On Thursday evening, April 27, digital media students in Assistant Professor Jane Cassidy's ART 408/326 will screen several works they created over the semester, on Woods Quad. The screening will take place from 8 to 10 pm and the public is invited and encouraged to bring a blanket or folding chair to watch the "movies"!
Art and Art History Students Present Research at URCA
FLIGHT SIMULATION Senior BFA major Kalypso Homan made a head-spinning presentation at the recent Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference held at UA. Art history majors Nadia DelMedico, Sommer Hallquist and art history minor Reed O’Mara presented their research in posters during a session held in the Heritage Ballroom at Ferguson Student Center on UA campus. Homan explained how her dizzying idea was brought to life: “The aim of this project is to use a HTC Vive headset to bring the viewer on a 3D time-based immersive virtual reality experience. With our research we are exploring the possibility for a realistic flight simulation from the point of view of a bird. This simulation takes the form of a predatory chase. The player will enter the role of the prey fleeing a supernatural force, the goal being to add a sense of speed, urgency and fear to the simulation. The entire experience should be so intense that the player might suspend disbelief for long enough to believe that they are flying, or even flying for their life.” ART HISTORY RESEARCH POSTERS Junior art history major Nadia DelMedico presented original research into extant slave dwellings on the antebellum UA campus. Her poster titled, “Too Close to Home: The History of Slavery on the University of Alabama Campus,” was selected as the third place winner in the Arts & Humanities category of the URCA poster sessions. DelMedico’s poster also won second place in the Harrison Awards for Excellence in Research at the Undergraduate Poster Presentation during the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History at UA’s Bryant Conference Center. Other presenters at the URCA poster session included senior double major in art history and anthropology Sommer Hallquist. Hallquist's poster was titled "Images of Antichrist within Bible moralisée Codex Vindobonensis 2554, Vienna, Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek." Economics and German major Reed O'Mara presented her art history research poster, "Getting Ahead: The Roles of Headless Saints in the Contest for Coronation Site."
UA Students Create Digital Media in Two Venues
The public is invited to experience two digital media events created by students of UA Assistant Professor Jane Cassidy this week! An exhibition in Ferguson Student Center Art Gallery opens with a reception on Wednesday, April 5, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., and runs through April 15, 2017. The exhibit includes print works as well as gifs, stop-motion animation, video and other formats. Then, during First Friday on April 7, everyone is invited to experience "video reality" in downtown Tuscaloosa! Digital media students have made new work in response to the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama and it will be projected on two downtown Tuscaloosa galleries. The Jones Projection will happen between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. One projection will be on the side of Grace Aberdean Habitat Alchemy, on 9th Street between 21st and 22nd avenues (2424 9th Street). The other projection will be in the alley behind Harrison Galleries, approached from 23rd Avenue. Digital Media is a studio concentration in the undergraduate program of The University of Alabama’s Department of Art and Art History that focuses on new media and digital art. Courses explore digital media as the primary tool, medium and an environment for art and design. For more information, go to http://art.ua.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/digital-media/.
Students Create Outdoor Projections for First Friday
The public is invited to have an immersive video experience during April First Friday in downtown Tuscaloosa! UA digital media students have made new work in response to the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama. On April 7 (First Friday), near two downtown Tuscaloosa galleries, The Jones Projection will be projected onto two buildings between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. One projection will be on the side of Grace Aberdean Habitat Alchemy, on 9th Street between 21st and 22nd avenues (2424 9th Street). The other projection will be in the alley behind Harrison Galleries, approached from 23rd Avenue.
Digital Artworks Showcased in Ferguson Exhibit
The UA Department of Art and Art History is pleased to present a Digital Media Student Exhibition in Ferguson Student Center Art Gallery, April 5-15, 2017, with an opening reception, Wednesday, April 5, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. The public is invited to attend. Students from Assistant Professor Jane Cassidy's digital media classes have been designing and making art in a variety of media from the digital world. The exhibit includes print works as well as gifs, stop-motion animation and video, as well as other formats. Digital Media is a studio concentration in the undergraduate program of The University of Alabama’s Department of Art and Art History that focuses on new media and digital art. Courses explore digital media as the primary tool, medium and an environment for art and design. For more information, go to http://art.ua.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/digital-media/.
Art Instructor Laura Lineberry Wins Best of Show at Tuscaloosa ADDY Awards
Tuscaloosa.—American Advertising Federation Tuscaloosa awarded UA instructor Laura Lineberry Best of Show in their annual American Advertising Awards (ADDYs) ceremony on February 23, 2017. The Best of Show award was chosen from among ten Gold ADDYs awarded that evening. Lineberry's Christmas card design for TotalCom Marketing won the Gold ADDY and Best of Show. Lineberry constructed almost forty individual cards by hand for each of TotalCom’s clients using recycled print publications created for them. Lineberry’s project competed with topnotch entries that included UA Office of Strategic Communication’s Legends Campaign. Lineberry also won a Silver ADDY for a poster series designed for Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, Ala. She said, "I am deeply honored by this award and was completely surprised by it." Sponsored by the AAF, the American Advertising Awards (formerly the ADDYs) honor excellence in advertising and seek to cultivate the highest creative standards in the industry. The competition begins at the local level with the 210 AAF member clubs nationwide from which local winners proceed to 14 regional competitions, and those winners proceed to the national finals. In addition, entries are solicited and accepted from entrants outside the U.S. whose award-winning work joins the prestigious list of Gold AAA winners. More than 250 entries were submitted from West Alabama and East Mississippi. The Gold ADDY winners automatically qualify for the district competition. AAF Tuscaloosa has been the key professional organization for area advertising, marketing and media businesses for almost fifty years and is an active affiliate of the American Advertising Federation. Lineberry has received the Best of Show award in three previous years: in 2014 for Mosaic Magazine (Student Division); in 2000 for her work on Folmer Architectural Millworks Annual Sales Catalog; and in 1994 for UA Japan Program’s “Sakura Brochure.” She was also the Recipient of a Best of Show in 2014 at the Mississippi Hospital Association’s Maggie Awards on behalf of her client OCH Regional Medical Center in Starkville, Mississippi. The Maggies recognize outstanding marketing and public relations work submitted by professionals from the health care sector in Mississippi. In addition to her Best of Show award, four of Lineberry’s current students won awards in the student division: Britt Buzan (Best of Show and 2 Gold ADDYs); Shea Van Sickler (1 Gold ADDY); Lo Wilhem (1 Silver ADDY); and Ashlé Colson (3 Silver ADDYs). A UA alumna, Laura Lineberry has been a full-time instructor in UA’s the Department of Art and Art History in digital media and graphic design since 2006. She was an adjunct instructor of graphic design from 2000 to 2006. Before she began teaching, she worked in Marketing Communications at the Capstone for nineteen years, including as art director, graphic designer and illustrator. With more than thirty years experience in the field of graphic design, she has won numerous local, regional and national graphic design awards, as well as had students win many awards under her guidance (Loupe spring 2014). In 2016, Lineberry won two AAF Tuscaloosa's Silver ADDYs: for work completed for UA’s Alumni Magazine and her role in the updated Branding Architecture for UA. Laura Lineberry is a board member of several civic organizations and charities including Sister Cities International, Easter Seals of West Alabama, and Friends of Drish. She is faculty advisor for the Honors College student-run publication Mosaic Magazine.
UA Art Alumna Curates “For the Culture” at Ferg Gallery
An exhibition titled For the Culture - New Age Black Artist and curated by UA art alumna Tanesha Childs is up now through Feb. 24, 2017, in the Ferguson Center Art Gallery. The opening reception is Friday, Feb. 17, 5-6 pm. The exhibition includes photography by UA art alumna Ausharea Adams and by Childs. The exhibition poster was designed by Adams. Childs recently exhibited work at the Feminist Art Conference in Toronto, where she participated in a ten-day residency last May. She graduated in the spring from The University of Alabama's Department of Art and Art History with a BA in studio art and a minor in art history. Ausharea Adams received the BFA in 2016 with concentrations in photography and drawing. Ferguson Student Center Gallery is located on the second (main) floor of the UA student center at 751 Campus Drive West, Tuscaloosa, on The University of Alabama campus.
VFX Artist Kev Cahill to Speak at UA
The Department of Journalism & Creative Media and the Department of Art and Art History present award winning VFX artist Kev Cahill for an artist lecture on Monday, November 7, 5-6 pm in 121 Reese Phifer Hall on The University of Alabama campus. Kev Cahill is a director, writer, producer and VFX supervisor and has worked on shows such as Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Thor, Penny Dreadful and Total Recall. For more about him, go to his website.
Art Students Find Synergy in European Study Abroad
In May, UA instructor of photography and digital media Lee Black and students delved deep into art and the psyche. Black and co-director Dr. Joy Burnham, Professor of Counselor Education, led eleven UA students on a May interim course to Switzerland and Austria titled, “UA in Europe: Finding Meaning - Synergy of Psychology & Art through Mind & Soul.” Describing the course, Burnham said, “This journey into Europe explores the rich history of psychology’s roots while also focusing on art from the same time period.” UA undergraduate and graduate students in art, psychology, counseling, speech and hearing, New College and business did assigned readings, research, art projects and writing, focusing on the theories of Freud, Adler, Jung and Frankl, leaders in the new field of psychology, and their contemporaries in art, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Black and Burnham led their students through museums and historic sites in the two countries and taught courses in digital media and counselor education. In art museums in Vienna, Zurich and Basel, the group viewed works by major artists such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele who were influenced by the new psychological ideas. They also visited sites such as the burial places of Beethoven and Mozart and toured the Mauthausen concentration camp. One of the highlights of the trip was their visit to the Jung Institute, once the home of Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, just outside of Zurich. There they attended a private lecture and were invited into Jung’s study where they met his grandson, who lives there now. Lee Black said she was inspired to be in the place where Jung studied and came up with his influential ideas about the human mind. “I was standing next to his desk where he wrote the Red Book [in which he developed his principal theories of the psyche]," she added, "He had books that were 400 to 500 years old in his library…it was profound.” New College senior SARAH JOHNS is working on her depth study in art therapy, which, she explains, "combines art and psychology - so this study abroad program was perfect for me!" Although apprehensive about traveling overseas, Johns' favorite experience turned out to be an unexpected ride up Mount Pilatus in Lucerne, Switzerland (6,982 feet above sea level). She added, "At the very least, I think I grew in terms of my confidence in my ability to operate independently." Senior BFA major in digital media and photography ALEX GREEN (who minors in art history) said that one of the best things about the trip was being able to see art works in person. “I’d never seen any major artists before this,” he said. His most memorable pieces were by Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Claude Monet in the Kunsthaus in Zurich and sculpture by Donald Judd in the Kunstmuseum in Basel. After the group trip, Green was able to stay on a few days and travel to Berlin, where he got to see the famous bust of Nefertiti at the Neues Museum. When he returned to Alabama, he took Art After World War II (ARH 381) with Tom Wegrzynowski during the summer semester (“I loved that class!”) and said that he reabsorbed much of what he had learned in Europe in a different way. When asked how this trip has affected him, Green expressed well the “synergy” of the experience of travel: “Honestly, my perspective on life has changed by being immersed in another culture.” Burnham and Black are working with UA Study Abroad to take another group of students in May of 2017. To find out more about this and other UA study abroad programs, check the Study Abroad “Start” page on the UA Study Abroad website or email studyabroad@ua.edu. Photo captions, top to bottom: 1. Sarah Johns and Megan Goldman in the Secession Building, Vienna. Photo by Lee Black. 2. Lee Black teaches Courtney Potts' a tutorial in Photoshop during their trip. Photo by Joy Burnham. 3. UA students in Vienna, May, 2016, with Dr. Peter Hlebowitsh, Dean of the College of Education at UA. Photo courtesy of Lee Black. 4. Instructor Lee Black in the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Photo courtesy of Lee Black.