Sheila Pree Bright: A Community Conversation about Social Engagement through Art Date: Wednesday, September 05, 2018 Time: 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Location: Warner Presentation Room, Wynn Fine Arts Center, Stillman College Cost: Free and open to the public Join Sheila Pree Bright in a community engagement conversation about art! The questions: Can art be a form of activism to create awareness and bring shared communities together to critically look at ongoing social and political struggles? Is it the artist’s responsibility to create social change through art? How can socially engaged art reshape the approach to under-resourced communities to help overcome barriers to participation and create equitable access? What role can young people play in furthering these conversations? Bright will share the short film Election Day: Lens Across America and examples from her recent photographic series Young Americans, 1960 Who, and #1960Now as a point of entry to this community conversation. Sheila Pree Bright's event is part of the Paul R. Jones Lecture Series, sponsored by UA College of Arts & Sciences.
UA Alumni to Speak on Activism in Art
The UA Department of Art and Art History cordially invites everyone to a public lecture by artist James Emmette Neel, in conjunction with his exhibition in the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. Neel will speak on Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 11:00 a.m. in Gorgas Library 205 on UA campus. On the same day at 5 p.m., a reception for the artist will be in the SMGA, 103 Garland Hall. During the summer of 2014, Neel lived for a month on the Turkish/Syrian border. In his lecture, Echoes Along the Syrian Border: Family Archeology and the Sound of Distant Gunfire, he will discuss his experiences and his commitment as an artist to addressing the plight of children in the Syrian crisis and those children victimized by violence in other areas of conflict. The lecture accompanies the opening of the exhibition by the same title in the SMGA. The objects in that exhibition span a four-year period and include works begun in a 2016 four-month John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/Industry Residency. Neel is concurrently at work on these long-term projects: Blond, Blue-eyed and Full of Hate: through photography, sculpture and the written word, investigates the growing White Christian Heritage movement and the KKK in the US with Professor Steve Cole. Children in the Line of Fire: a series of digital prints, creative non-fiction and terra-cotta sculptures of children that address the plight of children in war zones. Concomitant: sculpture in vitreous china that speaks for the children of Syria. Appointed Professor of Art at Birmingham-Southern College in 2016, where he has served as Chair and Director of the Durbin Gallery, Jim Neel was Chair of the Visual Arts Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts from 1973-2002. He received a BFA in sculpture from Birmingham-Southern in 1971 and the MFA in sculpture from The University of Alabama in 1973.
An Artist Reveals War’s First and Last Victims
The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art presents an exhibition by Alabama native and UA alumnus Jim Neel. Titled Echoes along the Syrian Border: Family Archeology and the Sound of Distant Gunfire: Works by James Emmette Neel, the show will run from January 12 through February 17, 2017. This solo exhibition comprises two bodies of Neel’s recent work which share an intense focus on the subject of warfare and its horrific effects on a country and its inhabitants, particularly children. In photography, prints and sculpture, Neel unleashes a visual landscape borne of his own physical proximity to war and its victims. Suriya was produced following Neel’s time spent in Syria; Les Enfants de la Terre was created in response to his experiences in El Salvador and Central America. In every war zone, children are war's most vulnerable victims. Neel depicts them - the combatants and the casualties - in chilling detail: weaponed and armless child warriors portrayed in terra cotta sculptures and digital images. The public is also invited to two free events on Thursday, January 12: at 11:00 a.m., Jim Neel will talk about his art in 205 Gorgas Library on UA campus; from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., a reception for the artist will be held in the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. Jim Neel received the MFA from The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History in 1973. He has worked as a photojournalist, administrator, teacher, scholar and artist and is currently Professor of Art and Director of the Durbin Gallery at Birmingham-Southern College. He recently completed his second residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where he produced a second body of figurative porcelain works exhibited recently at the Huntsville Museum of Art. He has been the recipient of the Southeastern College Art Conference Artist’s Fellowship and the Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship. Exhibitions of his artwork have been produced for regional museums including Winston-Salem’s Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, the Montgomery Museum of Art and the Alexandria Museum of Art as well as academic galleries at Memphis State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Montevallo and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Neel’s photographs have appeared in more than thirty newspapers, magazines and publications including Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Commercial Appeal, The Birmingham News, Birmingham Post-Herald, Oxford American, Esquire and books including Salvation on Sand Mountain and Redneck Riviera: Armadillos, Outlaws and the Demise of an American Dream. Support for this exhibition is provided in part by the Galbraith Fund. Funding support for the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art comes from the Department of Art and Art History and the College of Arts and Sciences. Admission to the gallery is free. Hours are Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. – 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 http://art.ua.edu/gallery/smga/. A video of Jim Neel talking about his current work, made at Kohler Art Center: