Here are a few of our outstanding students who received scholarship awards during Honors Day ceremonies in April, 2017. Return to Honors Day 2017 awardees list.
Historic Drish House Hosts BFA Exhibition
AUG 4-8 Geo-Synergies: Mallorie Beth Roberts BFA Exhibition, The Historic Drish House, Tuscaloosa AUG 4 First Friday reception, 5-9 pm The Historic Drish House will host an exhibition of ceramic sculpture by University of Alabama BFA major Mallorie Roberts, August 4 through August 8. Geo-Synergies opens with a reception on First Friday, August 4 from 5:00 to 9:00 pm. The Drish House is located at 2300 Seventeenth Street in downtown Tuscaloosa. "We're very excited to have Mallorie's exhibition at the Drish," said event coordinator Soapy Jones, "It is our first public exhibition and we're looking forward to opening the home to celebrate her hard work." Roberts describes the works in this exhibition as "a melding of materials, and my own exploration of the physical world and its intricacies. [They] encompass playful compositions featuring geometric forms that highlight the fluidity of various substances while celebrating their materiality. These forms emphasize the importance of composition and portray the significance of individual relationships created throughout Geo-Synergies." Mallorie Roberts holds an associate of arts degree from Shelton State Community College. She will graduate with the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from UA in August 2017 with concentrations in ceramics and printmaking. In the fall of 2017, Roberts will enter the ceramics post-baccalaureate program at the University of Florida after which she plans to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree. She is a member of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), and was one of ten students featured in the Professor and Student Exhibition at the Alabama Clay Conference in 2017. In 2016, she received a Windgate Charitable Foundation Endowed Studio Arts Scholarship. She has been an active participant and served as secretary for UA's Crimson Clay Club. Image credit: Mallorie Beth Roberts, Terrain, 2017, porcelain with ceramic shell and resin. Image courtesy of the artist. The Historic Drish House is located at 2300 17th Street, one block off Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa, by Band of Brothers Brewing Company. Visitors may park around the circle, in the parking lot on the side of the house or on the streets surrounding the Drish House. The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree is the professional degree for the artist; it is also the foundation for the masters program in studio art at UA. For more information about the BFA degree and our other degree programs in the UA Department of Art and Art History, go to http://art.ua.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/babfa-in-studio-art/ or contact the department at (205) 348-5967.
Art History Graduate Achieves Long-term Goal
Allison Springer is following a path she set for herself when she received degrees in apparel and textile design and marketing at UA ten years ago. After Springer received the MS in marketing in 2006, she moved to New York City to work in fashion. For the next five years, Springer worked in the creative departments at Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy's. Then she left New York to travel in Europe and develop her interests in art and history. She returned to her alma mater in 2015 to pursue a master's in art history, with the goal of seeking a Ph.D. in art history in order to teach and research. This spring, Springer successfully defended her master's thesis in art history, titled "Mixed-Race Fantasies: Abolitionist Propaganda as Spectacles of Race in the Nineteenth Century." Springer was accepted to PhD programs at Rice University in Houston, Tex., and the University of Kansas in Lawrence. She reports that she plans to attend Rice in the fall. Right: Allison Springer presents her thesis research in a paper at the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History in 2017. For more information about the programs of the UA Department of Art and Art History, visit this link: https://art.ua.edu/about/prospective/. The University of Alabama, the state’s oldest and largest public institution of higher education, is a student-centered research university that draws the best and brightest to an academic community committed to providing a premier undergraduate and graduate education. UA is dedicated to achieving excellence in scholarship, collaboration and intellectual engagement; providing public outreach and service to the state of Alabama and the nation; and nurturing a campus environment that fosters collegiality, respect and inclusivity.
Micah-Shea McKibben Defends MA Thesis on Botticelli
Micah-Shea McKibben successfully defended her MA thesis in art history, titled "Moving Beyond Beauty: Uncovering Sandro Botticelli's Isis," and graduated from The University of Alabama in December 2016. McKibben graduated cum laude from the University of South Alabama's Honors Program in 2012 with a B.A. in art history and a minor in history. Her undergraduate honors thesis was titled, "Knowing the Code, Analysis of Three Female German Expressionists." As a graduate student, she specialized in 15th-century Renaissance Italy and early 20th-century art. In March 2016, she presented her research on Botticelli's "Isis" at the South Central Renaissance Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, a regional conference of graduate students and professionals in Renaissance Studies. For more information about the programs of the UA Department of Art and Art History, visit this link: https://art.ua.edu/about/prospective/. The University of Alabama, the state’s oldest and largest public institution of higher education, is a student-centered research university that draws the best and brightest to an academic community committed to providing a premier undergraduate and graduate education. UA is dedicated to achieving excellence in scholarship, collaboration and intellectual engagement; providing public outreach and service to the state of Alabama and the nation; and nurturing a campus environment that fosters collegiality, respect and inclusivity.
Photo Shoot Night at the Museum
Students in Associate Professor of Photography Christopher Jordan's intermediate and advanced photo classes (ART 318 and 418) have been staging production photographs around UA campus for the past several semesters. Below is an example of one that was produced in the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Smith Hall. The image is made in a “directorial mode,” similar to the style of contemporary photographer Gregory Crewdson, in which a fictional reality is established. In this image, a lone character resembling Indiana Jones "camps out" inside the Alabama Museum of Natural History. The “nighttime” lighting as well as the fact that an explorer sits in front of a fake fire inside a museum instead of out in the wild, lends a surreal atmosphere to the scene. Find out about the other "fictional reality" photo shoots students staged at the Gorgas House, on Woods Quad and at the ‘little round house’ (officially known as the Guard House, built in 1862).
Tobias Layman MFA Thesis Exhibition
Tobias Layman will present his master of fine arts thesis exhibition, Out of Order, at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center in The Arts Council Gallery March 12-30, 2018. A reception for the artist will be held Thursday, March 22 from 5-8 pm. The Arts Council Gallery, located at 620 Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa, is open weekdays 9 a.m.-noon and 1-4 p.m. with free admission. Layman works in kinetic sculpture created from wood, metal and found objects. Shaped like gears and other moving parts, Layman's works present a sensory experience of sound, sight, texture, as well as an experience of the art works’ imperfections. “The gears are not cast from a mold or cut with state-of-the-art technology," Layman explains, "They are created by hand. Over and over. The gears do not align perfectly and they do not spin effortlessly.” In fact, Layman says, their flaws transform them beyond the realm of machines. “The imperfections warrant a sense of mortality. Their life span is unknown, and that unpredictability helps augment them and give them life.” See videos of Tobias Layman's kinetic sculptures here. Tobias Layman is a graduate student in sculpture in the department of art and art history, with an assistantship teaching courses in Ceramics I, Drawing I and 3D Design. Layman received the BFA, cum laude, in ceramics, from Jacksonville State University in 2014. He presented his MA exhibition, Grinding Away, in February 2017 at the Sella-Granata Art Gallery on UA campus. He has exhibited in national and regional exhibitions including 35 Live: CoCA Member’s Show, Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA; DAMNED IX, Detroit, MI; A Different Vision, Plymouth, MA; The Big Dance Exhibit, a juried exhibition in Des Moines, IA; and Abstracts Art Exhibition, Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery, where he received an honorable mention. In 2017, he took third place at the KAO International Kinetic Art Competition in Boynton Beach, Florida. Layman has been a studio assistant for the Department of Art at Jacksonville State University, an assistant instructor at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, and an instructor and ceramic technician at Earthworks Pottery Studio in Rome, GA. He is a recipient of the Thames Endowed Scholarship and the Joseph and Allen Sella Endowed Scholarship at UA. This exhibition is in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama. For more information on the graduate programs of the UA department of art and art history, visit this link: http://art.ua.edu/academics/graduate-programs/art-requirements/. The Arts Council Gallery is open weekdays 9 a.m.-noon and 1-4 p.m. with free admission. The Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center is located at 620 Greensboro Avenue in Downtown Tuscaloosa. For more information about the CAC, The Arts Council or Bama Theatre, patrons should LIKE the Facebook page “The Arts Council – Bama Theatre – Cultural Arts Center” and follow tuscarts on Twitter. Call 205-758-5195 or visit tuscarts.org for further information.
UA Students Create Fictional Reality in Photo Course
Associate Professor of Photography Christopher Jordan reported on some intriguing photo projects his students have been working on this past school year. "Over the past several semesters," he said, "in my intermediate and advanced photo classes (ART 318 and 418), my students and I have been staging production photographs around campus. You might recall the images from the Gorgas House, on Woods Quad, at the Museum of Natural History and now this semester, the 'little round house' (officially known as the Guard House, built in 1862)." After they obtained permission to use the space, the photo shoot of the Guard House took place early evening on April 18, 2016. Professor Jordan said that the image is made in a “directorial mode,” similar to the style of contemporary photographer Gregory Crewdson, in which a fictional reality is established. "In this image, a solitary dancer occupies the space lit in a way to create a dreamlike atmosphere. In one of the images, a passerby takes a closer look at the unusual event unfolding. The photo production employed various lighting strategies to support the illusion, including shooting at dusk with lights hidden strategically inside the little round house, just outside the frame." The students were Faith Barringer, Sydney Black, Morgan Hufnagel and Pierson Scarborough. The model was Olivia Zimmerman. Here are some of the photographs of students working on the production and and then photos taken by the students. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions. If you'd like to read more about the history of the Civil War-era Guard House, read Robert O. Mellown's The University of Alabama - A Guide to the Campus and Its Architecture (2013) or read this blog post from our friends at Alabama Heritage magazine.
Student Researches Slave Architecture on UA Campus
Junior art history major Nadia DelMedico presented her original research into extant slave dwellings on the antebellum UA campus at the new undergraduate poster session during the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, at UA's Bryant Conference Center in March, and at the recent URCA conference. DelMedico and Sommer Hallquist were awarded Harrison Prizes for Excellence in Undergraduate Research at the symposium. DelMedico's 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 won second place in the Harrison Awards.
Screening on the Green
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"!