Tuscaloosa – Internationally known artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds headlines a series of events on UA campus October 8-24, 2018, centered around an exhibition of his work in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery. During his visit, Oct. 22-24, Heap of Birds will present an artist lecture, gallery talk, book signing and reception, as well as a roundtable discussion with students. Spirit Citizen – An International Dialogue with Artist Edgar Heap of Birds will showcase more than twenty posters from Heap of Birds’s international and national exhibitions as well as a video created by Associate Professor of Art Sky Shineman and Assistant Professor of Journalism and Creative Media Nick Corrao, October 8-24, 2018, in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery. The public invited to participate in all these events: October 8–24 Edgar Heap of Birds Poster Exhibition Sella-Granata Art Gallery, 109 Woods Hall Monday–Thursday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. October 22 Artist lecture by Edgar Heap of Birds Gorgas Library 205 6:00 p.m. October 23 Gallery talk by Edgar Heap of Birds with reception and book signing following Sella-Granata Art Gallery, 109 Woods Hall 4:00 p.m. Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954) is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Tribes of Oklahoma and an internationally known multi-media artist. Heap of Birds has exhibited his work in the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, and China and participated in Documenta 8, and the Venice Biennale. He has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Lila Wallace Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust and the Andy Warhol Foundation, among others. Edgar Heap of Birds maintains a disciplined practice in multiple genres: public art installations; abstract-landscape paintings of his ongoing Neuf series; large scale, text-based drawings; prints and multiples; works in glass; and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture. Image credits: top: Edgar Heap of Birds in his studio in Oklahoma City, 2018. Photo by Shanna Ketchum Heap of Birds. bottom: Edgar Heap of Birds, Neuf Painting for Autumn (2), 2014, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 44 inches. Edgar Heap of Birds’s visit is sponsored by the Visiting Artists and Lecturers Series of the Department of Art and Art History, the College of Arts & Sciences Diversity committee, American Studies, Race & Gender Studies and is organized by Associate Professor of Art Sky Shineman. Woods Hall is a six-minute walk from the Campus Drive Parking Deck and Bus Hub on Hackberry Lane. Gold 1, Crimson, Blue and Bronze CrimsonRide buses stop between Garland Hall and Gorgas Library. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/.
Renowned Scholar To Speak on Apocalyptic Images
Tuscaloosa. — Explore the visionary landscape of the medieval Book of Revelation with one of its eminent scholars, Dr. Richard K. Emmerson. Dr. Emmerson will deliver a public lecture, “Apocalypse Illuminated,” on Tuesday, September 11, 2018 at 6:30 pm in Smith Hall 205 on UA campus. Richard K. Emmerson is Dean Emeritus of the School of Liberal Arts at Manhattan College, former Professor and Chair of Art History at Florida State University, and currently Visiting Distinguished Professor at FSU. He has served as Deputy Director of Fellowships at the National Endowment for the Humanities and as Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America, and has edited Speculum, Studies in Iconography, and Traditio. A Fellow of the Medieval Academy, he received the Medieval Academy Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies in 2009. Dr. Emmerson’s research focuses on medieval apocalypticism and its representation in art, drama, and visionary poetry. He has published seven books, including Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (1981), The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (1992, with Ronald B. Herzman), and The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (1993, with Bernard McGinn). His most recent book, studying the seven-hundred year history of medieval Apocalypse manuscripts, is Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Manuscripts, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2018. He has authored more than fifty articles, many studying word-image relationships in medieval illustrated manuscripts. Recent essays include “On the Threshold of the Last Days: Negotiating Image and Word in the Apocalypse of Jean de Berry,” in Exploring the Threshold of Medieval Visual Culture (2012); “Visualizing the Visionary: John in his Apocalypse,” in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams and Insights in Medieval Art and Thought (2010); “Framing the Apocalypse: The Performance of John’s Life in the Trinity Apocalypse,” in Visualizing Medieval Performance (2008); “Visualizing the Vernacular: Middle English in Early Fourteenth-Century Bilingual and Trilingual Manuscript Illustrations,” in Studies in Manuscript Illumination: A Tribute to Lucy Freeman Sandler (2008); “A ‘Large Order of the Whole’: Intertextuality and Interpictoriality in the Hours of Isabella Stuart,” Studies in Iconography (2007); and “The Representation of Antichrist in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias: Image, Word, Commentary, and Visionary Experience,” Gesta (2002). Image credit: Silos Apocalypse: Northern Spain, c.1100, British Library Add. MS 11695, ff.147v-148. Richard K. Emmerson's lecture is part of the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History, the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Continuing Studies at The University of Alabama. To see our past and future visiting artists and scholars, go here: https://art.ua.edu/resources/visiting-artists/. Smith Hall, 427 Sixth Avenue, Tuscaloosa, is a four-minute walk from the Campus Drive Parking Deck and Bus Hub on Hackberry Lane. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/. For more information on this or the other speakers in our upcoming Visiting Artist and Scholar Series, contact Rachel Dobson (rachel.dobson@ua.edu) or Pete Schulte (pschulte@ua.edu).
UA Ceramics Instructor Receives National Award
UA art instructor Wade Folger MacDonald received the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) 2018 Emerging Artist Award. The award recognizes exceptional early career artists and helps promote their work internationally for the year. As part of the award, MacDonald participated in an exhibition at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburg, Penn., during this year's NCECA conference and addressed the conference with an artist talk. A generous monetary prize is also granted to the award recipients. In addition, an exhibition titled Parallel/Collision that MacDonald proposed and is co-organizing has been accepted for this year's NCECA conference. Here is a video of MacDonald's talk: He also wrote a post, titled "Becoming an Artist and Advice for the Future" for the NCECA Blog. MacDonald teaches courses in ceramics and art foundations in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama. For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
UA Professor’s Book Spotlights Andrew Jackson’s Portraits
When President Trump hung a portrait of President Andrew Jackson in a prominent spot in the Oval Office, in hopes that Americans would associate Trump with the controversial president who fought for the “common man,” it helped put Jackson back in the public discourse. Jackson – unusually for his day – carefully crafted his public image – one thing the two presidents have in common. And UA assistant professor of art history Dr. Rachel Stephens is helping to clarify that conversation. Stephens’ monograph – the first book-length study of Andrew Jackson's personal portrait artist – has recently hit the bookshelves. Selling Andrew Jackson: Ralph E. W. Earl and the Politics of Portraiture, from the University of South Carolina Press was published in June 2018. In it, Dr. Stephens examines the role of Earl, Jackson’s “Court Painter,” in Jackson’s inner circle and the influence of his portraits on Jackson’s political career and historical legacy. We asked Dr. Stephens a few questions about what she hopes her book will bring to readers. Here are her answers: What will we learn about Andrew Jackson by reading your book that we didn’t know before? RS: Andrew Jackson's reputation precedes him, but few realize that he actually hired a full-time artist. Artists were always clamoring to paint the early presidents, and dozens of artists painted Jackson, but in order to control his own visual message, he hired Earl's services full time, and Earl even lived at Jackson's plantation and at the White House. I believe that Earl and Jackson collaborated on the portraits, and that each one was intended to respond to the current events of Jackson's life. Earl and Jackson became very close friends over the course of their 21-year friendship, and Earl is buried in the Jackson family cemetery at the Hermitage. How many paintings total did Earl paint of Andrew Jackson? RS: Earl painted untold numbers of portraits of Jackson. He painted him almost daily for fifteen or more years. An unfinished portrait of Jackson was on his easel when he died. The exact number is impossible to calculate because Earl didn't sign his works and records for them do not exist, but there are dozens of them! How many times a day did Earl paint images of AJ? RS: Seemingly, Earl was employed full time in painting Jackson. Visitors to Jackson's White House regularly mention Earl at his easel in the background or in his studio. Depending on the nature of the portrait, it might take Earl anywhere from a few days, to over a year to complete a portrait. What’s the most important thing you hope to communicate to readers with this book? RS: I'm so happy to see the book in print! I hope it will educate readers about the significant impact that Ralph E. W. Earl had on Jackson's career and also the importance of his contribution to American Art. Rachel Stephens is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama. Her research investigates the art and visual culture of the antebellum era, particularly in the South. For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/graduate-programs/art-requirements/.
Black Panther at the Paul R. Jones Museum
Inspired by the aesthetics of the blockbuster Black Panther, the Paul R. Jones Museum takes a look at the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s and its inspirations in the art of Africa. Opening July 6 First Friday, BAM! Black Panther and the Black Arts Movement in the Paul R. Jones Collection features work from Africa, as well as by important American artists David Driskell, Romare Bearden and Emma Amos. The exhibition runs through August 24. Image credit: Charles Lee, Untitled, acrylic on board, Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art, PJ2012.0044 The Paul R. Jones Museum is located at 2308 6th St. in downtown Tuscaloosa. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the first Friday of every month from noon to 8 p.m. The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team. For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/graduate-programs/art-requirements/.
UA Graduate Student Paints “The Immigrant Life”
UA graduate student in painting and professor of biology Juan López-Bautista has paintings on display now through August 10 at Ayers LRC Art Gallery in Anniston, Ala. The exhibition, titled "The Immigrant Life," expresses López-Bautista's ideas of the migratory life through abstract, fluid, moving shapes that allude to the most internal processes of life. In his artist statement, he writes, "Through washes, layers, and biomorphic shapes I intend to explore the development of consciousness as a result of a cultural assimilation by migration. My work is an invitation to the viewer to perceive this migratory effort. In my practice, each work is not a final product but a continuation of the previous one and itself the preceding stage for the consequent work. I envision my paintings as an evolutionary continuum, where issues of race, tolerance, immigration, separation, pursue of happiness, and survival occupies the same pictorial space." López-Bautista has a Ph.D. in plant biology from Louisiana State University and has taught for fifteen years in UA’s Department of Biology. Before entering the MFA program in studio art at UA, he took courses in painting at LSU and at The University of Alabama. The Ayers LRC Art Gallery is located on 1801 Coleman Road, at Gadsden State Community College - Ayers campus, in Anniston and is open Mon. through Thurs., 8:00 am to 7 p.m. For more information about the UA Department of Art and Art History and its programs, visit this link: https://art.ua.edu/academics/ or contact the department at (205) 348-5967.
Painting Alumna Joins Faculty of Boise State
Astri Snodgrass (MFA 2015, painting) will join the faculty of Boise State University as Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting in the fall of 2018. Her work is part of a two-person online exhibition at PLEAT Gallery in June. Since 2016 Snodgrass has served as Lecturer in Painting and Drawing in the Art Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Snodgrass was Artist-in-Residence at Virginia Center for Creative Arts in May 2018 and in the summer of 2017, she was Artist-in-Residence at Studios Midwest in Galesburg, Illinois. In May of 2016 she had a solo exhibition at the Coop Gallery in Nashville. She has also been writing reviews and interviews for Third Coast Review, a Chicago arts and culture online publication. And, teaching languages via Skype. More about Snodgrass’s art projects are here: https://www.facebook.com/astri.snodgrass.art/. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj-WikXBsOM/ For more information about the UA Department of Art and Art History and its programs, visit this link: https://art.ua.edu/academics/ or contact the department at (205) 348-5967.
New Sculpture in the Garden
Like an exotic flower that blooms overnight, a new sculpture has recently appeared in the Woods Quad Sculpture Garden. Mobius and Borromean Rings was designed and created in steel by marketing major and studio art minor Paget Kern. Kern, who has taken sculpture courses for her art minor and makes jewelry at home, designed the work in a collaborative project with students in the departments of Math and Art and Art History. She linked two complex mathematical ideas together in a massive sculptural example. Kern explained that the design is “a triple Möbius strip tied together in a Borromean knot.” Kern's monumental sculpture joins a bouquet that includes work by nationally known sculptors, art faculty and former sculpture students. At the center of the garden is Craig Wedderspoon, "Quilted Vessel," 2013, cast and welded aluminum. "Montgomery Marker" by Craig Wedderspoon, in the Woods Quad Sculpture Garden, UA campus Lindsay Jones Lindsey, "Fibonacci Spiral" installed in the Woods Quad Sculpture Garden, 2014. Billy Lee, Homage to Brancusi, 1993, 138 x 28.5 x 12.5 inches; painted steel. Joe McCreary, "Goldie 1971," 2009, iron and steel; approx. 23 ft., in 2018, in the Woods Quad Sculpture Garden. Read more about the Woods Quad Sculpture Garden and UA's public sculpture. Go here for more information on The University of Alabama's Department of Art and Art History.
Forbes, Essence Feature UA Art Alumna
Alumna Laci Jordan (BA 2011, digital media) has been making big headlines in the graphic design world recently. Jordan, who is a senior graphic designer at Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles, has had her artwork featured on ESPN’s news site The UnDefeated, on the site, Amplifier, an online “art machine for social change,” and on Wildfang.com. Seven interviews or profiles about Jordan have been published at media sites from Forbes.com and Essence to AL.com. These are links to some of those websites: www.forbes.com, www.essence.com, wildfang.com, 5fifths.co, www.paperdarts.org, amplifier.com, vice.com, and www.al.com. https://www.instagram.com/p/BX84TAAFlrH/ Just two years ago, we featured Jordan in our alumni news post about her work at CAA and her own company: LACI JORDAN (BA 2011, digitial media) has been working her way up, from a designer at Creative Campus to a graphic designer at Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles. All along, Jordan has done freelance design work and had her own company, So Laci Like, where she specializes in branding, digital illustrations, web and art direction. Her portfolio is www.lacijordan.com and she says, “you can find me creating fresh artwork at www.solacilike.com.” Laci Jordan (BA 2011), "Vote for Our Lives," poster design for Amplifier: https://amplifier.org/march-for-our-lives/ For more information about the UA Department of Art and Art History and its programs, visit this link: https://art.ua.edu/academics/ or contact the department at (205) 348-5967.