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.
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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.
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.
Tomb Wall on Display in OP Atrium
Dr. Orel’s Egyptian Art class has installed a full-size copy of the wall from a tomb at Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt. The tomb dates from about 4000 years ago, and belonged to a provincial governor. The artwork was recorded by English Egyptologists in the late 1880s, and was published at a small scale. Fine Arts Design took the line drawing and blew it up again to the real size so students can experience the art at its original scale rather than shrunk down to fit in a publication. The “wall” will be on display until Friday afternoon, September 11th.
New Pottery Inspired by Old
The cases in the lobby of Ophelia Parrish Hall are once again filled with Ceramics I student work. The assignment from Professor Wynne Wilbur asks students to create a functional vessel inspired by a pot more than 500 years old, with decoration that might be much more recent in concept and design.
Faculty Show and Exhibit Beyond Truman
Natural Domestic, the exhibit by the Crescent Collective (including Truman Professor Laura Bigger), is on display in Minneapolis this month.
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:
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 Exhibition in University Gallery
We have two fabulous exhibitions opening on Tuesday, October 18. A public reception will be held 5-6 p.m.
Fact or Fiction, which is installed in the main gallery, presents contemporary artworks by three St. Louis-based artists, Brandon Anschultz, Michael Behle, and Greg Edmondson. Each experiments with the formal elements of their artworks to test the ambiguous boundaries between the illusionistic representations of reality and the abstract materiality of artistic media. In other words, their works inhabit the space between fact and fiction. The exhibition includes an exciting spectrum of media including: drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and new uses of traditional materials.
I, too, am America, a collection of photographs taken by fast food workers in the Kansas City Area, is in the side gallery. Originally shown last May in Kansas City, this exhibition received national media attention for capturing the everyday occurrences, the working conditions, and the common struggles of urban low-income workers as captured from their own perspective. The photographs explore major issues that our contemporary society faces including income inequality, race and gender discrimination, workers’ rights, and the working poor.
“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.
Art History Class Visits World War I Museums
Truman students at the General Pershing Boyhood Home in Laclede, Missouri. Photo courtesy of Nala Turner.
Generous funding from a School of Arts & Letters Mini-Grant and from the Friends of the Gallery fund of the University Art Gallery helped students in ART 428 Topics in Art History: Dada and World War I travel on Wednesday, September 28. Students visited the Gen. John J. Pershing Boyhood Home and State Historical Site in Laclede, MO, and the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, MO. At both sites, students met with museum staff and visited these important museums and their collections; since students are working on a Spring 2017 exhibition, to be held in the University Art Gallery, which focuses on creative responses to World War I, the trip benefited not only their studies this semester, but also the Gallery show in the spring. Stay tuned for more on the students’ work in this class and on the show, entitled Arts Against the Great War.
Truman students in front of the National World War I Memorial and Museum in Kansas City, MO.