I kind of trailed off on my monthly flower photos towards the end of winter, so here are a few leftover ones I haven't posted yet! They are: two pictures of Gymnocalycium damsii var. rotundulum, an almost-blooming Tillandsia seleriana, and a blooming Tillandsia ionantha.
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!
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.
I submitted two pieces (All Out and City Solstice) for consideration in this juried alumni show held during Penn's Alumni Weekend, and despite strong preference being given to submissions from artists definitely attending the event, my entries were also accepted! (My own attendance is quite unlikely unless I happen to end up in the area at the same time, so I said no to definitely attending.)
So if you happen to be on or near Penn's campus from May 11-25, you should stop in to the Burrison Gallery to check them out.
From their website: The Gallery, located in the University Club at Penn on the 2nd floor of The Inn at Penn, 3611 Walnut Street, is open Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
I will be spending part of this upcoming summer in Agüimes, Gran Canaria of the Canary Islands, Spain, at this very exciting artist residency: La Pedrada de Noemi. The Canary Islands are located off the northwest coast of Africa, and I have always wanted to explore African island ecologies - Madagascar and Mauritius are still on the wish list! The Canary Islands just seemed like a great fit given that the language and governance will be quite familiar as I have cumulatively spent around eight months in various parts of Spain, but the environment will be an interesting departure.
The Canary Islands have a very biodiverse marine ecosystem, so I plan to purchase an affordable underwater camera and create artwork based on that aspect as well as any terrestrial fauna or flora I find compelling.
I will also be extending my layover on the way to LPA as one of the routes went through Dublin and I would love a chance to explore that city (and potentially the neighboring countryside).
It should be a fun and productive summer!
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!
My painting All Out has been accepted for publication in DASH Literary Journal, which is published through the California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics since 2008.
It will be printed in the upcoming issue slated to come out in May 2018.
OK, this is too cool - apparently puffin beaks fluoresce! Particularly given my recent foray into fluorescent sculpture and my mixed media acrylic series on Atlantic puffins, I'm feeling inspired to perhaps make a fluorescent puffin of my own soon...!
I have another group exhibition coming up! My mixed media painting Littoral Layers was accepted into the Art Reach of Mid-Michigan's Climate Change Juried Show. 16 artists were selected to exhibit in this national exhibition.
The exhibition, held in the Morey Family Gallery at 111 E. Broadway St., Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858, opens on April 4th and runs through April 28th. There will be a reception on April 5th from 5:00-6:30pm with normal gallery hours of M-F 10:00am-5:30pm and Sa 10:00am-4:00pm. For more information, call 989-773-3689 to speak to Art Reach.
As a professor, I have been a part of many discussions regarding campus security and active shooters. I just read this article about a problem related to gun ownership that I hadn't realized was happening, though: An Alarming Number of Guns Are Waiting to Be Found in Campus Restrooms
I have returned a couple cell phones that have been forgotten atop toilet tanks to their owners. I myself accidentally left a plane ticket in an airport restroom stall and had to run back to get it around six minutes later when I discovered it was missing. It makes complete sense to me that people forget their loaded guns as well, particularly because they aren't a frequently-used accessory. I have no doubt that if the number of guns on campus increase, the number of accidentally abandoned, loaded guns will also increase.
Here're a few readings for you that I've been interested in lately:
The Place of the Arts in a Liberal Education by David W. Oxtoby
How Engaging With Art Affects the Human Brain by Kat Zambon
How the Environmental Humanities Can Heal Our Relationship to the Planet by Ben Valentine
Should Some Species Be Allowed to Die Out? by Jennifer Kahn
Here are a few more photos from my Finding Light exhibition currently up in USM's Goppert Gallery! I'm taking photos in batches (it is very hard to get good photos in low-light settings, so I take some, see if I have any good ones, post, and repeat!). It's not hard to take photos of the non-interactive parts of the show, so I haven't been focusing on those just yet since it's more important to figure out the photography for the interactive pieces since they're so tough to capture! So first up - here are some additional photos of All That I See. The algae that is growing on the sculpture is a local species - I took water from USM's pond and have been cycling it and keeping it alive and flourishing for several months now within the sculpture's glass container.
This Friday was my opening reception for my Goppert Gallery exhibition Finding Light. I will share a more comprehensive set of photos with you in a bit, but here's a teaser! The show is up through March 9th if you want to experience it firsthand.
I just completed a new piece of artwork - the second companion piece to Pilgrim. I had intended to do at least two from the start, but it took a while to find the studio time to devote to the second piece.
In this one, I wanted to achieve a real sense of depth in my relief without being cartoonish. My aim was to maintain the possibility of illusionism from some angles - particularly that of the shallower sections. With Pilgrim, there is a relatively shallow relief over the entirety of the sloth's body. In this new piece, the sloth's body contains an area that is solely painted with no relief at all and then extremely shallow through rather bold relief.
I'm considering titling this one Outreach. It's Quick Cure Clay and acrylic on basswood panel, 12x6x1.75", 2018. Due to the dimensions of the piece, it shows up quite large below; if you click on it though it will open up in an overlay that depending on your monitor and settings will probably be smaller and more of a gestalt.
Below you can see a couple in-progress photos of the relief work before I applied paint.
I'm having a solo show in USM's Goppert Gallery that will have its opening reception next Friday afternoon (the 16th)! Here's the press release with all pertinent details. I hope to see you there!
Sometimes Lex likes to pretend she's a bat.
Some very exciting news - Quick Cure Clay (QCC), the clay I helped Dr. John Pojman develop, is now being licensed by Ranger Industries! Ranger has products in nationwide stores like Michael's, so it might not be long before you can find it for sale in your neighborhood. Here's a Greater Baton Rouge Business Report article about the deal (and about other startups that LSU is incubating).
You can see the product listing on Ranger's site as well!
I am so happy about this! The clay is such a pleasure to work with that it really deserves market success. And speaking of the clay and how nice it is to use, I've been working on another relief piece recently... more on that soon!
We are hosting an interesting spontaneously-added exhibition this week in USM's Goppert Gallery - Joy Anne Duquette's Sightings and Daydreams, with the opening reception having taken place on Friday, January 26th. Since it wasn't in our original gallery schedule, it's only up through this next Friday, February 2nd at 3pm, so if you want to see it you should come by soon! Here's the press release for the show.
Here are the photos from the final month of 2017! We've got fewer flowers for sure this December - just this Copiapoa hypogaea, Gymnocalycium pfanzii var albipulpa, Sansevieria cylindrica, and Sansevieria phillipsiae, respectively. This fruit on my Gymnocalycium mihanovichii has also been around since at least November, but it really started becoming eye-catching in December. It is now in the process of drying out.
