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Happy Independence Day!
We hope you take advantage of the holiday to have a break from your classes and work and enjoy time with friends and family. And maybe a few fireworks. These are from Kirksville’s 2015 show.
Visual Communication Exhibit
For the second year in a row, seniors in our Visual Communication program held their capstone exhibition in the display space of the Kirksville Arts Association. Rusty Nelson sent these pictures of the exhibit and the reception, held May 6th, the night before Truman’s graduation.
Photographs of Visual Communication Senior Exhibition at the Kirksville Arts Association, courtesy of Rusty Nelson.
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.
Museum Educator (and Alumnus) Visits Truman
Art History major Emma Shouse with alumnus Mike Murawski, at his gallery presentation.
Thanks to funding from the School of Arts and Letters, the Art Department was happy to welcome back Dr. Mike Murawski (BA – Art History and History, 2000), Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum, and Pacific Region Director for the Museum Division of the National Art Education Association. Dr. Murawski met with students and faculty and spoke to several classes, including the interdisciplinary Museum Studies class taught by Dr. Sara Orel.
He also led a program in the University Art Gallery. His interactive presentation, “Art Encounter: The New Education in Museums and Galleries,” gave the attendees several models of how to involve visitors to an art exhibition that did not start with an authority delivering a contextual lecture. These exercises were designed to draw out observations and responses from the viewers. Techniques included group-writing poetry and shaping (folding and tearing) paper in response to images, among other approaches.
Mike Murawski (class of 2000), Heidi Cook (Gallery Director), and Art History major Emma Shouse arrange torn and folded paper responses to a quilt in the University Gallery.
During his visit, Dr. Murawski had a chance to speak about his path from Truman to American University for his graduate degrees. He returned to Missouri, where he worked as the head of education for the Saint Louis Art Museum. While there he was selected the Missouri Art Educator of the Year (Museum Education) for 2011. He is an innovator in the use of digital technology in Museum Education and has been involved with the MacArthur Foundation’s Connected Learning initiative, the National Writing Project, the Educator Innovator initiative, and is a member of the Advisory Board for the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report 2013 Museum Edition, the Advisory Board for Art History Teaching Resources. We were very happy to have him visit and the students who interacted with him had a good opportunity to talk with a specialist in a field many are interested in pursuing. Thank you for the visit and talks, Mike!
Art History major Hannah Nicks reads a group-written poem in the University Gallery.
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.
Midterm Break Travels
Even over a break, Truman people go out of their way to experience art. We asked for pictures from the week off and several students and faculty sent us some from their travels. Thank you and enjoy!
Pictures from Midterm travels: (clockwise from upper left) Nala Turner in New York, Emily Pulley in Denver, Maddie Tweed in New York, Dr. Sara Orel in Ghent (Belgium), and Taylor Knoche in St. Louis.
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.
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.
This
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.
Museum Studies Students Visit General John J. Pershing’s Boyhood Home
Recently the Museum Studies class taught by Dr. Sara Orel took an afternoon trip to visit the General John J. Pershing Boyhood Home State Historical Site. General Pershing is an alumnus of Truman, then the Missouri State Normal School, which he attended for two years before leaving for West Point. While at the museum, students had an opportunity to view a variety of types of display settings, from the historic home itself, set up to look as it would have in the 1870s and 80s, a small schoolhouse that serves as the primary display space for the museum’s collection of objects, and the new museum building, which is in the process of renovation and will provide a much-expanded space for both permanent and changing exhibits.
Denzil Heaney, Administrator and Curator of the General John J. Pershing Boyhood Home State Historic Site in Lacelede, Missouri, discusses the array of World War I poster images on display in one of the exhibition spaces at the site. Truman students shown are Rachel Pozzo, Anthony LaMarche, Luke Edwards, and Victoria Loos.
The host for the visit was Denzil Heaney, administrator and curator of the site. His enthusiasm and flair for storytelling and the importance of the site were quite inspiring for the students, who subsequently prepared exhibition proposals to take advantage of the new museum space. There are exciting opportunities for Truman collaboration with the Pershing Historic Site, a state park that attracts thousands of visitors from around the world every year. The current interest in the centenary of the Great War means the number of visitors will only continue to increase.
Truman’s quickly-growing Museum Studies program, still informally structured but with a strong track record of graduate school and job placement, provides internships across the state of Missouri which are available to students of all majors, including Art History, Studio Art, and Visual Communications, but also students in fields including Anthropology, History, Communication, Biology, Chemistry, and many others..
If you are interested in pursuing an interdisciplinary program in Museum Studies at Truman, contact Dr. Sara E. Orel (orel@truman.edu) for more information.
The view from inside the building that will serve as the new General Pershing Museum in Laclede, Missouri.