Five Students Receive Summer Grants to Create Art

Five art students were awarded TruScholar grants to pursue research this summer.  You can see their resulting work in the Atrium Gallery of Ophelia Parrish from Monday, August 30- Friday, September 3.  Below is a summary of each project:

For his TruScholar research, Kameron Clark compared struggles of contemporary wealth inequality with similar themes from the past.  Historical paintings such as “Hard Times” by Hubert von Herkomer (1885) and “Evicted” by Blandford Fletcher (1887) are reimagined in the current United States climate.

Kameron Clark

Maggie Adams conducted her TruScholars project on the fiber artist Lenore Tawney; her research combined studio art and art historical methodologies. Adams focused on replicating Tawney’s understudied weaving techniques in her body of work “Woven Forms” and its connection to Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s.

Anna Grahlherr’s summer research reclaims the female nude in art from the perspective of female-sexed people.  In this series, she rejects the tradition of the male gaze and explores diverse bodies.

Anna Grahlherr

ZuZu Smugala created artwork that explores how people use different coping mechanisms in their daily lives.

ZuZu Smugala

Kristen Buck’s project is about documenting her body to create permanence of her self-image. After going through a drastic physical change, her reality has been comprised by her own thoughts. The resulting series of photographs capture her contradictory feelings as well as igniting conversations about what an image is and how it serves to preserve truth.

Last Chance to See!

This is the last week of the Student Juried Show in the University Gallery.  We have pictures of students with their award-winning art if you need encouragement to see what students have been doing over the past year.

Phuong Duong, Intuitive, Spray paint and acrylic Winner of the Student Union Purchase Prize

Phuong Duong, Intuitive, Spray paint and acrylic Winner of the Student Union Purchase Prize

1st place: Maggie Adams, Sink or Swim, Cotton, fishing line

 

Third Prize: Natalie Gruber, A Fly in the Ointment, Watercolor

Best in show: Wesley Scafe, Market Worship, Wood, 3D printed plastic

 

2nd place: ZuZu Smugala, Pink Rock, Acrylic on canvas

Batik Workshop

Danielle Yakle demonstrates Batik

Professor Danielle Yakle demonstrates the process of batik to Truman students

In conjunction with the “Wandering Sprit: African Wax Prints” exhibition currently up in the gallery, we hosted a small batik workshop in the fibers studio. Indonesian batik textiles severed as the inspiration for the nineteenth-century industrial Dutch imitations that became what we call African wax print fabric today. Fibers professor Daniel Yakle and Fibers club students walked students through how to apply layers of wax resist to create patterns on dyed cotton. The results were stunning!

Students work on their batik scarves

Chetanae Ellison waves to the camera, enjoying her experimentation in wax painting on cloth.Wax painting

Stephen Poindexter paints in wax on a scarf.

Student with completed scarf

Lee Gardunia shows off a completed batik project.

Winners of the Student Union Building Purchase Prize Announced

Exciting news! Elisabeth Held’s relief print “St. Dolly” and Machayla Poe’s fiber work “Fried” have been selected for the 2020 Student Union Building purchase prize! Each year, staff and students who work at the Student Union vote on two artworks from the Juried Student Exhibition to purchase for permanent display in the SUB. It was a tight vote because there are so many strong works in this year’s Juried Student Exhibition, up until September 29th.

Truman student, Maggie Adams, accepted into the Surface Design Association’s Juried Student Exhibition.

Maggie Adams’ hand-felted installation work Digestive Gestation was accepted into Future Tense 2020.  The show will be on display at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville, Tennessee, from August 13 – October 27.

Maggie Adams, Digestive Gestation

Maggie Adams, Digestive Gestation

Future Tense 2020 celebrates the creative work of student artists, designers, and makers working with or inspired by fiber or textile materials or techniques. The exhibition offers a glimpse into the future of contemporary fibers by presenting the very best work being made by students in the field today. This exhibition was juried by Stefanie Gerber, current director of the North Carolina Glass Center, and Rena Wood,  Assistant Professor at Tennessee Tech University’s School of Art, Craft & Design at the Appalachian Center for Craft.

A full online exhibition of Future Tense 2020 will be live soon.

Have a marvelous summer!

Truman is in to its summer season, with Joseph Baldwin Academy students on campus and incoming students visiting us to register for their fall classes.  We welcome all of you, and hope those who are students already (and alumni) are having a great summer, whether working or interning, or just hanging out at the beach and painting or reading a really good book!

We look forward to seeing new and returning students here in the fall.  May you have a wonderful summer wherever you may be.

Capstone Exhibits and Reception for the BA in Studio Art

Friday at 6 pm come and join the graduating BA students to celebrate their capstone exhibition, which is on display in the University Gallery until that evening. Help us congratulate the students on completion of their degree (and enjoy some lovely snacks while you do)!

Hey! There’s an Aquarium in the OP Lobby!

Students in the Advanced Sculpture classes are at it again! For this Homecoming week, the lobby of Ophelia Parrish Hall is featuring blow-up animals, this time inside a fiber aquarium.  The sculpture is made to walk through, and the animals are far larger than life-sized.

The art installation should be up throughout the week.

Student Art in the Library

In the spring semester, Danielle Yakle’s Sculpture, Fibers, and 3D classes joined forces to produce a set of sea creatures that hung in the library.

Jelly fish in the library

For about a month in late February and early March, jellyfish, whales, rays, and sharks prowled the atrium space. Thank you to the Art students who worked together to change the ambience of Pickler Memorial Library and the library authorities who were so welcoming to this public art project.

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