TUSCALOOSA – The University of Alabama department of art and art history is
pleased to announce the annual fall exhibition of work by graduate students in studio art, You Can’t Hold Water: Works by Graduate Studio Artists. The exhibition, held in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery in Woods Hall, opens Monday, October 1 and closes Friday, November 2, 2012. There will be an artist reception on Friday, October 12 from 5-8 p.m in the gallery. The public is invited to attend, to meet the artists and encouraged to ask them about their work.
About the Artists
- M. R. Barry is in his third semester as an MFA candidate in painting and sculpture. His work titled “Heavyweight” is an acrylic painting that examines and enhances the physicality of stretched canvas.
- James Davis’ areas are ceramics and sculpture. Originally from Rome, Georgia, Davis received his BFA in Ceramics from Shorter University.
- Virginia Eckinger, from Birmingham, is in her second year working in sculpture.
- Claire Lewis Evans is an M.F.A. sculpture student whose installation Signs of Life will be constructed in Black Belt Bamboost’s bamboo park in Northport this fall. Her work as a digital publishing editor at The University of Alabama Press is part of the inspiration for her creative exploration of physical form in time and space.
- Anne Herbert grew up in Auburn. She is a painter in her third year of the MFA program. Her painting Arrow is in acrylic on muslin.
- Darius Hill is a native of Birmingham. His area of concentration is painting and he is currently working with mixed media where he is exploring identity; drawing inspiration from art historical references, Americana and pop culture.
- Art work by Clermont, Florida, native Nikki March, in her final year of graduate studies in sculpture, is Bodies created from fabric, sand, sawdust, which she is sure, will not hold water!
- Amory, Mississippi, native Aynslee Moon just completed her MFA thesis installation, Painted Space, in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery.
- A printmaker and mixed media artist in her second year, Kelly Parvin earned her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and spent recent years working as a magnet school art teacher in Montgomery, Alabama.
- Birmingham photographer Andy Pruett writes that the show’s title, You Can’t Hold Water, connotes for him “the necessity to be able to articulate your work with a solid discussion beyond the strictly formal qualities of it.” Pruett has “another year and a half to go, ideally.” His untitled work is a digital pigment transfer on board.
- Tuscaloosa native Meredith Randall is in her second semester in the sculpture program. Randall received her BFA from UA and was a Windgate Charitable Foundation Endowed Art Scholarship recipient. She worked with Black Belt 100 Lenses Summer Camp in 2012.
- Kelly Shannon, from Birmingham, has two years left in the sculpture program. She writes, “I am currently making forms out of PVC pipe, which coincidently holds water.”
- Claire Siepser is from West Chester, Pennsylvania and Portland, Oregon. She now lives in Alabama and co-founded the artist’s collective Alabama Art Kitchen. Siepser is in her final year of the MFA program in Book Arts. She plans to finish the MA in printmaking in 2013. Siepser writes, “My piece is about how the past affects us. You can’t hold water and you can’t hold onto the past despite how much we try.”
- New graduate student Astri Snodgrass’s concentration is in painting. She is from St. Charles, Illinois.
- Painting student Stephen Watson, who hails from Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, is in his final year of the MFA program. Watson says about his mixed media work, Gratuitously Ridiculous: “This painting is as reasonable as a cupcake.” His MFA thesis exhibition is scheduled for the spring of 2013.
- After 31 years, Frank Williams is returning to graduate school to work in ceramics. He earned an undergraduate degree at the University of North Alabama in 1981.
For more information about the exhibit, please call Rachel Dobson at (205) 348-1893 or email Rachel atrdobson@bama.ua.edu. FACEBOOK EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/
About the Sella-Granata Art Gallery: Located in 109 Woods Hall, The University of Alabama, the gallery is open during the school year. Hours are Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. except school holidays. In 2009, the honorary degrees and recognition committee of The University of Alabama Board of Trustees voted to rename Room 109 in Woods Hall in honor of two long-time UA art professors. The Sella-Granata Art Gallery, which primarily exhibits student work, honors the late Alvin C. Sella, professor of painting, and Angelo Granata, professor of sculpture and director of the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. Professor Granata came to the university in 1949 and retired in 1998; Professor Sella, who came to UA in 1960 and retired in 1999, continued to teach until 2011.