Student News

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Joi West, a BFA candidate in photo and digital media, won one of four $250 cash awards in the Adult Division in this year’s Double Exposure juried photo competition. Sponsored by the Arts Council of Tuscaloosa, the annual contest is open to Alabama photographers. The juror was Dominic Lipillo, Assistant Professor of Art, Mississippi State University. West, a senior originally from Hueytown, has been a gallery assistant in the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art for two years. http://www.joiwest.com/.  Also juried into Double Exposure were UA art majors HEATHER LISTON (BFA candidate, painting) and ALAINA DENEAN CLARK (BA candidate in photography), as well as UA art alumna Bethany Windham Engle.[Sg13]

VIRGINIA ECKINGER was juried into the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts’ 2013 National Student Juried Exhibition, February 15 – March 23, 2013, in Houston. Jurors were Bonnie Seeman and Kevin Snipes. ECKINGER and fellow grad student MARK BARRY held their joint MA exhibition, A Version of Events, at the Harrison Galleries in April. Eckinger told the CW that her art works “are inspired by fairy-tales somewhat, and deal with identity and sexuality and society’s perceptions of that.” Barry described his work as “a personal investigation of the physical and emotional effects of illness and disease.”[Sg13]

CLAIRE LEWIS EVANS’s MA exhibition Signs of Life has come and gone but there are still “signs” of it around. The Black Belt Bamboost Park adjacent to the Kentuck Park in Northport was the location of her bamboo sculpture installation and demonstration in October. Courtney Haden of Weld posted an illuminating interview of Lewis Evans here.[Sg13]

ANNE HERBERT and DARIUS HILL held a joint thesis exhibition, she for the MFA and he for the MA, titled Amalgam. Although they seem to have little in common in their work, time may be their common element. Herbert had the insight that she explores moments of recognition and an unfolding experience in her work, while Hill turns and re-turns popular culture images into iconic symbols.[Sg13]

ASTRI SNODGRASS’s paintings were featured in the Ferguson Center Art Gallery in February. Originally from St. Charles, IL, Snodgrass is a first-year grad student in painting and recently won Honorable Mentions at the 28th West Alabama Juried Show and at the Emerging Artists’ Exhibition, ArtHaus, Decorah, IA.[Sg13]

ALAINA Denean CLARK (BA candidate in photography) won an honorable mention in Photographers Forum’s 33rd Annual College and High School Photography Contest. Out of over 16,000 entries, there were only 100 honorable mentions. Click here for more info and the Winners’ Gallery.[Sg13]

In January, the 2013 Juried Undergraduate Exhibition was held in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery. Jurors for the 2013 Juried Undergraduate Exhibition were Sandra Wolfe, Executive Director of the Arts and Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa, and James Harrison III, Chairman of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. $300 for Best In Show was awarded to Kelsey Syx for Eric Marcus, Professor of Philosophy.[Sg13]

UA studio art grad student MARK BARRY is getting lots of notice this summer. Barry was mentioned in an Oxford American review of the 2012 “Southern Open” juried exhibition (Lafayette, LA) in which he had three works (scroll down the page). He was also one of about only 16 artists from the US (ca. 240 total) accepted into the Santorini Biennial of Art’s inaugural exhibition The Past: History, Time, Memory and Nostalgia. Barry’s painting and the other artists’ works in the exhibition will be “configured throughout the island to build various platforms in which to open a dialogue with the public.” The exhibition runs August 1 – September 30.[F12]

BEN BAILEY, the department’s nominee for the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts scholarship, won the award and will spend his summer in the Smokies![S/S12]

Graduate student MARK BARRY won Best Sculpture in the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) Third National Juried Art Exhibition, Wide Open 3, for his work, Give and Take. Juror was Charlotta Kotik, Curator Emerita of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The show ran March 18 – April 1 in BWAC’s massive Civil War-era warehouse on the Red Hook waterfront in Brooklyn, NY. See more of Barry’s work here.[S/S12]

Art history grad students MARY K. BENEFIELD and BRANDI MOORE presented papers at the 17th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, held in February jointly by UAB and UA. and hosted by UAB.[S/S12]

Art work by MICAH CRAFT was chosen by chair CATHY PAGANI to represent The University of Alabama in the Fourth Annual Emerging Artists Exhibit at the Coastal Arts Center of Orange Beach from May through July. JULI JORDAN, UA art alumnus and Visiting Artists and Special Exhibits Administrator said,“The idea is to offer an opportunity for graduating visual arts students to exhibit and sell their work during the peak season. It’s also an opportunity for the community and visitors to see what is emerging from our colleges and universities.” Craft sold all his work on display at the exhibit.[S/S12]

BFA major JACOB DAVIDSON was named Full Moon Emerging Artist at Kentuck in December 2011. He presented a solo exhibition of prints of his character, “Toaster Boy,” in the Georgine Clarke Building. Davidson explained, “‘Toaster Boy’ and his contemporary contraptions are responses to questions concerning my own usefulness in and contribution to my community and culture. Graphic designers occupy a strange limbo in the service industry that has been brought on by technological advances that are constantly challenging their appropriate function for and overall usefulness to the client.” Davidson’s “personal struggle” has made him aware of “uncertainties.” Davidson continues: “One of these uncertainties deals with the robot-like approach [to making design work] that evolved alongside technological advances that make graphic design as easy as learning to operate the right programs. Are we just robots doing something someone else could do if they just took the time? The more aware I become of the world of ‘Toaster Boy,’ the closer I am to answering these questions for myself.”  Davidson, who is currently pursuing a BFA in digital art and painting, explains, “As opposed to drawing or painting, where creativity arises out of working directly on the surface, printmaking shifts the creative process so that the artist is removed from the final destination of his artwork. My brain clicked with this shift when I made my first print and I knew this was a new favorite medium.”[S/S12]

In January, CLAIRE LEWIS EVANS exhibited recent sculpture and mixed media work at the Kentuck Gallery in Northport and she was part of “a public art gesture” at the UA Arboretum in December titled 500 Gifts. Lewis Evans and her fellow exhibitors are all graduate students and known as the Arboretum Five: James Davis, Virginia Eckinger, Claire Lewis Evans, Anne Herbert, and Chism Lien. Photos are here:
http://clairelewisevans.com/section /276571_500_Gifts.html.[S/S12]

ANNE HERBERT held her MA exhibition, Bloom, at the Ferguson Center Art Gallery in February.  She recently was appointed exhibition coordinator for the student center gallery, just in time to hang the annual Japanese print show curated by CATHY PAGANI with assistance from Pagani’s students in ARH 254 and ARH 455.[S/S12]

BFA majors ADAM HILL and BROOKE HOWELL exhibited their sculpture, ceramics, and graphic design artwork in May at the Harrison Galleries in downtown Tuscaloosa. In March, Hill was one of only ten students in the U.S. to receive a $15,000 Windgate Fellowship from the University of North Carolina – Asheville’s Center for Craft, Creativity and Design. Brooke Howell just found out she has been accepted to a second summer internship with the marketing department at Protective Life Insurance Company in Birmingham doing graphic design. She writes, “I had a really good experience with them last time. I did an internship with them two summers ago and they want me back this summer!”[S/S12]

AMBER JONES’S BFA exhibition, Hot Steams, in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery, brought together Jones’s art work and ideas from the last several years in a installation that acknowledged the artistic debt she owes her family and the local culture of her native west Alabama. Photos: http://bit.ly/AmberJonesBFA.[S/S12]

The Arts & Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa hosted ROTATION, an exhibition of drawings by MFA candidate ROGER JONES, at the Bama Theatre’s Junior League Gallery in April. About his work, Jones wrote: “In these drawings, sensations induced by sound are explored as visual concepts through mark making.  The accumulation of marks mimics the arrangement of sound in musical sequences. Surfaces that retain the history of each image’s development render the work an intersection between concept and material. Visual themes that emerge within this series position each drawing as a stage in an ongoing process.”[S/S12]

AYNSLEE MOON, grad student in painting, is curating art exhibitions this summer at the Pie Lab in Greensboro. Moon was a finalist in Ruminate Magazine’s 2011 Visual Art Prize. Four pieces were featured in the winter 2011 issue; more paintings were published in their spring 2012 issue. She had two paintings juried into the Third Annual Figurative Drawing and Painting Exhibition at the Lore Degenstein Gallery in Selinsgrove, PA. In April, Moon had a solo show at the Pie Lab.[S/S12]

Printmaking students GREG RANDALL and JOSEPH ROBERTSON won the Arts and Sciences Division of Fine Arts and Humanities Poster Presentation at the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference for their poster, “Discovering Photogravure.” They undertook senior independent study projects with printmaking professor SARAH MARSHALL, researching photogravure, which is based on intaglio principles, but uses photographic images rather than drawn ones. The poster depicted Randall’s and Robertson’s illustrated step-by-step process, their “Results” so far, and a bibliography. Robertson wrote in their Results: “Now that we have the ability to generate good photogravures we are working with the more difficult to quantify issues of aesthetics.”[S/S12]

Art grad student KELLY SHANNON and Creative Campus built a larger-than-life sculpture, The Nest, with branches and tornado debris from the aftermath of the April 27, 2011, tornado. The Nest was unveiled Feb. 25, in “an interactive community event.” The student arts organization selected “community members to paint and assemble their own branches into The Nest sculpture in commemoration of April 27th.” According to CC’s press release, UA students cleared and collected the debris for use in the sculpture in partnership with the Tuscaloosa Area Volunteer Reception Center. The Nest is intended to be “a beacon of rejuvenation in the midst of the tornado’s destruction” and “weaves together these scattered pieces of the Tuscaloosa community.”[S/S12]

STEPHEN WATSON held his MA exhibition, Curved Taper-and-Swell, at Harrison Galleries in March. More of Watson’s work is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewatson.[S/S12]

SENIOR EXHIBITIONS IN 2011 & 2012

In December 2011, Capstone Expo Senior Studio Exhibition, in the Ferguson Center Art Gallery, showcased art work in several media by UA studio art students. Participants were graduating seniors JACOB DAVIDSON, BFA; KATIE JAEGER, BA; AMBER JONES, BFA; ASHTON MINTO, BA; LAUREN RUEL BA; and TRISTAN WATTS, BA.  Ceramics, painting, photography, and sculpture were represented.
In May, studio art majors graduating with a BA exhibited their work in the 2012 BA Senior Show in the Ferg Gallery with STEPHANIE BRUMFIELD, TIFFANY ETHRIDGE, KELSIE FAIR, SOPHIE HALL, COREY A. LOLLAR, MARTIKA TOWNSEND, and SCOTT WILLOUGHBY. Media included painting, photography, sculpture, digital media, and ceramics. Along with producing the work, the students also helped coordinate and hang their exhibition.More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uaart/sets/.[S/S12]

STUDENTS CURATE DIGITAL PHOTO SHOW

After curating an exhibit of work chosen from the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama, including works by visiting artist Sheila Pree Bright, students in Professor CHRIS JORDAN’s advanced digital photography course curated an exhibit of their own art work. Digital Obscura, on display in December 2011 at the Paul R. Jones Gallery in Tuscaloosa, followed Visual Narratives: The Photographs of Sheila Pree Bright, in October. Seniors DREW HOOVER, BRITTANY SIMON; sophomore CAYCE SAVAGE; junior JOHN MICHAEL SIMPSON; and graduate students NIKKI CHURCH, MARI MULLER, and ANDREW PRUETT put together the show after participating in classroom critiques with artist Sheila Pree Bright. Media included fabricated realities, stroboscopic techniques, expressive documentary, abstraction, and experimental printing processes.[S/S12]

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