Faculty

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Professor Matthew Derezinski’s work receives honor

Professor Matthew Derezinski received Honorable Mention in 15th Pollux Non-Pro Digital Manipulation in the Landscapes and Seascapes category. The works were “Eve’s Garden” and “Forgotten Day”.
The link is here.
Eve's Garden, by Matthew Derezinski

Eve’s Garden, by Matthew Derezinski, 2020.

This 15th edition of the Pollux Awards has been pre-screened by the curators of the Worldwide Photography Gala Award and juried by Julio Hirsch-Hardy, director of the Biennial of Fine Art & Documentary Photography. A total of 439 photographers from 41 countries submitted 3,505 photographs for consideration of the pre-selection team of the Worldwide Photography Gala Awards and the final selection of the juror.

Posted on by Art Department Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, News and Events

Ceramics Instructor Eric Ordway is Visiting Artist at College of the Ozarks

Truman’s Ceramicist Eric Ordway recently visited the College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, MO (just south of Branson). The campus is currently closed to visitors but Dr. Richard Cummings and Professor Michael Ashley found a way for him to still come down and demonstrate his practice to the students.

He writes: “One of the moments that I really enjoy (besides getting to dialogue with their amazing ceramic students) was when I got to see my work installed and lighted in the studio space for the first time. I have been living with this work in my basement and my garage for the last year and it had started to feel under whelming… But when the work was displayed, lighted and given space to breath, it felt like I was able to see the pieces with new eyes. It gave me a sense of pride and confidence to continue making and continue to share my process and my vessels with the wider world.”

Congratulations to Eric Ordway for his beautiful work and impressive show. We are pleased you had a chance to share your work with a new audience!

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New Faculty Member: Dr. Josh Hainy

Dr. Josh Hainy in front of the “American Gothic” house in Eldon, IA.

Josh Hainy joined the Truman State University Art Department in August 2017. He received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Iowa with a specialization in 18th– and 19th-century European Art. Before the University of Iowa, Hainy attended the University of Oregon, where he got a Master’s degree in Classics. Drawing from his background in the classical languages, for his dissertation in Art History, he examined the ways in which British draughtsman and sculptor John Flaxman (1755-1826) depicted subject matter taken from ancient literature. Flaxman’s drawings of Homer’s Iliad received particular emphasis. These images—done in the contour style of the late 18th and early 19th centuries—became quite popular throughout Europe, but scholarly interest traditionally focused on Flaxman’s use of contour, not the ways in which he presented the narrative of the Iliad through a series of images.

“Ajax Defending the Greek Ships against the Trojans” by John Flaxman.

 

In addition to presenting his research on Flaxman’s narratives at The Art Institute of Chicago Graduate Symposium, Dr. Hainy has presented other papers about Flaxman and his interactions with classical antiquity at the annual conferences of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. He talked about the role of the human body in the lectures Flaxman delivered as the first Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art at a symposium about art, anatomy, and medicine held at the Columbia Museum of Art. This paper will be part of an edited volume about art, anatomy, and medicine since c. 1800.

At Truman State this fall, Hainy is teaching “Introduction to the Visual Arts”, the survey of Western Art from the Renaissance to the present, and Renaissance Art in the fall. In the spring he will teach the second half of the western survey, as well as one course on Modern Art and a topics (Art 428) section on art from the 18th and early 19th centuries, titled “Rococo to Romanticism.”

We extend our enthusiastic welcome to Josh Hainy, a valued addition to the Art Department at Truman!

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Design Faculty Road Trip Over Labor Day Weekend

Over the Labor day weekend Design professors Rusty Nelson, Matt Derezinski, and Aaron Neeley took a trip to Detroit, Michigan to see the House Industries Exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum. Known throughout the world for its eclectic font collections and far-reaching creative exploits, House Industries has been a standard-bearer for American graphic design for 25 years. House has worked with a diverse list of collaborators including Jimmy Kimmel, Hermès, The New Yorker, John Mayer, Muji, the Estate of Charles and Ray Eames, and Heath Ceramics.

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University Gallery Opening August 29th

Works by Professors Rusty Nelson (left) and Wynne Wilbur (right).

Join us Tuesday, August 29th at 5pm for the Fall 2017 New Work by Truman State Art Faculty show, featuring works from Professors Matt Derezinski, Lindsey Dunnagan, Aaron Neeley, Russell Nelson, and Wynne Wilbur.  The show will be up through the 6th of October.

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Art Faculty Attend Institute in Asheville, NC

Art faculty Julia DeLancey, Aaron Fine, Aaron Neeley, and Sara Orel, along with Amanda Langendoerfer, who is the Head of Special Collections and University Museums at Truman, attended a Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges Summer Institute on Liberal Learning in Asheville from June 8-10, 2017.  This year the annual institute focused on art programs.  Titled “Adaptations: Working in Art Departments at Public Liberal Arts Colleges,” the program brought together faculty from 18 universities to share ideas and discuss such topics as encouraging undergraduate research in Art, teaching Art History without having major museum collections nearby, and partnering with community arts organizations.

Photograph of participants in the COPLAC Summer Institute, courtesy of Emma Anderson.

Truman Faculty (all in the front row): Aaron Neeley, Julia DeLancey (2nd and 3rd from the left, respectively), Sara Orel (8th from left), Amanda Langendoerfer (5th from right), and Aaron Fine (2nd from right).

At the Institute Truman faculty also had the opportunity to congratulate the incoming Executive Director of COPLAC, our former colleague Cole Woodcox, who has retired from Truman to take the position. (He is the first person on the right in the back row of the photo above).

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Congratulations Dr. Heidi Cook!

Assistant Professor of Art Heidi Cook completed her Ph.D. this year in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh with advisor Barbara McCloskey. Her dissertation was titled “Picturing Peasants: Maksimilijan Vanka’s Folkloric Paintings and the ‘Croatian Question’ from Habsburg Empire to Croatian Nation-State.” Using the work of Croatian-American artist Vanka as a linking thread, her project explored how the production, circulation, and reception of objects and images related to Croatian folk culture played an active role in imagining a spectrum of competing national and imperial identities in early twentieth-century Yugoslavia. She received an American Councils Title VIII Fellowship, Foreign Language and Area Studies Academic-year Fellowships, and a Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship from the University of Pittsburgh among other grants to fund her research and writing. Her research will continue to focus on visual constructions of nationalisms and other competing political identities in the modern art, architecture, design, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe.

Dr. Cook and Dr. McCloskey at the University of Pittsburgh Commencement.

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Faculty in New York for Research and Book Signing

Dr. Julia DeLancey’s current research into melancholy in the Italian Renaissance, perhaps a manifestation of what we now call “depression,” led her to research in New York, at the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  She has shared these two images taken during the research trip, funded in part by a fellowship established by former Truman State University president Barbara Dixon.

The New York Public Library, photo courtesy of Julia DeLancey.

Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art walk past Albrecht Dürer’s Melancholia I, photo courtesy of Julia DeLancey.

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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.