Pennies From Heaven/ New York Community Trust Award, Tanne Foundation Award, and Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award Grant. Biggers is Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Visual Arts program and a board member of Sculpture Center, Soho House and the CUE Foundation. He has also taught at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Sculpture and Expanded Media program and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s VES Department in 2009. For more information on this lecture or StudioVU, contact the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University at 615-343-7241.

 

Opening in Vanderbilt’s Space 204 – 40 Years of Career Highlights by Susan Demay

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art proudly welcomed an exhibition celebrating four decades of art by Susan DeMay, the art department’s long-time senior lecturer in ceramics. Career Highlights: 40 Years in Clay was on display in Space 204 from Thursday, Oct. 17, through Friday, Nov. 22, 2013. Recognized for her distinctive glazes and glazing techniques, DeMay’s show brought together more than 40 works from public, private and the artist’s collections and includes vessels and wall pieces, sculptural ceramics, and her recent mixed media work.

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Also on display will be the burial urns of friend and mentor Sylvia Hyman. Hyman, who died late last year, had years ago requested DeMay create her burial urns, incorporating the ashes from her cremation into the glazes. DeMay, an educator at Vanderbilt since 1985, has conducted workshops and exhibited extensively throughout the region. The author and subject of numerous articles for national and international publications, her work is featured in five different Lark Book series. The preface of the latest book, The Best of 500 Ceramics: Celebrating a Decade in Clay, includes this statement: “Sixty-four prominent contemporary ceramic artists served as jurors for this special edition, each selecting what he or she found to be the most technically masterful, stylistically inventive, and historically important pieces featured in the Lark’s 500 Series.”

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DeMay is also the owner of a studio production company, Made by deMay, which she started in 1985 after completing her master’s degree in Art at Tennessee Tech’s Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville, TN. “The supportive and nurturing environment there help me me realize I needed to set up my own operation,” DeMay says. Several lines from Made by deMay have been sold through the Smithsonian Museum stores. Originally from upstate New York, DeMay received her undergraduate degrees in art and education from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fl. and her MS degree from George Peabody College in Nashville, the last class before the college merged with Vanderbilt in 1985. Space 204 is the second floor gallery of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 1204 25th Avenue South at Garland on the Vanderbilt campus. Sponsored by the Vanderbilt University Department of Art, all Space 204 exhibitions are free and open to the public. Metered parking is available on Garland Avenue, alongside the Ingram Art Center. For more information, contact The Department of Art at 615-343-7241.

 

StudioVU Lecture Series 2013-14: Leighton Pierce

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art proudly opened the seventh season of StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series 2013-14 with Carving a Ball of Sound with an Image Chisel, a discussion and film screening by experimental filmmaker Leighton Pierce. The recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Creative Capital Foundation, Pierce’s talk was held Wednesday, Oct. 23, in Wilson Hall, Room 103 on the Vanderbilt University campus. This event was co-sponsored by the Vanderbilt University Film Studies Program.

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In addition to his lecture, Pierce screened his newly-completed film, White Ash (30 minutes, 2013). The film’s statement describes the work as “an inexorable dive into edges of consciousness. While grounded in recognizable images and sounds captured from reality, Wh i t e A s h is designed to scrape through the patina of normal perception, leading to an embodied associational state—something “to the side” of narratives and perceptions. Pierce meticulously weaves the warp and weft of image and sound leading the viewer into a conscious meditative state. Shooting and then animating thousands of moving camera, hand-held, long exposure, digital still photographs into articulations of real spaces and events, Pierce re-articulates and recontextualizes the video by applying the lever of a judiciously and intentionally composed musique-concrète soundtrack.” Pierce is acclaimed for his experimentation with film, video, and sound, creating experiences in transformative time. He has created multi-channel site-specific installations as well as single channel works that have been exhibited in major art museums and film festivals throughout the world, including The Whitney Bienniale, and the Sundance, San Francisco, New York, Tribeca, Ann Arbor, and Rotterdam Film Festivals, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Montreal Museé d’art contemporaine, and The Sheldon Art Museum. Retrospectives of his works have been presented at venues such as The New Zealand Film Festival, Lincoln Center, The Cinémathèque française, Festival Nemo, and Pompidou Center in Paris, and at The Lisbon Biennale.

Pierce is currently Acting Dean of the School of Art and Design at Pratt Institute, the director/producer at Leighton Pierce Image and Sound, and Professor Emeritus of Film, Video, Audio Production at University of Iowa. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. For more information on this lecture or StudioVU, contact the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University at 615-343-7241

work/work By Sculptor John Watson

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art welcomed to Space 204 an exhibition of repurposed wood sculptures by local artist and educator John Watson. work/work was on display from Thursday, Aug. 22, through Friday, Sept. 27. Architectural in nature, Watson’s work is sourced primarily from reclaimed wood and the salvaged cast-offs of trade and industry, building sites, or home remodeling projects.

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The sculptures teeter between collapse and structure but share the stage with the use of space. In his artist statement, Watson writes, “Like kudzu clinging to an Alabama pine tree, the work relies on the structure it occupies while it simultaneously exists as its own entity.” Watson joined the Belmont University faculty this past year, relocating from Webster University where he taught for seven years.

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His art has been the shown in solo exhibitions at HEMPHILL in Washington, DC; Laumier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO; Philip Slein Gallery in St. Louis, and the Savannah Gallery in Atlanta, GA, among others. Watson received his MFA from the University of Maryland, and his BFA from Webster University. Space 204 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. For more information, contact The Department of Art at 615-343-7241

Space 204: Two new exhibitions showcase Vanderbilt’s own artistic talents

Vanderbilt University Department of Art’s Space 204 gallery welcomed two exhibitions spotlighting the talents of two of its own. Somehow, I Guess included prints and drawings by Jerry Phillips, the Space 204 gallery assistant and building/studio manager for the Department of Art. Where Do All The Memories Go? showcased the work of Jeremy Jones, sculpture and ceramics technician for the department. The exhibitions were on display from June 13 through Aug. 1, 2013.

In Where Do All The Memories Go?, Jeremy Jones often employed full-sized human figures and broad range of materials and processes, from fiberglass and castings to ceramics. Frequently incorporating himself as the model, Jones says his work is based on the idea that the human body is in constant transformation, both physically and spiritually. And perhaps, he says, “a non-ordinary reality resides on the cusp of our everyday perceptions,” an idea that is obviously hard at play in his work.

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Cervidae Hippocampus by Jerry Phillips

Jones’ sculptures have been displayed in numerous exhibitions and private collections throughout the U.S. and his outdoor sculpture, Hover, is on public display as part of the juried exhibition Fifth Annual Outdoor Sculpture WalkAbout in the downtown area of Wichita, KS. Other recent exhibitions include the The Todd Art Gallery at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN; Rochester Contemporary Art Center, 6x6x2013, Rochester, NY; and the Lionheart Gallery and Tattoo Studio in Nashville, TN. Additionally, his work will be featured locally in the upcoming W.O. Smith Music School I Am Art Nashville exhibition, and Arts at the Airport: Flying Solo Exhibit at the Nashville International Airport. Jones received his BFA in ceramics and sculpture from the University of Wyoming in 2006 and his MFA from Wichita State University in 2012.

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Phantom by Jeremy Jones

For Somehow, I Guess, Jerry Phillips exhibited recent drawings and prints which tackle the complex topic of opposing cultural identities. Of strong Pacific Islander Heritage roots and raised in the US, Phillips describes himself as someone “somewhere between.” Phillips creates whimsical imagery that seeks to calm the push and pull of these two often opposing identities.

Making his Nashville debut with Somehow, I Guess, Phillips has exhibited his prints and drawings in numerous national and international group exhibitions. His work was recently included in the inaugural exhibition of the new Peoria Riverfront Museum, Peoria, IL, as well as the 311 Gallery in Raleigh, NC and the Washington Printmakers’ Gallery, Silver Springs, MD. Phillips received his BFA degree in printmaking and drawing from Murray State University and his MFA degree in printmaking from Bradley University. He has taught as an adjunct instructor for Bradley University and a sabbatical instructor for Illinois Wesleyan University – Bloomington, Illinois.

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

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

Vanderbilt’s Senior Art Majors presented Senior Show 2013 – April 12 through May 10

Each year the massive doors between the galleries of Space 204 are slid back to reveal the hard work of Vanderbilt University’s graduating studio art majors in that annual rite of spring in the Vanderbilt Art Department – Senior Show.

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Senior Show 2013 was on display to the public from Friday, April 12 until Friday, May 10, in Space 204, the second floor gallery in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th and Garland, on the Vanderbilt campus.

A public reception was held in the second floor rotunda Friday, April 12, from 4 to 6 pm, with student awards announced at 5 pm in Room 220. Awards included the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet awards, the Allan P. DeLoach Award for Photography, the Mid-South Ceramics awards and the Plaza Artist Materials awards.

The eight participating seniors included Ariela Atwell, Julie Choi, Daniel Litzow, Wenhao Liu, CJ Rhoades, Helen Robinson, Hanna Rodgers, and Adriana Salinas.

“In addition to making tremendous strides in the quality and depth of their work this year, these students have put together an interesting array of exhibitions, including painting, photography, printmaking, drawing, sculpture and installations” said Mark Hosford, acting chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Art.

In conjunction with the Senior Show opening, art work completed during the spring semester by all Vanderbilt studio art students was displayed throughout the art building during the department’s Spring Open House on Friday, April 12, from Noon to 6 pm.

All Space 204 events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, with special Saturday and Sunday hours of Noon to 4 p.m. for the duration of the Senior Show exhibition.

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

 

StudioVU: Mendi and Keith Obadike

Vanderbilt University and StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series welcomed Mendi and Keith Obadike, who will speak on their music, live art and conceptual internet artwork.

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Mendi + Keith began their collaboration making conceptual Internet art and sound art works. Since then, their work has been commissioned by The Kitchen, Rhizome / The New Museum, The NY African Film Festival with Electronic Arts Intermix, Northwestern University, Bucknell University, the Yale Cabaret, Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. They have released two albums on Bridge Records, a book of poetry with Lotus Press, and two artists’ books will be released soon on 1913 Press. They are currently exhibiting their new series of sound installations entitled African Metropole: Sonic Cities and touring their opera-masquerade Four Electric Ghosts.

Keith received a BA in Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. He is an associate professor in the College of Arts and Communication at William Paterson University and serves as an art advisor for the Times Square Alliance. Mendi received a BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in Literaturefrom Duke University. After working as a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University, she became a poetry editor at Fence Magazine and an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies atPratt Institute. Both Mendi and Keith grew up in Nashville, TN.

 

SPACE 204: Tucumcari by photographer Jeremiah Ariaz

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art welcomes to Space 204 an exhibition of compelling photographs by Jeremiah Ariaz.

The Tucumcari project, four years in the making, seeks to explore a community and way of life influx. Ariaz first visited the vibrant
New Mexico small town of Tucumcari by happenstance in 2006, its centennial. He and his camera were at once drawn to the historic
buildings and “the way their brilliant colors shone in the western sun light.” Some time later, another trip down that same stretch of
highway brought him back to Tucumcari and he was startled by the changes he saw – changes due to both the national economic
downturn and local struggles. Ariaz has worked to tell the tale of “an American place caught between a vanishing past and an uncertain
future.”

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Select photographs from Tucumcari have been featured in numerous exhibitions, including the Atlanta Photographers’ Gallery (2009),
the Halpert Biennial at the Turchin Center for the Arts (2009) (receiving the juror’s prize), and Center for the Arts (2010) and B Gallery
in Rome, Italy (2013). In addition, two photographs are included in the 2011 publication, “Exploring Color Photography” by Robert Hirsch.
Also, while completing the series, he was twice named a finalist for the Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography.

Ariaz received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, his MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo and has exhibited
his work and lectured both nationally and internationally. He was recipient of a Schomburg Fellowship as well as a Canadian-American
Studies grant which led to the publication of the limited edition artist book, “A Spectacular Fall,” and accompanying exhibition.

Space 204 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.

Studio VU Lecture Series welcomes Antoni Muntadas Feb. 27

Vanderbilt University and StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series welcomed multidisciplinary installation and media artist Antoni Muntadas on Feb. 27, 2013. Muntadas’ talent has garnered him numerous awards and fellowships and his work has been exhibited in major museums throughout the world.

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During his long career, Muntadas has worked to address social, political and communications issues through his photography, video, installations and other diverse works. He has received awards and grants throughout the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum in California, the Musée Contemporain de Montreal, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, as well as biennials.

Since 1995, Muntadas has grouped together a set of works and projects titled On Translation. Their content, dimensions and materials are highly diverse, all focusing on the author’s personal experience and artistic activity over a period of thirty years. By grouping such works together under this epigraph, Muntadas has said “he places them within a body of experience and concrete concerns regarding communication, the culture of our times and the role of the artist and art in contemporary society.”

Born in Barcelona, Spain, and a resident of New York since 1971, Muntadas is currently a visiting professor at the Visual Arts Program in the School of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and the Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura del Veneto in Venice. He has also taught and directed seminars at institutions throughout Europe and the United States,

His most recent exhibition, Muntadas: Entre/Between, took place in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, from November 2011 until March 2012. It was exhibited at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, Portugal and it is currently showing at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and will travel to the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, in the spring of 2013.

For more information, please call 615-343-7241.

 

SPACE 204: 2011 Hamblet recipient Jean Kang, Jered Sprecher

Yuja by Vanderbilt alumnus Jean Kang, recipient of the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award in 2011, and The Dreams of Architects and Poets by the artist and painter Jered Sprecher was on display in Space 204 from Jan. 17, through Feb. 8, 2013.

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As recipient of the 2011 Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award, Kang’s prize was earmarked for a year of art research and travel, culminating in a solo show in Space 204. For Kang, the year saw her dedicating herself to her art while attending the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Post Baccalaureate in Fine Arts program. Calling the experience “invaluable,” Kang said the Hamblet award provided her the means to “greatly expand upon my ability to view the world in a more open and thoughtful manner.”

Kang’s show, Yuja, a term meaning female or woman in Korean, is a collection of drawings, prints and installation developed during a time of reflection for Kang. “In this period of personal confrontation, I established ideas about my self as a female and as a Korean American. My work evolved out of observations of the body, the mind, and my cultural heritage. More specifically,” she continued, “I reflected upon my experiences regarding these elements which can act both contentiously and harmoniously. Through these works, I explored the nuances of identity, and with Yuja, I came to an understanding about the complexities of my personal identification and the ever-evolving nature of this concept.”

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Also reflective, Jered Sprecher’s paintings “grasp a single moment, a glance, a small epiphany.” The associate professor of Art at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville describes his art in this way: “I am a hunter and a gatherer, constantly accumulating images produced by the people and cultures around me. Segments of this collection of images then emerge in my paintings. My work shows images that are revealed as fragments in the midst of change, destruction, redefinition, and restoration.”

A 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, Sprecher has had solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York, Wendy Cooper Gallery in Chicago, Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston, Kinkead Contemporary in Los Angeles, and Gallery 16 in San Francisco. His work has also exhibited at The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Bronx River Art Center, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Des Moines Art Center, Weatherspoon Museum of Art, and the Knoxville Museum of Art. Sprecher participated in the Artist Residency Program at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, New York. He has also taught at Princeton University and Cornell University.

For more information, contact The Department of Art at 615-343-7241.

Space 204: DARK MATTER and SLOW NO DUST

Vanderbilt University Department of Art welcomed two exhibitions into Space 204 during November, 2012. DARK MATTER was a science fiction-inspired photography by art collective Lakes Were Rivers. The second show, SLOW NO DUST, was an exhibition of photographic prints and collages by Portland artist Nicole Lavelle.

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Green River #2, Nicole Lavelle

The work in DARK MATTER “explored ways photographic description can provoke uncanny disturbances in the understanding of place,” according to Lakes Were Rivers member and curator of this show, Adam Schreiber. The other 10 members of this Austin, TX based collective include Anna Krachey , Barry Stone, Ben Ruggiero, Elizabeth Chiles ,Jason Reed, Jessica Mallios , Leigh Brodie, Mike Osborne, Sarah Murphy, and Susan Shahan. Since 2008, the Lakes Were Rivers have exhibited their photography and videos individually and collectively, as well as collaborating in the publication of limited edition books

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“Stone” is by Lakes Were Rivers

“A rumination on language, landscape, and how the two interact,” according to Lavelle, SLOW NO DUST includes 35 works from digital and photo prints to collage and found paper. An adjunct design instructor at Portland State University, Lavelle integrates art, design, writing, teaching and research into her work, which “straddles many disciples and contexts.” She has participated in projects and exhibitions nationally and internationally.


Space 204: Sarah Applebaum and Nick DeFord

Vanderbilt University’s Department of Art kicked off the fall season with two new exhibitions in the Space 204 gallery. Mind Reader by Sarah Applebaum and The Other Side by Nick DeFord opened Thursday, Aug. 30, and continued through Friday, Oct. 5, 2012.

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Calling Mind Reader a “personal parade” or a form of protest, Sarah Applebaum’s new work seeks to explore Applebaum’s own mind through the use of signs and symbols. Heavily influenced by her own experiences and study of psychology, her work “bridges the gap between the psychological and the psychedelic, bringing freedom and an exploratory ethos to the art making process,” she says.

Internationally recognized, Applebaum has beenexhibited in La Triennale Di Milano Design Museum in Milan, Nordic House Cultural Center in Reykjavik, Iceland, the Denver Biennial of the Americas in Colorado and the San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art in California, as well as many other places. Her work has been featured in numerous books and publications throughout China, North and South America and Europe. A self-taught artist, she resides and works in San Francisco, California.

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Knoxville artist Nick DeFord physically stitches and layers materials into an examination of the boundaries between the known and unknown, focusing his work predominantly on subject matter “infamous for its mystery,” such as strange locales, monsters, the occult and mysticism. In The Other Side, DeFord’s work focuses on the afterlife and presents the anxiety and allure of reaching out into the unknown and “bringing back a hint of what is there.”

DeFord’s work has been exhibited nationally, with recent exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art and the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts in New Jersey. His work has also appeared recently in Elephant Magazine and Strange Attractors: Investigations in Non-Humanoid Extraterrestrial Sexualities. He received his MFA from Arizona State University and his BFA from the University of Tennessee andhas previously taught at both Arizona State University and theUniversity of Tennessee. He recently became the Program Manager for Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.

StudioVU: Hung Liu

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art kicked off the 2012-13 season of StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series with acclaimed painter and printmaker Hung Liu. Liu, whose artistic talent has twice garnered her National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and whose work has been exhibited in major museums throughout the world, lectured on her work Wednesday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. in Wilson Hall, Room 103 on the Vanderbilt University campus. All lectures are free and open to the public.

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Working from historical Chinese photographs, Liu challenges the viewer to re-examine the depicted moment through her more reflective process of painting. Much of the meaning in Liu’s painting comes from the way the washes and drips dissolve the documentary images, suggesting the passage of memory into history, while working to uncover the cultural and personal narratives fixed – but often concealed – in the photographic instant. She has written: “I want to both preserve and destroy the image.” In effect, Liu turns old photographs into new paintings.

In addition to her two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in painting, Liu also received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Printmaking from the Southern Graphics Council International in 2011. Liu’s works have been exhibited extensively and collected by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., theAsian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the Los Angeles County Museum, amongothers. A retrospective of Liu’s work will open Februrary of 2013 at the Oakland Museum of California, A professor of art at Mill College in Oakland, CA. for the past 20 years, Liu was formally educated in both China and the US, immigrating here in l984.

For more information on this lecture or StudioVU, contact the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University at 615-343-7241

 

Two Installations in Vanderbilt’s Space 204 gallery May, 2012

No Going Back by Barbara Yontz and Aesthetic Predicament by Quintin Owens were displayed in Space 204 from May 18 to June 29, 2012.

New York and Nashville-based artist Barbara Yontz fascinated us with her use of sound, video and natural materials such as wool and hair. The centerpiece of this new sculptural exhibit was her 2009 work, The Star Womb Project: Monad to Nomad, an 8 foot dome-shaped structure made of wool, silk and hog gut representing not only a womb or cave but creating a nurturing listening space. It was inspired by research on the first star by astrophysicist Daniel Wolf Savin.

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Currently an associate professor of art at St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York, Yontz has exhibited her work extensively, including the Phoenix Gallery, Chelsea, NY; The Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville, TN.; the Jose Marti National Library, Havana, Cuba; The Boston Museum School in Boston, MA; and the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences, NJ.

Quintin Owens’ installation work was a gathering of past memories and experiences in which he utilized a wide range of materials – from taxidermy and clay to balloons and construction materials – working to recall a sense of moment that can never be relived.

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Describing himself as “a mid-western kid, who after shoveling manure, stocking shelves, bailing straw, washing dishes, weeding mint and beans, feeding the hungry, and serving the drunk, decided that art making was the glue that stuck everything together,” he was at the time studio assistant in the Department of Art. Owens has shown his work at Nexus 2012, University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, TN; Marsh Gallery, Indianapolis, IN; the Zoller Gallery, University Park, PA; and the Coleman Burke Gallery New York, NY. He received his MFA from The Pennsylvania State University and BFA from the Herron School of Art and Design.

Hannah Stahl – recipient of the 2012 Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award

Vanderbilt University Department of Art has announced the recipient of the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award. The 2012 recipient is Hannah Stahl, daughter of Mary Jane Sorentino and Jim Stahl of Providence, Rhode Island and formerly of Jamestown. Stahl received a $25,000 prize, allowing her a year of art research and travel, culminating in a solo show at Vanderbilt in one year.

Stahl’s paintings were selected for the award following a juried competition, involving exhibition, interviews and written proposals.

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The $10,000 Merit Award was presented to Yeon-Sil Yi of Daegu, South Korea.

Stahl’s and Yi’s art were part of the 2012 Senior Show which included a diverse approach to art making from the 13 graduating studio art majors.

Other students exhibiting included Rosina Andrews, Grace Burnworth, Xi Chen, Stephanie Falcone, Kathryn Jaramillo, Lauren Jopling, Wei Kong, Patrick Louis, Katherine Manire, Ricky Don Taylor Jr., and Lucia Alvarez Zeevaert.

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 were all distinguished artists and educators. Jurors included Thomas Roma, director and professor in thephotography department at Columbia University in New York and twice recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship; Pat Bellan-Gillen, the Dorothy L. Stubnitz Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA; and Greg Shelnutt, Chair and Professor in the Department of Art at Clemson University, Clemson, SC.

For more information, contact the Department of Art at (615) 343-7241 or visit www.vanderbilt.edu/arts.

Senior Show 2012: April 13-May 11, 2012

The massive doors between the galleries of Space 204 were slid back on Friday, April 13, to reveal the hard work of Vanderbilt University’s graduating studio art majors in this annual rite of spring: Senior Show 2012.

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Senior Show 2012 was displayed to the public from Friday, April 13 until Friday, May 11, in Space 204, the second floor gallery in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center, 25th and Garland, on the Vanderbilt campus.

A public reception was also held in the second floor rotunda Friday, April 13, from 4 to 6 pm, with student awards announced at 5 pm. Awards included the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet awards, the Allan P. DeLoach Award for Photography, the Mid-South Ceramics and Plaza Artist Materials awards.

The 13 participating seniors included Rosina Andrews, Grace Burnworth, Xi Chen, Stephanie Falcone, Kathryn Jaramillo, Lauren Jopling, Wei Kong, Patrick Louis, Katherine Manire, Hannah Stahl, Ricky DonTaylor Jr., Yeon-Sil Yi, and Lucia Zeevaert.

“These students have made tremendous strides in the quality and depth of their work this year. This senior exhibition includes paintings, drawings, ceramics, installations and performances by a hard working group of students.” said Mel Ziegler, chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Art.

In conjunction with the Senior Show opening, art work completed during the spring semester by all Vanderbilt studio art students was displayed throughout the art building during the department’s Spring Open House.

A sincere thanks to the Hamblet family for their generous gift and support of our students and department, and for the extended experiences this gift provides, not just for the award winners, but for all its students. The prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet award is held each year in conjunction with the senior exhibition. The Department of Art has supervised the awarding of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award since 1984. This 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 here at Vanderbilt.

 

Rebecca Cummin’s Apparent Light in Space 204

The movement of light was explored through image sequences and installation in the Space 204 exhibition, Apparent Light. On display from Thursday, March 1, though Thursday, March 29, 2012, Rebecca Cummins’ work investigates what she calls “the sculptural, experiential and sometimes humorous possibilities of light and natural phenomena.”

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

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Cummin’s work often references the history of science and optical devices and, according to the artist, has incorporated “rainbow machines, paranoid dinner table devices, video rifles, photographs, video, sundials and site-specific portable camera obscuras.” An associate professor of Art at the University of Washington in Seattle, Cummins has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, including Steambot, Kirkland Art Center, 20112008 Biennale of Seville, Spain; The Shenzhen Institute of Fine Art, Shenzhen, China (2008); 2006 Shanghai Biennale; KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki and the South Australia Biennale (2001). In 2011, she participated in workshops and lectured at CAA, NYC; Stanford University Department of Art & Art History (SiCa grant); SPE, Atlanta, GA; the University of Chicago Film Studies Lecture Series and the Exploratorium, San Francisco. Her work, Aperture Skylight Sundial, is permanently installed in the Montlake Branch of the Seattle Public Library.

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

Studio VU and Frist lecture series: Jens Hoffmann – March 15, 2012

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts and its lecture series State of the Art teamed up with the Vanderbilt Department of Art’s Studio VU lecture series to bring prominent curator Jens Hoffmann to Nashville for a lecture March 15, 2012.

Trenton Doyle Hancock

StudioVU: The Department of Art Lecture Series 2011-12 welcomed wildly imaginative and multi-faceted artist Trenton Doyle Hancock to Vanderbilt Feb. 22.

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.

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and then it all came back to me 2, by Trenton Doyle Hancock

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 was included in the Frist Center for the Visual Arts’ exhibition, Fairytales, Monsters and Genetic Imagination, displayed Feb. 24 and through May 28, 2012. In addition to his StudioVU lecture, he also joined artists Saya Woolfalk, Kate Clark and Meghan Boody, and moderator Mark Scala, chief curator at the Frist, for the artists’ panel: Hidden Meanings/Invented Bodies: Fables for our Times.

The Department of Art would like to thank the Frist Center for the Visual Arts for its assistance in coordinating this StudioVU event. For more information about the lecture or StudioVU, contact the Vanderbilt Department of Art at (615) 343-7241.

 

 

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

The Vanderbilt University Department of Art proudly welcomed 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 was exhibited in Space 204 from Jan. 12 through Feb. 17, 2011.

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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!!

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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.

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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

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images, left to right: Zineb Sedira, installation view of Gardiennes
d’images [Image Keepers], 2010, at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, three-channel
video installation with sound, part I: double projection, 19 minutes, 16:9
image ratio; part II: single projection, 30 minutes, 16:9 image ratio
(production SAM Art Projects; courtesy of the artist and Galerie Kamel
Mennour, Paris; photo: Andrea Morin); Zineb Sedira, Dead End, 2010,
installation with 100 light boxes and electric cables, dimensions variable
(commissioned for the exhibition Told Untold Retold by Mathaf, Arab Museum
of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; courtesy of the artist and Galerie Kamel
Mennour, Paris; photo: William Martin

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Corpus, 2011 by 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.”

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“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.

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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.

 


 

 

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.

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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.

 


 

 

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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

 


 


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.

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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



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.

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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.

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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.

 


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.

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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.

 



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.

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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.

 



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.

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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.

 


 

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.”

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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.

 


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

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Transparencies by Vesna Pavlovic

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

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ambienTTransformation by Amelia Winger-Bearskin

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.


 

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

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4 Contained Growth by Jennifer Stoneking-Stewart

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.

 


 

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.

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Olympia by Beth Cavener Stichter

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.

 


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.

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Food Fight mural project Feb. 22-27

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.

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Image of mural to be displayed at Rand Dining Hall.

 

 

 

 

 

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.