Teaching

Approaching the End of the Semester

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Well, finals begin at the end of next week for Spring 2020 here at Morningside College! It’s been a lot of work converting in-person classes to online - I spent several hours finding public domain imagery of skeletons and nude models for my figure drawing class, as just one example - but we’re making it through!

Here’s our first fully virtual senior show of the season, courtesy of our skilled student Riley Custer:

And here are some more photos from my walks around Sioux City over the past couple weeks, including a surprising and somewhat misguided street donut offering:

Time for a New Adventure!

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I am very excited to announce that I have accepted a new position starting in the fall at Morningside College in Sioux City, IA, as Art Department Head, Director of the Helen Levitt Art Gallery, and Associate Professor of Art. Morningside is a great liberal arts college with a vibrant art community, and I am enthusiastically looking forward to this new adventure and the career progression it offers me!

Nevertheless, I have been honored to have served the University of Saint Mary as Art Program Director and Assistant Professor of Art for six years, and to have earned tenure and promotion in rank to Associate Professor just as I am departing. I will miss the many amazing faculty members, staff, students, and SCL, as well as the beautiful campus, that make USM unique. I learned a lot in my time at USM and will be leaving with a multitude of treasured memories and strong friendships.

Here’s to embracing change, opportunity, and growth!

Another Student's Art Restoration Side Business Made the News!

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Haha, my art students are doing such cool things that we can’t help but dominate the news cycle here in Leavenworth - this time, senior student Gwen Logan is in the Leavenworth Times for her art restoration side business and potential career interest, which grew from a homework assignment I gave to her last fall in Painting I!

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A Student's Been Accepted into the 2019 Nelson-Atkins Curatorial Summer Academy!

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This is great news - my student Adeline Pagan Sanchez applied and was accepted into the very prestigious Nelson-Atkins Curatorial Summer Academy for this summer, which will take place on June 1-8, 2019. I wrote her recommendation letter, so I was extra invested in the outcome and I’m very proud of her for taking the initiative to apply. The Leavenworth Times featured her success on the front page!

Citizens Savings & Loan Debit Card Design Scholarship

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Citizens Savings & Loan has partnered with the University of Saint Mary to offer a university-branded debit card that raises money for student scholarships - and they put out a contest call a few months ago for designs. The winner was to receive a $500 scholarship and have their design printed as the inaugural card… and sophomore art major Adeline Pagan Sanchez won with the submission to the right!

Addy took the initiative to compete and worked very hard on this contest. She created and submitted a variety of designs since she wasn’t sure what aesthetic - cartoonish, sporty, refined - the selection team was looking for. Her classy, modern take on the USM spire and surrounding architecture hit the mark. Here’s a picture of us presenting her with the award, via an oversized ceremonial check!

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I’m proud of her and look forward to more of her successes. For further details, check out USM’s press release, which was published in the Leavenworth Times too!

Guest Artist Kelli Scott Kelley's Alternate Realities

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I am honored to share that my former graduate school professor Kelli Scott Kelley is exhibiting in USM’s Goppert Gallery, with an opening reception this afternoon! Here’s the press release for more details. Come join us if you’re in or around Leavenworth today, or stop in over the next couple weeks!

An Interesting Study on Learning Styles

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This is an interesting article about learning styles and how they may not be as important as some believe. I do think the conclusions for this specific study may not be as broadly applicable as the researchers claim, though; I took the VARK out of curiosity after reading the article and here are my results:

  • Visual 4

  • Aural 9

  • Read/Write 7

  • Kinesthetic 6

You have a multimodal learning preference.

What would that mean for the study? Does the VARK actually assess preferred learning styles particularly well? Is learning style equivalent to studying style, particularly if the test isn’t in a format that corresponds to the favored learning style? Does this study on a group of Indiana University anatomy students apply to other, possibly more diverse student populations?

I think the reality is more complex than this article suggests - people can learn from most modalities, but different levels of experience can benefit more from different modalities and a mixture is almost always more beneficial than solely offering one.

Fall 2018 Teaching Schedule!

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It's that time of year - this morning USM held its annual matriculation ceremony, and tomorrow classes start!  I will be teaching Sculpture, Painting I, Typography, and Art Career Internship.  I'm looking forward to meeting new students and hearing how returning students have spent their summers!

The Spring Student Art Exhibition and the End of the Academic Year!

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We had a great Spring Student Art Exhibition, which was accompanied by the annual judging for Miller Art Awards.  Our guest judge this year was alumna and graphic designer Lea Whitson!  Here are some photos of the show, but there were so many more pieces than what you'll see in this slideshow.

This Saturday was also our graduation, and it is always wonderful to see my students walk across that stage but just a little bit sad knowing that I won't see them return again in fall.  I hope they go on to do great things but also stay in touch!

One of My Non-Art-Major Students Is Now a Commissioned Artist!

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Exercise science student Sam Schoon took my Advanced Honors Seminar in Interdisciplinary Art last year, and in the segment on physics and art learned about liquid dynamics and how artists can create beautiful abstract patterns through pouring slightly higher density paint onto a lower density one from our guest lecturer Dr. Pat Bunton of William Jewell College's Physics Program.  She gave her two small pieces of liquid dynamics artwork to Pat at the end of the course, and he hung them in his office.  A while later, his Department Chair saw them and liked them so much she had Pat reach back out to Sam this past fall and ask if she'd be willing to do a much bigger piece sometime this year for departmental decor.  Sam took up the challenge even though it was outside of her comfort zone, and she recently delivered the finished piece to Pat!  Below is a photo of us with her artwork right before she handed it over and was paid.

I'm proud of Sam for taking this on, working hard, and overcoming surprise obstacles in the process to accomplish this very cool goal.

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Kristina Carbrey's Being Human Solo Exhibition in Goppert Gallery

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Kristina Carbrey's lithograph Place in My Heart

Kristina Carbrey's lithograph Place in My Heart

Graduating senior Kristina Carbrey's senior thesis solo exhibition is on display in Goppert Gallery - it opened with a reception on Friday, April 6th from 3-5pm, with normal gallery hours of 9am-3pm April 6-20.  Kristina is a very talented artist interested in the human form and psychology and she put together an impressive body of work for this exhibition so I encourage you to check it out!  She's also donating all proceeds from sales through this show to the Ulman Cancer Fund and spending her summer biking 4K across the US to raise money and awareness for this charity.  I think it will be an amazing adventure!  If you'd like to donate directly to this cause, here is her link.

Here's the press release from her show - come take a look and also see if any of her work wants to accompany you home!

A New Year, a New Semester!

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It's that time again!  Spring 2018 at USM will start on Monday, January 15th, and with it, my courses: Introduction to Printmaking, Computer Graphics, Advanced Honors Seminar in Interdisciplinary Art, and Art Career Internship, Advanced Studios, and Senior Exhibit (the latter three counting together as one course load).

I look forward to seeing new and returning students and all the new artwork they'll produce!

The Rashel's Immigration & Community Engagement Exhibition

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As part of a campus-wide interdisciplinary focus on social justice, immigration, and human rights, with events centering on on these topics will take place throughout the month of September, we in the Art Program brought A K M Jabed Rashel and Tajreen Shupti Akter to USM's Goppert Gallery with their show The Rashel's Immigration & Community Engagement Exhibition.  Here's their press release!  

If you're in the area, you should not only come and check it out but consider buying - all proceeds will be donated to the relief efforts supporting Rohingya refugees.  The show will be up through October 6th.

Leavenworth Times Article on My Graphic Design Class's Digital Colorization Project

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The Leavenworth Times wrote a front-page article on one of our class projects - digital colorization - in AR 383 Graphic Design!  You can read it here.

USM Baptism Stole

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Last week, University of Saint Mary President Diane Steele dropped by one of my classes to ask me or one of my students to decorate a baptism stole for one of our own esteemed colleagues who is getting baptized this Friday.

Given the seriousness of the event and the once-off support media, I chose to take the task on myself so as to make sure it was a well-executed piece.  I took pieces of some of our logos and printed them out at the proper scale, handcut them into stencils, and painted them onto each side of the stole.  I then freehand-painted somewhat stylized fire and water below the stencils.  I took my time in doing it, and it even surprised me how long it did take - around 7 hours!  But I think it turned out quite well.

Arcilia Gonzalez's Senior Art Exhibition

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My student Arcilia Gonzalez is graduating this spring, and her senior exhibition is having its opening reception tomorrow!  Come to Goppert Gallery between 3-5pm on Friday, April 7th to take in Not Just Beautiful, but Alive and Breathing - or if you absolutely can't make it then, it will be up through April 21st.  Here's the press release!

Arcilia's graduation marks the fourth year that I've been teaching at USM, so hers is the first class I've seen all the way through from freshmen to graduation.  She's also been a work study student of mine, and is an interesting, good person, so I'll miss her in a number of ways.  Arcilia has another show in the region this winter, though, so I'll get to see her again after she graduates in the not too distant future.

A Photo Gallery from My LASM Exhibition Trip

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I have a few more photos to share from my LASM exhibition and associated demos/events!  This was a fantastically fun trip, all thanks to the amazing Dr. John Pojman.

A Sneak Peek at My In-Progress Sloth Bas Relief

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As I've mentioned before, I'm teaching an extra course this semester - Honors Seminar: Interdisciplinary Art.  The course is structured into a few different sections, with the first exploring my own interdisciplinary interests (science and art, particularly involving the fields of ecology, biology, anatomy, botany, and my collaborative work in chemistry with Dr. John Pojman developing 3P QuickCure Clay).  

For this segment, the students must use QCC and make at least one piece of artwork that explores the fields listed above that are interdisciplinary interests of mine.  Since it's such a personal-to-me assignment, I decided I'd join in on the project.  I'd considered doing a sloth for a while - I met and got to directly interact with one named Peregrina in Peru during my 2014 residency there - but I didn't want the piece to be too cutesy so I kept dismissing the subject matter until I felt ready to tackle it with a somewhat more complex take on the animal.   I decided the time is now, mostly due to finding this elongated panel (its dimensions are 6x12") which felt like a perfect match to the gangly nature of the sloth.  

I plan to paint it, so the end piece will look considerably different than this, but here's a sneak peek at the relief work before adding any paint.

Spring Classes are Coming!

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The Spring 2017 semester is almost upon us!  At the University of Saint Mary, we commemorate Martin Luther King Day instead of taking it as a holiday, so Monday was slated to be out first day of classes... but the weather has other plans, and to avoid the predicted ice storm and attempt to help unravel the resultant travel complications our students are already facing, we have canceled classes on Monday and will instead begin Spring 2017 classes on Tuesday.

This semester, I am teaching an overload (five classes instead of my typical four): Basic Design, Drawing II, Typography, Honors Seminar: Interdisciplinary Art, and Art Career Internship/Advanced Studios/Senior Exhibit.  The overload is due to taking on the Honors Seminar; I'm very excited about it as I got to create the class entirely with our honor student population and my own academic interests in mind.