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Graduate Students Exhibit MFA Thesis Research at the SMGA

The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History is pleased to present the Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibitions of Kelsey Windham and Celestia Morgan, April 21-May 26, 2017, in the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. Windham’s exhibition, Walked and Waited, and Morgan’s exhibition, Red Line, will open with a reception on Friday, April 21 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Celestia Morgan, graduate student, with her work “My personal history and geographical location have heavily influenced my current body of work. My relationship to Birmingham, Alabama, is a very personal one, for both my family and me. It’s the place where my grandparents raised their children, my parents raised me, and now where my husband and I are raising our two children. My work explores the racial histories of Birmingham from the development of interstate 20/59 to the historical residential security maps created by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) during the 1930s on residential mortgages.” Morgan’s work is also currently on exhibit at the Mobile Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama Contemporary Photography. She received the BFA in photography from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the associate degree in elementary education from Lawson State Community College.

Kelsey Windham, “Repose” (detail)Kelsey Windham translates her observations and responses to the outdoors into paintings and poetry. Commenting on her work, “I am drawn to the solitude that can be experienced outside. There is a spirituality to stillness and an intimacy to painting landscapes.” Windham earned the Bachelors of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in drawing from Memphis College of Art in 2011. In 2010 she was awarded the Hohenberg Fellowship to study painting in Umbria, Italy and participated in a group show there. Windham was listed among Southern Living’s The Daily South’s “Southern Artists to Follow on Instagram Now” in 2016.

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 page.

Admission to the gallery is free. Hours are Monday through Friday 9:00 – 4:30 p.m., Thursday evenings: 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. The gallery is located at 103 Garland Hall in the heart of the UA campus on Woods Quad. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/. Parking is free on campus in a legal space after business hours. Contact the gallery at (205) 348-1891 or go to our webpage.