World War I Exhibitions Opening

In commemoration of the centennial anniversary of World War I, the Truman State University Art Gallery and Pickler Memorial Library’s Special Collections have collaborated on two interrelated exhibitions about art produced during the Great War.  Join, Save, Buy:  WWI Posters on the Homefront consists of a selection of never-before-exhibited World War I posters from the E.M. Violette Museum which reveal experiences on the American home front.  Arts Against the Great War looks at creative responses to the Great War which explore the war’s complications, violence, and human cost.

Truman State University undergraduates contributed and are contributing significantly to the exhibitions, including in research, writing, installation, serving as docents and designers, and other activities.

The University Gallery during installation of Join, Save, Buy:  WWI Posters on the Homefront. Photo courtesy of Sara Orel.

And here is a 3D view of the side gallery during installation of Arts against the Great War.

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#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.

Faculty Show and Exhibit Beyond Truman

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Natural Domestic, the exhibit by the Crescent Collective (including Truman Professor Laura Bigger), is on display in Minneapolis this month.

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Truman State printmaking professor Laura Bigger and her two collaborators, Teréz Iacovino (on the left, an artist), and Artemis Ettsen (in the middle, an architect), currently have a solo exhibition in Minneapolis.  The trio collectively is known as the Crescent Collective.   with my collaborative trio Crescent Collective. The show is called Natural Domestic and is housed at Form + Content gallery.  Laura tells us “This work is distinct from my independent work although it thematically overlaps very closely.”

 

Temporary Assistant Professor of Photography Amanda Breitbach has curated an art exhibit in St Louis at Webster University’s Gateway Campus.  “Rendered Visible” is her contribution to the Arcade Comtemporary Art Projects is an exhibition of photographs that address the topic of American incarceration and the justice system.

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:the-journey-home-project

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.

nativetreasures-by-lindsey-dunnaganNative Treasures, 2016, installed in Kroger store #532.

All photographs courtesy of Lindsey Dunnagan.

“New Works by Truman Faculty” Show to Close This Saturday

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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.

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New Faculty Member Francine Fox

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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.
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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.

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.

Mami 2015: A recent work by Professor Priya Kambli.

Dr. Julia DeLancey Contributes to the Italian Conferenza del Colore

Julia DeLancey (Professor of Art History) has been invited to serve for a second year on the Scientific Committee for the interdisciplinary Conferenza del Colore (Conference on Color); the 12th Conference will be held in Turin (Torino) Italy in 2016.

ThisLogo of the Gruppo del Colore international conference features work on color in all its aspects, including not only color theory and color in art history, but also color as used in industry, lighting, education, design, psychology, and so on. The Scientific Committee is made up of academics and other professionals who deal with color from a wide range of perspectives. Dr. DeLancey’s research is focused on the color sellers of Venice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

More information about the 12th conference of the Gruppo del Colore has been posted, and their bright logo is the splash to the left.

Jim Jereb’s Prints on Display

Pickler Memorial Library at Truman is exhibiting the art of printmaking professor Jim Jereb until March 25th.  The coffee shop exhibit area, located on the first floor of the library, displays prints that reflect the diversity of techniques Jereb uses in his work.

Jim Jereb's prints on display at the coffee shop in Pickler Memorial Library.

Jim Jereb’s prints on display at the coffee shop in Pickler Memorial Library.

Jereb has been a professor of art at Truman since August 1990 and oversees the printmaking program. He uses many varied techniques in this show including relief, intaglio, lithography, and serigraphy (silk screening).

Printmaking generally begins with a flat, smooth material known as a matrix. Through the various technical approaches on display, several different substances (zinc or copper metal plates, Bavarian limestone, end-grain maple and polyester sheets, to name a few) are manipulated to create a surface that, when inked, will generate the desired image. Paper is pressed against the hand-inked surface to force the ink into the paper fibers. This physical contact of hand-manipulated materials, supplies, processes and machinery gives creative printmaking its rich densities and evocative imagery.