The Department of Art
April - May 2013 Events & Exhibitions

Student Artworks on Display at East Square Plaza During April

Jeanne Vockroth
Image credit Lydia Clark

 

Opening reception: Thursday, April 4, 5 pm - 8 pm

Closing reception: Friday, April 26, 5 pm - 8 pm 

Visiting hours: Monday/Wednesday, 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm 

Tuesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday, 10 am - 1 pm 

 

The University of Arkansas Student Gallery, sUgAR Projects: Student Pop-Up Gallery, is pleased to host a month-long art event at East Square Plaza (basement level at 1 E. Center St.) on the downtown Fayetteville square from April 1 - 30, 2013. During the month of April, two exhibition receptions will celebrate the work of current MFA, BFA Honors, Advanced Sculpture, and Advanced Painting students in the Department of Art: An opening reception on Thursday, April 4th from 5-8 pm will kick off the event with Crafted Identities, a group honors thesis exhibition showcasing works by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts Honors students Emily Chase, Melissa Love, and Jeanne Vockroth. A closing reception on Friday, April 26th from 5-8pm will conclude the month-long event with BYO, a second group exhibition featuring works by first and second year graduate students, advanced sculpture, and advanced painting and drawing students.

Image courtesy of Eric Jackson

 

During the month of April, eight advanced sculpture students will design and build installations for specific spaces, and the resulting projects will range from three-dimensional works integrating sound and light to video installations. Exhibiting artists include Cambry Pierce-Duperier-Newton, Todd Pentico, Justin Tobin, Eric Jackson, Jeanne Vockroth, Ven Yates, Samantha Hussey, and Sarah Colpitts. Additional galleries will present student work selected by painting professors, Stephanie Pierce and Kristin Musgnug.

 

The advanced sculpture and painting projects represent students currently enrolled in courses instructed by Bethany Springer, Associate Professor of Sculpture, Stephanie Pierce, Assistant Professor of Painting, and Kristin Musgnug, Associate Professor of Painting.

 

Support for these projects has been generously provided by Facilities Management and the Department of Art at the University of Arkansas.

 

This is a unique opportunity for the public to view diverse works during various stages of the artistic process. Please join us throughout the month of April. All events are free and open to the public.

    


Alms Matara Exhibition by artists Reilly and Kelly Dickens-Hoffman

Anne Kittrell Gallery, April 3 - 16, 2013
Reception: Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 6:30pm
Lecture: Thursday, April 18 at 6:30 pm in room 213 FNAR
Workshop: Wednesday, April 17 with sculpture class: OxyAcetylene demo

Reilly & Kelly Dickens-Hoffman connected in 2010 and now this bond has transformed into a collaborative art partnership. Each endeavor is an alloy of their talents, philosophies, and experiences materialized into a seamless form suffused with ebullience. They each bring their own unique talents to this union from various founts of knowledge and experience: theatre scenic design, sculpture, art history, art education, art curation, web development, engineering, metallurgy, ancient civilizations and literature. From this study, observation and reflection of disparate information as resource, they create a connection that is their art. Art created through fire philosophically and chemically mirrors the birth of stars and the elements. Steel, a man-made material is composed of iron and carbon. Iron is referred to as the "blood of the universe" and carbon is found in nearly all forms of known life. They work with metal as one works clay, "we mold and carve it from its extruded identity to imbue the metal with our energy. The work is inspired by the desire to create objects that reference nature, but not replicate it directly. The work is often inspired by ancient texts that reference shapes, objects and ideas that span cultural and geographic barriers that invoke a sense of community and universality".

http://www.reillyandkelly.com/about.html

Reilly & Kelly Dickens-Hoffman received their BFA in sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and BFA in scenic design from Texas State University. Together they have received numerous honors and awards. Additionally they have been selected for numerous public and private commissions including Saint Luke's Hospital among others. Recent exhibitions include the Todd Weiner Gallery and the Epsten Gallery in Kansas City.


MFA Thesis Exhibitions

Dilenia Garcia
Toile
Exhibition dates: Monday, April 1 - Friday, April 5, 2013
Reception: Friday, April 5, 6-8 pm

2013 MFA candidate Dilenia Garcia presents Toile, an exhibition of artworks which explore material culture. Toile is a painting series that explores constructions of taste in manufactured fabrics.  Through the use of irony, paradox and deconstructions of rhythm, shape, color and form, the paintings are a response to the formal and historical content in the fabric. The idyllic landscape, notions of identity, sexism and liminality are some of the themes considered in the series through an exploratory and generative painting process.










Nichole Howard

Cycle
Exhibition dates: Monday, April 8 - Friday, April 12, 2013
Reception: Friday, April 12, 6-8 pm

Cycle is the culmination of a year-long project in which the artist experimented with growing her own food and medicinal herbs. Using material culture as a physical and conceptual platform, Howard inverts the meaning of objects through material and offers a radically different view of their form and substance. Plaster molds of "Big Gulp" plastic cups are transformed into terracotta seedling pots, seeds then germinate inside these objects and those plants are then used as large gardens, where healthy food and medicinal herbs can be accessed. The "Big Gulp" object is a part of mainstream culture currently in the throws of political warfare. For Howard, the activity surrounding it is a marker in identifying Americans relationship to food.

Samantha Dixon
Tethered
Exhibition dates: Monday, April 15 - Friday, April 19, 2013
Reception: Friday, April 19, 6-8 pm

Tethered alludes to the innate fear of forgetting where an individual's family originates, both physically and historically. After recently discovering that Dixon's family was almost completely annihilated by the Holocaust, Tethered is visual documentation of the long-term effects of families of survivors. The exhibition is also influenced by her grandmother's experiences as a Mauthausen concentration camp survivor and her experiences being raised by a survivor.   

The knowledge of the imminent loss of memory initiates an instinct to repetitively record and remember personal history. Numerous memories have been forcefully buried in the darkest recesses of the minds of many family members, and they continuously surface through communication with her mother and grandmother.  As personal memory is collectively shared, psychological effects of the survivor pass on through storytelling. As each object develops, Dixon continues to search for threads between history, place, and identity as a way to demonstrate a new reality, a struggle, and a story.

The books and prints in the exhibition symbolize the compilation and transportation of memory that is witnessed through sensory communication. Fragility of memory and history are emphasized through the use of materials and construction of each object. Many of the objects reiterate the struggle to address what is missing or what will eventually disappear and never return. Other objects symbolize the residual effects of the past and how they are still present in her family's daily lives. The iconography of loss plays an important role in constructing each piece, creating a complex relationship between narration and symbolization. Each object attempts to grasp a lost identity and the haunting memories of experiences that are not fully understood.


Kat Wilson
Portrayal
Exhibition dates: Monday, April 22 - Friday, April 26, 2013
Reception: Friday, April 26, 6-8 pm

Portrayal examines the relationship between an artist's work, an
artist's public self, and the gossip surrounding the artist's public
and private life. The goal of this series is to visually immerse each
artist within his or her own artwork, thus personifying the relationship between the artist and the body of work. Portrayal examines the lives of individuals as observed through the eyes and lens of the artist- Wilson's photographs reflect her respect and admiration for each subject. These staged photographs portray Wilson's own knowledge of her subjects and demonstrate her ability to make them feel comfortable enough to reveal their true self. The portraits evoke a cinematic quality and appear to capture a lifetime in one single frame.

Portrayal is ultimately a study of the juxtaposition between the public and private life of an artist who must reveal the private in their art and protect the private in public realm.






Stephanie Petet
Painting by Stephanie Petet
Senior Painting and Drawing Students Present: a series of one night exhibitions under the direction of painting professor, Stephanie Pierce  

These exhibitions will take place at LALALAND Art Gallery, located at 641 Martin Luther King Blvd, Fayetteville, AR  (behind the Art Experience).

Figuratively Speaking, work by Mia Buonaiuto and Ray Parker
Friday, April 19, reception 7-9 pm with music by Candy Lee beginning at 7:30 pm

We Sages: Repeat and dense, work by Natalie Brown and Ben Flowers
Thursday, April 25, 8-9 pm

Stranded in Hypothesis, work by Shannon Vance
Saturday, May 4, 4-6 pm

Synthetic Syncopation, work by Ashley Lindsey and Stephanie Petet
Friday, May 10, reception 7-9 pm with music by WitchSister and Foley's Van starting at 9 pm



Mary Kate Massanelli
A Narrative Self-Portrait
Annual Awards and Scholarship Exhibition
Monday, April 29 - Saturday, May 4, 2013
Awards presentation and gallery reception: Friday, May 3, 2013 at 5 pm

The Department of Art is pleased to present a group exhibition of current BA and BFA students.

This exhibition will be comprised of work from all media, showcasing each department within the College and will highlight the multidisciplinary talents our students possess. Specific works will be selected for awards and scholarships. Please join us for the awards reception on Friday, May 3 at 5 pm for the announcement and presentation of these awards. The exhibition will be open to the public during the ARTwalk on Saturday May 4 from 2 to 5 pm.


Saturday, May 4 is the ARTwalk

sUgAR Projects announces the Spring 2013 Art Walk. The art walk will be held on Saturday May 4, 2013 from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. The Fine Arts building and the Ceramics Studio building will host work from the University of Arkansas Departments of  Fine Art, Landscape Architecture and Interior Design. Professors and students will be available to answer questions regarding the work on display. Additionally, the fine art studios will be open for touring. This is an exciting time for each of these respective departments and we are delighted to share this with the public.  Receptions will be held at each location and are free and open to the public.



Graduating BFA Exhibition

Monday, May 6 - Saturday, May 11, 2013
Gallery reception: Friday, May 10 at 5 pm
Gallery will be open on Saturday, May 11 from 12 to 5 pm

The Fine Arts Center Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition of the 2013 BFA Fine Arts Graduating class. The exhibition will present work in a wide range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture, as well as graphic design.


GALLERY INFO:

Fine Arts Center Gallery
Cynthia Nourse Thompson ([email protected])
Curator and Director of Exhibitions
Department of Art
University of Arkansas, FNAR
Fayetteville, AR 72701
479-575-7987

sUgAR Projects
student directors:
Samantha Dixon ([email protected])
Cambry Pierce-DuPerier-Newton ([email protected])
Laura Polaski ([email protected])
Bryanna Jarmillo ([email protected])
More info: 479-575-5202

Fine Arts Center Gallery and sUgAR Gallery events are free and open to the public.

Thank you for your interest in and support for the Department of Art's free public programming if you would like to make a gift of support to the department, gallery programming, or underwrite our lecture series please contact the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences or call 479-575-3712.

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