LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Journal 2

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Over that first weekend, I attended the Baton Rouge Bromeliad Society Show & sale, went to a Beatles cover band concert by the Remnants (they did play one CCR song, which is more my jam), listened to the artists’ talks for the Baton Rouge Gallery’s current four-person exhibition, spent some time in my host Rob’s studio (mine still hadn’t been made available to me yet) and took a 4.5 mile walk around University Lake to try out my new camera!

Let me back up. After I agreed to take on this residency, I applied for and was awarded a Morningside University Ver Steeg Faculty Scholarship Grant to help cover associated costs. These include the mundane, like mileage, but also the exciting: a new camera and larger substrates than I have been typically using as well as more paint/mediums.

My old camera is a Sony RX100 II, and I adore it. However, it is eight years old and it’s having ever-more-serious issues; when I wrote the grant application a couple of months ago, I shared that “it is having problems focusing, retracting its lens, and opening and closing its automatic lens cover.” However, it has now also factory-reset itself and then later during a photoshoot the screen showing the previous photo wouldn’t clear and the camera behaved as though I was taking a new photo of the previous photo including trying to adjust focus. It’s not dead yet, but its reliability is heavily faltering.

Eight years is a significantly-above-average lifespan for a digital point-and-shoot camera, and I am a heavy and hard user; this camera has been to the Amazon rainforest, Iceland, and everywhere else I’ve been in the past eight years, and it has put up with internal condensation, ants, and all sorts of environmental conditions. My previous two cameras maybe averaged three years each? So I have a lot of respect for the Sony RX100 series.

My new camera is therefore the Sony RX100 VII. On my test-drive walk around the lake, I took photos in shade, in light, of still objects, of animals, from close range and at distance. Some differences I noted pretty quickly: the zoom appears to be better, and there’s a forced-focus feature. Much like on a cell phone, you can press on the large glass touchscreen view on the back of the camera and force the focus. At first, I was absolutely in love with this feature. I still think I’d elect to have it, but there is a downside; any time you touch the back glass, you’ll set it - even if you don’t mean to touch it at all. Then you have to figure out that it’s been set, and at that point you will need to manually clear it.

When I returned to the vet school on Monday, I was given the keys to the kingdom: my badge which allows me access to my studio as well as all other gated-off areas not for public access, and the door key to the studio itself (a temporarily converted conference room). This week I also met with an epidemiologist specializing in mosquito-borne viruses, wildlife medicine, and integrative medicine. I visited the clinical skills laboratory and the histology labs, spent a bit of time in the farm animal and equine areas, got to watch a red-shouldered hawk release, and began to delve into my studio practice.

In addition, I went out to dinner one evening with my former graduate school professor and mentor Kelli Scott Kelley, and then we took in a jazz concert afterwards!

Also a big thanks to Sandy Sarr, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s Communications Coordinator and my primary point of contact, for documenting my residency so well. I rarely get so many good photos of myself in action!

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Journal 1

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When I agreed to do this new artist residency at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, my initial assumption was that I’d fly down. However, upon deeper thought, that seemed like it’d be very expensive in that I’d then need to rent a vehicle for two months. I decided I’d instead drive down to Baton Rouge, which is approximately 16.5 hours away from my home in Sioux City.

I broke the drive into three days - on the first day, I finished packing and loaded the car up and then went down to Leavenworth, KS, to visit my very good friend, former colleague, and amazing artist Susan Nelson. The following day, I drove down to Benton, AR, where I had booked an AirBnB ahead of time. Then the final day I made my way to Baton Rouge, LA!

Some observations: It was extremely windy when I left IA (in fact, it was under a tornado watch) and it remained windy until I got south of the KCMO metro. In terms of roadkill, the main species in IA, KS, and most of MO were raccoon followed by possum. Then in southern MO through AR and LA, armadillo was the most common.

I arrived on a Tuesday evening and I met my host: the talented artist Rob Carpenter. He’s a retired art professor from Nicholls State University, and he graciously offered to house me for free in his “auxiliary dwelling unit” or “microtel” as he describes it. It is the smallest space I’ve ever lived in, so it is a novel experience for me. Rob and I then were treated to dinner with Sandy Sarr, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s Communications Coordinator and my initial and primary point of contact.

That following morning, I arrived at LSU Vet Med to get onboarding processes begun and receive some orientation. The next two days were filled with meetings - I met a neuroscientist, an equine surgeon and an equine internal medicine clinician, a DNA researcher, and a clinical pathologist. As a part of these meetings, I explored several laboratories, became relatively familiar with the large animal (equine and farm animal) hospital, and met possibly the world’s cutest two-day-old baby Nubian goat.

In addition, I attended a Baton Rouge Gallery opening for their current exhibition of four members’ work: my host Rob Carpenter, Mary Ann Caffery, Theresa Herrera, and Brian Kelly. It was a hopping reception with a live jazz band, food and drinks, and lively conversation. I had decided to walk there as it was only a 20-minute walk from Rob’s house, and I was reacquainted to the fact that a lot of neighborhoods in Baton Rouge do not have sidewalks.

I also met with the LSU Museum of Art store manager, who looked over the originals and prints I brought down with me, and selected 49 reproductions they’ll put up for sale. While we were doing so, it began do downpour (I forgot how frequently it rains in BR!) so I popped upstairs and checked out the museum itself. By the time I was done, the rain had temporarily ceased and I was able to load back up without getting everything wet in the process.

Upcoming: Lauritzen Gardens Solo Show!

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I’ll be exhibiting a solo show titled Conservation Conversations at Omaha’s Lauritzen Gardens botanical center from August 17 through September 24, 2022. Mark your calendars!

If you can believe it, this exhibition has been in the works since 2020 (I’ll give you one guess as to why it took a couple more years). Below are the front and back of a rack card from Lauritzen Gardens advertising their 2022 exhibition calendar (you can click in for more detail) - I was honored that they selected one of my paintings for the large facing image!

End of the 2021-2022 Academic Year!

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Morningside’s 2022 graduation was on May 14th, and it was a really nice ceremony filled with a lot of students-becoming-alumni I have taught over the past three years! I posed for several photos, but I haven’t received copies yet - however, here’s one from our ODK honors ceremony in April. This is of Steinkamp, our 2022 Marion Shapiro award winner!

I’m posing with Rachel in front of her entry into the Morningside Reynders’ Retirement Art Contest!

Speaking of wrapping up for the year, here are some of our graduating art department majors’ websites (a capstone course assignment), if you’d like to check any or all of them out:

https://www.calissahanson.com/

https://elizabethobermeier.com/

https://gracie-eli-design.squarespace.com/

https://lexwurth.wixsite.com/lex-wurth

https://8shayjohnson.wixsite.com/my-site

https://mk0025.wixsite.com/madeline-keating

This was a fun and full academic year, and it should be a bustling summer as well!

Upcoming: Indiana University Kokomo's Biosphere Juried International Exhibition

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I have my recent bas relief Surface (which I created while attending my Whiterock Conservancy artist residency) in the upcoming juried international exhibition Biosphere hosted by Indiana University Kokomo. Out of just under 200 submitted entries, 36 pieces were selected for display.

As per the below show flyer, this exhibition will be on display from June 9 - July 9, 2022 with an opening reception on Thursday, June 9th from 4-7pm. If you’re in the region of Kokomo, Indiana, you should check it out! The gallery is located inside the Kelley Center at 2300 S. Washington St, Kokomo, IN 46902.

IU Kokomo's 2022 Biosphere exhibition flyer

IU Kokomo's 2022 Biosphere exhibition flyer

April 2022 Raku Workshop at Dakota Potters Supply

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Here are some day-of photos from the April 2022 raku workshop I attended at Dakota Potters Supply in Sioux Falls along with Morningside ceramics instructor Paul Adamson and students Lauren Hedlund and Debora Allard. The photo of finished works are some of the student pieces - I’ll post separately about my own!

Puerto Rico Photos!

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Whew, I’ve been booked up so much that I’ve not had time to download, edit, and upload photos until now! Here are some highlights from my spring break trip to Puerto Rico.

Hard at Work Making Ceramics

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I’ve been spending a lot of studio time with ceramics lately as I’ve got several bodies of work in progress simultaneously and each have different time pressures. I’ll discuss each as they continue to develop! However, in these photos I was preparing for the Dakota Potters Supply raku workshop I attended in Sioux Falls this past Saturday, April 23rd along with our ceramics instructor Paul Adamson and two Morningside students.

Since this semester has been so busy, I only had one raku piece ready to go by April 14th (the start of Morningside’s Easter break). I needed to have all the pieces I wanted to bring in the bisque firing by April 20th, which meant finishing the rawware by April 17th to give it time to dry. I cranked out seven more pieces over the holiday, so I was able to bring eight with me to the workshop! My sweet spot is between six to nine pieces for each workshop day, so that worked out perfectly.

In the first image, you can see me in the Morningside ceramics studio as I used the slab roller, a foam square, and a 6” mushroom anvil to prepare a few small platters. In the second photo, I’m handbuilding a vase in my kitchen at home.

Just Returned from the April 2022 CIC Workshop for Department and Division Chairs

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It’s a busy spring - I just returned from the April 2022 Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Workshop for Department and Division Chairs in Greenville, SC. I attended with two of my Morningside colleagues from the music and business departments.

You might be surprised to find out this was my first full academic conference. I have attended the annual College Art Association’s (CAA) conference twice, but the first time was as a graduate student job seeker, so I worked as a room monitor/projectionist in order to afford the registration cost and went to the job fair and the exhibitor and trade fair. This meant I didn’t really engage with the main conference all that much, as my availability was heavily focused on those three aspects. The second time I attended the CAA, my role was exclusively being a vendor in the exhibitor and trade fair alongside Dr. John Pojman representing QuickCure Clay. I have also attended several raku ceramic workshops at Dakota Potters, but those are geared towards production rather than discourse.

At this April 2022 CIC conference, it was rewarding to get to know my own two colleagues better as well as to get to meet peers from institutions across the United States and work with them on our various session topics. One of the presenters was Morningside’s own Bill Deeds, our retired provost who hired me onboard in his last semester!

After the conference was over, I stopped by the Greenville County Museum of Art and had a great time viewing their four exhibits, which had a heavy concentration of work by Andrew Wyeth, Jasper Johns, Thomas Sills, and David Drake. I really enjoyed Wyeth’s and Johns’ work in particular.

I'm the Inaugural Invitational Artist in Residence at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine!

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I have extremely exciting news - I have been invited to be the inaugural artist in residence at the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine this summer 2022! This brand new program is the first artist residency at a veterinary school in the United States, and it’s a huge honor to be asked to set the tone. I’ll be completing a two-month residency in June and July, with an exhibition at the end of July as well as a public lecture sponsored by the LSU School of Art.

Below is a screenshot of the email announcement sent out to LSU, and you can check out their webpage about it here.

A Taste of Puerto Rico

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I had a great time in Puerto Rico over spring break - we hiked a trail in El Yunque and swam in one of its rivers, had several beach excursions, toured the Rio Camuy Caverns, kayaked the Laguna Grande bioluminescent bay, and went out dancing! Since I fully used my break time, I immediately returned to work so I haven’t had a chance to pull any images off my cameras yet; here’s a cell phone photo on the trail down to the Rio Camuy Caverns to tide you over until then!

Spring Break in Puerto Rico!

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I’ll be visiting Puerto Rico with my friend and colleague Stacey Alex over spring break! As you might imagine, I’m excited to get to soak in the natural beauty of the island. Our planned outdoor itinerary includes kayaking on the Laguna Grande Nature Reserve’s bioluminescent bay, hiking in El Yunque National Forest, a variety of beach visits, and exploring the Rio Camuy Cave Park.

I’ll post some photos when I return!

Title IX Religious Exemptions

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Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a federal civil rights law which reads, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

All three of the higher education institutions I have taught at have complied with this law. Up until recently I had believed - mistakenly, it turns out - that any educational institution had to make a choice between adhering to Title IX and receiving federal funding, or opting out of both.

I have now learned that institutions can request religious exemptions to Title IX, receive those exemptions, and then are explicitly allowed to discriminate against their students and employees and still receive federal funding. Furthermore, the Office for Civil Rights has approved every religious exemption Title IX request filed. This includes hundreds of institutions; in late 2016 that number was at 245 and it continues to grow each year. Depending on their religious tenets, institutions can legally discriminate “on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy or receipt of abortion while still receiving federal funds.”

Last March, the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP) filed a class action lawsuit seeking to remedy this glaring civil rights loophole. As stated in the legal complaint, the institutional and legally sanctioned discrimination faced by these diverse populations includes “conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse and harassment, as well as the less visible, but no less damaging, consequences of institutionalized shame, fear, anxiety and loneliness” on our taxpayer dime.

If you too find this religious exemption to Title IX to be deeply troubling, please consider donating to the REAP team (through their parent organization Soulforce, which received an 89/100 on Charity Navigator).

Rolling with Ceramic Glaze Changes

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Speaking of glazes: I’ve been learning that the discipline of ceramics involves many variables, and some of the variables are less constant than I’d expect. In the discipline of painting, when I use up paint and I need to buy replacement tubes, they are very consistent in formulation so they are almost never perceptibly different. In ceramics, due to weight, volume, and cost issues we mix most of our glazes ourselves. This introduces a lot more human error compounded by potential supply line vendor changes in the ingredients and user contamination. To continue the comparison, it’d be like if I switched brands and sometimes even types of paint and expected continuity!

To state it simply: I’ve learned that when a bucket of glaze is gone and we remix it, I cannot expect the same aesthetics or behavior from the new glaze as from the old, even if they are purportedly the same. In some ways this is disconcerting, of course. But it is also a real opportunity, and it adds some exciting pressure and novelty into the glazing process. The novelty is self-explanatory; the pressure comes from if you want consistency since you only have as long as those buckets last for the desired effects to relatively predictably result.

Below is how Cone 6 Larry’s Black under Iron White looked with the bucket of Iron White that we were using last year.

You can see that the Iron White behaved in a very glossy way, was relatively thin at one coat but varied in thickness dependent on number and types of application coats with opacity ranging from translucent to decently opaque. At its most opaque, it was white. The Larry’s Black underneath went to a glossy and stable spectrum of various values of blue dependent on the application thickness of both colors.

We used up that bucket of glaze a few months ago, and the new Cone 6 Iron White appeared. Below are two new pieces that use Green Tweed, Larry’s Black, and the new mix of Iron White.

This Iron White is thicker at one application coat, a little yellower, and more opaque and matte. It also interacts quite differently with Larry’s Black. The matte-over-gloss effect causes the Iron White to crater and blister atop Larry’s Black; you can see it does not do that over Green Tweed as Green Tweed is itself more of a matte glaze.

Cratering and blistering are frequently considered “glaze defects,” but I enjoy the texture that some “glaze defects” provide - if you review my body of stoneware ceramic work you’ll notice that I am drawn to crawling as well.

Since these were my first pieces with the new bucket of Iron White, I didn’t know about this new interaction yet - I was expecting glossy results aligned to that first batch above. Now that I know, I’ve glazed a bunch of new ceramics with this cratering/blistering effect in mind, and they are waiting in the kiln until it’s filled up and ready to fire. I’m excited to see them come out!

New Cone 6 Glaze Combination!

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When my parents visited this past fall, my mom tried her hand at ceramics! Then at Thanksgiving, she glazed her first piece. She decided to use four different Cone 6 glazes on the small dish - she overlapped Green Tweed, Red Earth and Iron White around the sides, and then filled in the bare central triangle left in the middle with Baby Blue.

Red Earth was a new-to-the-studio glaze that we had recently acquired; it was an old recipe our ceramics faculty Paul Adamson unearthed and wanted to try again. I didn’t imagine it would look very good in combination with Green Tweed, but the overlap on my mom’s dish was small so I figured it wouldn’t matter.

When my mom’s first piece of ceramics came out of the glaze firing, I was really surprised - the overlapped spot of Red Earth over Green Tweed looked metallic and reflective! So far, I’ve only seen that kind of glaze result from raku, and those are somewhat unstable and decorative (not watertight). I was excited to see what this new food-safe stoneware glaze combination would look like on a larger scale, so I tried it out on several pieces! This glaze combination seems somewhat chaotic in terms of its uniformity, density, and reflectiveness, but I’ve always enjoyed the balance that natural chaos can bring to my tight artistic hand.

There are two views of each of the three pieces above. The bowl and egg-shaped vase both use Green Tweed as the base and then have Red Earth applied to most of the top. The striped planter combines Iron White, Green Tweed, and Red Earth in different layers.

Here are three more pieces - two more broken-eggshell vessels and another planter! These also experimented with Iron White, Green Tweed, and Red Earth in different ways. I need to take better notes on my processes, as I no longer remember the order of layering on each of these and I didn’t write it down, but more testing will reveal all such secrets in time.

Overall, I’m really pleased with how these all turned out and plan to continue experimenting with these glaze combinations more in the future!

Hot Water

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My travel through artist residencies to different parts of the world has contributed a lot to my artistic oeuvre and practice. But its impact surpasses professional rewards; it has materially changed the ways in which I see and operate within the world both big and small. One of the smaller persistent changes is that every time I have a hot shower, I really appreciate it.

I took hot water in the shower - and out of the shower! - for granted growing up. I liked it, but I don’t remember truly feeling grateful for it until after I lived without it for weeks at a time. I’ve probably only lived a cumulative of around three months without hot water. It is somewhat surprising to me that such a short period of deprivation or negative novelty can have this lasting an impact. I’m so happy it has, though! Because again, every time I step into a hot shower now, I’m impressed and thankful. I just finished a hot shower, in fact, and was marveling at it which led to my writing this post.

I recognize that this story reflects my privilege; that I was able to take hot water for granted growing up and that travel, rather than economic hardship, has led to my reevaluation of hot showers are both very fortunate circumstances. But now I am additionally fortunate for my gratitude, this transformation of an expectation into an abiding appreciation.

Do you have any “hot water” transformations?

Speaking Of Ashlar...!

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I always provide Ash with a water bowl in addition to misting. I know she drinks from the misted droplets and the water in her food rather than standing water, but I like providing her with a spot to soak if she wishes. She somewhat regularly drags coconut fiber bedding into the dish, and that’s her prerogative!

Recently, though, I saw her sitting protectively atop the wet coir in the dish one evening - a behavior I’ve not witnessed before - and I thought I spotted a bit of white that looked suspicious. I took a photo and then the next morning when she’d moved off to sleep, I investigated! Sure enough, I unearthed an egg. I’m not sure if it’s her first egg or not, but it’s the first I’ve spotted from her! She created her own lay site and ensured the right humidity - what a clever gecko she is.

Since Ash has been a solitary gecko since around eight months old, she is very likely laying infertile eggs. There is an ever so small - microscopically tiny! - chance that she could successfully undergo parthenogenesis, but I’m not holding my breath. However, this is a maturity milestone! I left the egg in the dish as she might want to circle back and eat it to reclaim some of the nutrients.

Ashlar Etching

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I was invited to take part in the ART 246 Intaglio and Collograph Printmaking course’s finals etching trade. The end of the semester is always a busy time, but I said yes; I haven’t done an etching in ten years and it’s always good to refresh and grow, plus it’s a nice interaction for all involved. Our talented instructor Stephanie VonderAhe provided me with an already beveled 3x4” copper plate with hard ground applied. The assignment was themed “the view from here.” As I was mulling over the theme and how it might fit into my artistic practice, I decided to do a portrait of Ashlar - I see her every day.

I drew the piece at home, and I just accepted any mistakes I made as I didn’t really have time to re-ground any spots. When I thought it was done, I put the plate into the acid bath for a 40min etch, took it out, and printed it. That first print was pretty good, but the drawing seemed a little flat and there were a number of areas where I wanted to add or deepen shadows and develop a sense of volume. Stephanie added a new layer of hard ground for me, and I went back into the plate a second time. We then put it in the ferric chloride again for 40 more minutes.

I printed an edition of 16, but several of those had print errors (are you supposed to count those? - I’m now thinking you’re not, but I did!). As intended, I gave away 7 to the class. I framed up one for myself, and gifted another to my parents and a third to my sister. I have just a few good prints left, but of course I do still have my plate…

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! Of course, I see some areas I could improve upon were I to do another plate or had time to fix mistakes prior to etching, but overall it’s a nice representation of Ash.