Photography Professor Priya Kambli exhibits in Jaipur, India

Professor Priya Kambli’s photographs were displayed at the JaipurPhoto show in late February/early March.  JaipurPhoto is an international open-air travel photography festival held every February in the Pink City.

For the 2017 edition, JaipurPhoto’s Artistic Director, Lola Mac Dougall, invited Federica Chiocchetti, Founding Director of the photo-literary platform Photocaptionist, to be the Guest Curator and respond to the theme of wanderlust. As a Westerner, who works on the relationship between photography and fictions, images and words, and who had to ‘imagine’ and ‘study’ Jaipur and India from far away, Chiocchetti felt inclined to search for photographic works that subtly connected the notions of travel with ideas of the imaginary and the unexpected.

Professor Kambli’s work on display in Jaipur.  These are from her series “Kitchen Gods,” which takes inspiration from her own family’s photographs from India.

As the festival writeup proclaimed: “In this unique family pantheon, Kambli labours to afford her ancestors the same treatment as given to kitchen deities. The act of transforming simple snapshots into gods that watch over the nourishment of the family makes this series–although aesthetically rooted in India- a universal story.”

Priya Kambli is back in the classroom in the fall of 2017, after taking a sabbatical to work on her art full time.  Congratulations on the show, and welcome back!

 

News from Printmaking (student travel and Prof. Bigger’s summer adventures)

 In April, during the last full month of the (academic) year, art students Jennifer Reagan, Nick Phan, Claire Nipper, Morgan Price, Morgan White, Greta Dellinger, Cassie Koelling, and Madi Pearson all went on a trip with Professor Laura Bigger, our printmaking instructor.

The trip took them all to the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and its Print Study Room, Cave Paper, The Minnesota Center for Book Arts, The Walker Art Center, Midway Center for Contemporary Art, two graduate programs (at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), Leg Up Press, and the Highpoint Center for Printmaking.
They also made requisite stops to eat doughnuts and yummy food.
Professor Bigger herself writes that this summer she will be heading to Documenta and Berlin to research a study abroad trip for the Art Department. She will also mount an exhibition at The Holland Project in Reno, Nevada, and the Silverwood Park Gallery in St. Anthony, Minnesota. We hope to have pictures from those adventures in the fall.

New Public Art on Campus

Danielle Yakle’s Introduction to the Visual Arts class was at it again this spring.  As you walk around campus over the summer, see how many benches you can find that were not there at the beginning of April.*

These benches were completely fabricated by Professor Yakle’s class, with her assistance, and they are sturdy enough to last through midwestern weather.  The body of the benches is metal, and they are almost completely covered with concrete with the decoration added at the end of the process. Each bench is differently-shaped and covered with glass tiles of different colors.  They are placed around the central part of campus.  It is time for a treasure hunt!

*There are six benches.

Painting professor Lindsey Dunnagan on one of the benches newly installed on campus.