Although most if not all faculty have been hard at work this summer teaching, making art, doing research, writing, preparing classes, and/or doing a bit of relaxing too, Wednesday, August 13 marks the official start of meetings for faculty and staff on campus so welcome back to everyone. Stay tuned to the blog for news about what faculty have been up to over the summer and about the exciting goings on in the Art Department!
The Art Department blog will be taking a break for the rest of the summer, but please come back in mid-August as we gear up for the new academic year and look forward to welcoming new first-year and transfer students.
However, in case readers missed the news earlier in the spring, we will repost the great news about alum Lori Nix winning a Guggenheim Fellowship!
The Art Department is very pleased and proud to announce that alumna Lori Nix (Art History and Studio Art) just been named a 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in the Creative Arts (Photography)!
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded by US Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife as a memorial to a son who died in 1922. As the Foundation website states, “….[it] offers Fellowships to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.” The Guggenheim Fellowships “are intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.”
Fellows include future winners of the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize, and writers who have gone on to become Poets Laureate and include among their ranks hundreds of prominent creative individuals.
Those on campus in Kirksville will remember the recent exhibition of Nix’s work in the University Art Gallery (Fall 2013) as well as Nix’s great visit to and talk on campus during that exhibition.
To read more about and to see some of Ms. Nix’s work, please visit her website.
Truman State University Art Department faculty and alumni participated in the recent Renaissance Society of America annual conference in New York City in late March, 2014.
Dr. Jasmine Cloud (alumna, Art History; who just recently received her doctorate in Art History from Temple University) presented a paper entitled "In and Out of the Roman Forum: Charting the Properties of Ss. Cosma e Damiano and S. Francesco Romana" based on her archival research on Roman architecture and urban layout.
In addition, Dr. Julia DeLancey (Art History) and Dr. John Garton (alumnus, Art History; Associate Professpr of Art History at Clark University) co-organized a pair of sessions entitled "Harmonies and Disharmonies in Leonardo 's Approaches ot the Body". In one of those sessions, Dr. Garton presented a paper entitled "Leonardo and Creative Ugliness" and Dr. DeLancey a paper entitled "On Bended Knee: Leonardo da Vinci and the Anatomy of Devotion". The sessions came out of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, "Leonardo da Vinci: Between Science and Art" held in Florence, Italy in the summer of 2012. The Institute was organized by Dr. Francesca Fiorani (University of Virginia).
Finally, Dr. Ryan Gregg (alumnus, Art History: Assistant Professor, Webster University) presented a paper entitled "Anachronism as Fact: Vasari's Resurrection of the Porta San Gallo Monastery for Cosimo il Vecchio" in a session called "Reconsidering Premodern Accuracy: Verisimilitude and Truth Claims".
Photo Credit: Rusty Nelson
Middle and junior high school students in Prof. Rusty Nelson's Joseph Baldwin Academy (JBA) class, "An Animated Course", worked on traditional drawn cell-frame animation, stop-motion photography, and claymation animation during this three-week course. Students completed 12 animations totaling about 5 to 6 full minutes of animation at 10 frames per second.
To learn more about Truman's Joseph Baldwin Academy for Eminent Young Scholars, please visit the program's website: http://jba.truman.edu/
Thanks to Prof. Matt Derezinski for sharing with us some recent updates from his curriculum vitae:
Honorable Mention, St. Charles Community College, Regional Juried Art Exhibition 2014, St. Louis, Missouri
3rd Place, Leading Artist Gallery, Visions of the World, Shrewsburg, www.leadingartistsgallery.com
Merit Award, Northwest Art Center, Americas 2014: Paperworks, Minot, North Dakota
Special Merit and Special Recognition Award, Online Gallery Light Space & Time, All Photography Art Exhibition – February 2014, www.lightspacetime.com
Limelight winner, eXel Photo Magazine : 1 of 2 as feature in the magazine
Best Digital or Mixed Media Artwork, Still Point Art Gallery, Landscapes by Day – Landscapes by night, www.stillpointartgallery.com
Congratulations to Art Department graduate and alum Alex Thierry who let us know that he was accepted into the MFA program in Ceramics at the University of Kansas. Congratulations, Alex!
If you are an alum and have news to share, please let us know by e-mailing art@truman.edu. We'd love to hear from you!
Students in Prof. Wynne Wilbur's (Studio: Ceramics) Advanced Ceramics class worked on an assignment this semester to provide serving dishes for Sodexho, specifically for the Truman Foundation reception held Saturday, April 12, 2014. Those participating included, Kyle Pappalardo, Caity Priese, Paige Tunze, McKenzie Grabish, Ali Goeckner, Darrell Williams, Shawna Obrien-Stephens,and Emily Keppel. Some pictures of the serving items from the reception appear above and below. Congratulations!
Congratulations to Prof. Lily Lee who had her work juried into a upcoming exhibition in Portgual entitled Contextile 2014 Contemporary Textile Art Biennial.
Congratulations to Prof. Matt Derezinski (Visual Communications) and Prof. Lily Lee (Studio: Fibers and Sculpture), both of whom received Honorable Mention at the 2014 Regional Juried Art Exhibition at the Saint Charles Community College Art Gallery!
Congratulations to Art Department alumna Valerie Lazalier (Art History) let us know recently that she has received a competitive and coveted internship at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. Valerie is currently finishing a dual masters degree in Information and Library Science and Art History at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
Valerie had this to say about what she'll be up to during the internship: "I will primarily work in the Gallery Archives gathering provenance information from historical documents relating to the collection of Lessing J. Rosenwald, one of the Gallery's founding benefactors. I will then use the data to create web content in support of the Rosenwald Project, a joint effort of the National Gallery of Art and the Library of Congress. During the nine weeks, I will also attend biweekly museum seminars held to introduce interns to the broad spectrum of museum work, and to Gallery staff, departments, programs, and functions."
Congratulations, Valerie!