Truman is on our Thanksgiving break for the week. Enjoy yourself and hurry back!
We look forward to seeing you and starting up again on the 28th of November.
Department
#15 for Art
The Art Department’s series of short faculty presentations — 15 minutes, one professor, one work of art — continues this Thursday, October 17th, with Professor Matthew Derezinski, who teaches in the Design (formerly “Visual Communications”) program. Matt’s talk will begin at 4:45 pm in the University Gallery.
The mini lecture series was featured several weeks ago on Truman’s media network. Talks will continue into the spring semester, with a different faculty member featured every two weeks.
Kirksville High School Students Job Shadow in the Art Department
Kirksville High School seniors in a personal finance class were challenged to shadow someone who does a job they are interested in. Two high school seniors shadowed Art faculty members on Wednesday, October 26. They were able to talk with faculty, sit in on classes, and visit the University Art Gallery. We really loved having them on campus and in Ophelia Parrish and wish them all the best as they finish up their senior year!
Kirksville High School student Mikaila Battrick (center) with Professors Heidi Cool (left) and Julia DeLancey.
Anyone interested in setting up a job shadowing opportunity in the Department of Art should please e-mail art@truman.edu. We enjoy having visitors who are interested in our Art program.
Painting professor Lindsey Dunnagan to speak at “#15 for Art” on Thursday, October 20th
New Assistant Professor of Painting, Lindsey Dunnagan, is giving this week’s “#15 for Art” talk. Come to the University Gallery on Thursday October 20th at 4:45 pm. These images may give you a sense of her work, but come and see what she talks about on Thursday afternoon.
Professor Dunnagan has a major art series which just had its first public exhibit this past summer. Her The Journey Home Project was featured at Carneal Simmons Contemporary Art in Dallas, TX, from late July to late August, 2016. She describes the process of creation and the work itself:
For the past year, I collected locations from people in North Texas and beyond, including various student groups and a refugee center in Dallas. Now their names and “ideas of home” have been painted onto a large-scale installation that forms a labyrinth.
As visitors walk through the painted translucent walls, they may find a location that holds significance to them while also experiencing other places that are cherished. In this way, the project presents the world as a treasure and a place to discover; it intimates a deep connection we have with each other and the planet.
Lindsey Dunnagan, The Journey Home Project, on display in Dallas, August 2016.
In addition, Lindsey Dunnagan installed a large commissioned work in Fort Worth, TX, at Store #532 of the Kroger Company. Native Treasures is painted and drawn with watercolor, ink, salt, and acrylic on Clear Acrylic. You can see it in Fort Worth at 5241 N Tarrant Parkway.
Native Treasures, 2016, installed in Kroger store #532.
All photographs courtesy of Lindsey Dunnagan.
“New Works by Truman Faculty” Show to Close This Saturday
The University Art Gallery’s current show “New Works by Truman Faculty,” with artwork by Laura Bigger, Amanda Breitbach, Aaron Fine, and Francine Fox, has its last day on Saturday, October 8th. If you are interested in seeing art from our new faculty or some of the works created by Aaron Fine on his sabbatical, you don’t have much time to take a look.
As a special treat, Laura Bigger will discuss one of her works on Thursday, October 6th, as part of the Art Department’s #forArt series. At 4:45 pm every other Thursday in the University Gallery there is a presentation from a faculty member. A 15 minute talk, between classes on Thursday evening. Come hear Professor Bigger talk about her own work in front of examples of it, as one of the highlights of this week in art.
New Faculty Member Francine Fox
Assistant Professor Francine Fox in her studio
Truman State University has added several new faculty in the Art Department this fall. Francine Fox is starting as an Assistant Professor of Foundations and she will be teaching Drawing, Art Studio Foundations I and II, and sections of Introduction to the Visual Arts focused on Drawing in the fall and on Watercolor in the spring.
Before accepting her position at Truman, Fox taught a range of Fine Art courses at Western State Colorado University, Casper College, the Art Institute of York Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Millersville University, and the University of Delaware. She has been a member of the New Wilmington Art Association, The Lancaster County Art Association, Emerging Young Artists, The Casper Artists’ Guild, and the Rochester Contemporary Art Center.
Fox is a nationally- and internationally-exhibiting artist whose work is represented by Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, New York. She has exhibited at the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy, the Social Sciences Research Council in Brooklyn, NY, the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science, and Art in Scranton, PA, and the Werner Wildlife Museum in Casper, WY. Additionally, Fox has works in the collections of the Contemporary Painting Museum at Namık Kemal University in Tekirdağ, Turkey, the University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, NY, and the 2016 Wyocity Public Art Project in downtown Casper, WY.
Fox utilizes combinations of figures, gently anthropomorphized animal imagery, traditional and personal semiotic lexicons, and depictions of invisible forces through modified and invented charting symbols to examine the significance and aesthetics of gray areas between opposing ideas linked to identity and epistemology.
For more information on Francine Fox, please visit – http://www.francinefox.net or http://www.kbfa.com.
New work by Francine Fox will be on display in the University Gallery in September.
The Art Department has added several new faculty this year. Check back on the blog this fall, because we will be highlighting them, along with other events and activities that are going on at Truman.
Academic Honor Awards in Art
o Benjamin Flowers receives a certificate in recognition of his selection as the Outstanding Student in Art: Studio Art. The award is presented by Sara Orel, Professor of Art History.
Congratulations to the three students, representing three of our major programs, who were selected by the Art faculty to receive recognition as the outstanding members of their senior class. The three students are:
Sadie Pafford, Outstanding Student in Art
Benjamin Flowers, Outstanding Student in Art: Studio Art
Madeline Perel, Outstanding Student in Art: Visual Communication
Dr. Sara Orel represented the Art Department to present the awards to Sadie and Benjamin. Madeline was otherwise occupied, taking part in the BFA: Visual Communication capstone exhibition at the Kirksville Arts Association, for which the final reception was the same evening (the Friday before graduation). We will have pictures from that exhibition soon. In the meantime, here is a photograph from Benjamin Flowers’ senior BFA show. Congratulations to all three students from the Art faculty and from Truman State University. We will miss all of you!
Visitors admire Benjamin Flowers’ BFA exhibition in the University Gallery.
Events You Won’t Want to Miss: Friday, April 29th
Two retirement receptions and one gallery reception. What a way to end the semester and the year! Come join us this Friday to celebrate the end of Bob Jones’ and Jim Jereb’s careers at Truman, and the completion of the BFA degrees of three seniors.
The events start at 2 pm in the Georgian Room in the Student Union. Come and celebrate the contributions of Professor Bob Jones to Truman and the Art Department. The senior member of our department, Bob has taught at Truman since 1979, serving in numerous administrative positions, starting the Visual Communications program, and teaching thousands of students over the decades. 
Then at 6 pm come to the University Gallery for the reception celebrating the last gallery show of the year.
And a fitting way to end the evening is the retirement reception for our printmaking professor Jim Jereb, who has been at Truman since 1990. In addition to teaching a generation of printmakers, Jim has taught a variety of courses in foundations and the university core. He has mentored many students who were interested in learning about conservation and most recently has helped to prepare an exhibit of posters from the Great War to be displayed in the University Gallery in 2017. Come to the Dukum Inn at 7 pm Friday and celebrate his contributions, his past, and his future.
Truman Newspaper features two ART professors
The Index, Truman’s student newspaper, featured articles on two Art Department professors in their March 24th edition. Jim Jereb was featured in a tribute article about his retirement. Jim, who has taught at Truman for 26 years, will be moving to Big Horn, Wyoming, to take up a curatorial position at the Brinton Museum there. He will also head the printmaking section of the museum’s new education center.
The second article featured Priya Kambli, our professor of photography, who presented her work at the St. Louis Art Museum. The symposium, “If it Wasn’t for the Women: Women of Color Behind and Through the Lens,” was a Women’s History Month event. “If It Wasn’t for the Women” is a free annual program that brings special attention to women of color and their experiences in the arts. This year the focus was on photography.
Mami 2015: A recent work by Professor Priya Kambli.
Suzy Williams, BFA ’08: Designer and Successful Quilter
Suzy Williams earned her BFA in VisCom in 2008, and has found success by combining both areas. We just heard from her about what she has been doing. Suzy writes:
What has been exciting in my transition from full-time graphic design to textile design is seeing the two art forms connect so well. The Fibers Department was the original reason I chose Truman, but the convergence of design and technology I found in the VisCom department is what grabbed my attention in the end.
I now use the skills I learned in VisCom as a base for designing all of my quilts and patterns. I use Illustrator to layout my designs, choose colors and quickly and efficiently determine the math behind the sewing. InDesign is the program I use to layout the PDF patterns I sell.
I believe these foundational graphic design skills give me an added edge over other quilters and textile designers who do not have the tech background.
To give you an example of what I mean, here are both a digital sketch and a quilt of my design “Triangle Jitters.” This pattern is currently being sold in my online shop.
Triangle Jitters, by Suzy Williams: Digital Pattern (left) and Final Quilt (right).
Three of my quilts were featured in QuiltCon 2016 this past February; they include Mod Mountains, Drip and Modern Fans . Mod Mountains (below) received a third place award for handwork.”
Mode Mountains, by Suzy Williams (BFA 2008).
Congratulations, Suzy! It is always great to hear about the successes of our students.
If you are an alum and have news to share, please write to us at art@truman.edu We’d love to hear from you.