Nasrin Iravani: Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition April 16 – May 14, 2020 Opening reception, Thursday, April 16, 5-7 pm Nasrin Iravani is a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts degree in the department of art and art history at UA. She is completing her graduate studies in ceramics and serves as a graduate teaching assistant. Iravani presented her Master of Arts exhibition at UA with the April 2019 exhibition entitled I’m a Woman Here Standing in the Mist! and previously received the MA in Handicrafts (ceramics) from Tehran University of Art. Her work is inspired by figurative forms in Persian art. She presents a critical view of ethical and cultural issues in her art, including women’s rights and concerns. Iravani has participated in ceramics exhibitions internationally (Milan, Italy; Madrid, Spain and Tehran, Iran), and in the United States. Recent exhibitions include The Millennial Show Juried Exhibition, Dayton (Ohio), Clay: A Southern Consensus, New Orleans; 33rd Annual Alabama Clay Conference, The Ritual Table (Corning, New York), and Vitreous, New Orleans. 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. Additional support comes from the Farley Moody Galbraith Endowed Exhibition Fund. Admission to the gallery is free. Hours are Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. The gallery is located at 103 Garland Hall in the heart of 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. For further information, contact the gallery at 348-1891 or check our main webpage: https://art.ua.edu/gallery/smga/.
Revisiting the Origins of Anxiety Through Art: An MFA Thesis Exhibition
Tuscaloosa. — The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History is pleased to present Manifestations, the master of fine arts exhibition of John Klosterman IV, March 21-28, 2019, in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery. There will be a closing reception for the artist, Thursday, March 28, 5-8 p.m. John Klosterman is a native of Daphne, Alabama. Growing up, he developed a fondness for machines and the tinkering that came along with them. His life-long love of tinkering now takes on a two-dimensional form in the physical process of printmaking. Instead of the turn of a wrench, he notes, it is now the carving of a block with a gouge. Layers of each print, much like parts of a car, are assembled in a manner that creates a functioning vehicle for the message of each piece. In his current body of work for his final MFA thesis exhibition, Klosterman confronts and examines his mental health issues, specifically anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, through imagery and the process of making art: "I use vultures and various birds of prey to depict the omnipresent oppressive feeling of my anxiety. They hover above my head and glare at me from the shadows as they wait for me to fail. I use family photographs and chemically transferred landscapes to hint at its possible origins. My appropriation of these captured moments allows me to revisit places or relationships that were a part of my upbringing. I print repetitive frame-by-frame stills and exhaustingly detailed diagrams over objects and landscapes. These transparent diagrams represent my struggle with obsessive compulsive thoughts." Klosterman received the BFA from the University of South Alabama in 2015, with a major in printmaking and a minor in interdisciplinary studies. In 2017, he presented a gallery talk about his art work and practice. 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 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. Funding support for the Sella-Granata Art Gallery comes from the Department of Art and Art History and the College of Arts and Sciences. Admission to the gallery is always free. Hours are Monday through Wednesday 9:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m., Thursday 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The gallery is located at 109 Woods Hall in the heart of the UA campus on Woods Quad. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/. For more information, contact the gallery at (205) 348-2783 or visit: https://art.ua.edu/gallery/sgg/.
Artist Transforms Old Technology into ‘Endearing Memory’
Tuscaloosa. — The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History is pleased to present Syndication, the master of fine arts exhibition of Amy Smoot, March 21-28, 2019, in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery, with a closing reception for the artist, Thursday, March 28, 5-8 p.m. In ceramic, graduate student Amy Smoot recontextualizes now-obsolete technology into what she terms “containers or capsules of memory.” These objects transport us, Smoot notes, “to what we think are simpler times. I transform them from a cold, hard plastic and an outdated commodity into an endearing memory coated in a film of nostalgia.” Amy Smoot has taught Figure Modeling and assists in Ceramics I, III and IV. Smoot received the BFA in ceramics from the University of West Georgia where she was a studio assistant in ceramics and a student research assistant. She was one of three artists selected for Air Air in 2017, an artist residency where artists make art on airplanes. In the spring of 2017, she gave a 19th-century ceramics presentation at historic Lyon Hall in Demopolis, Ala. and led a “Fifty Minute Heads” workshop at the 2017 Georgia High School Clay Symposium (at UWG). In 2016-2017, she received a UA Graduate Council Fellowship. She currently serves as President of Crimson Clay. 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 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. Funding support for the Sella-Granata Art Gallery comes from the Department of Art and Art History and the College of Arts and Sciences. Admission to the gallery is always free. Hours are Monday through Wednesday 9:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m., Thursday 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The gallery is located at 109 Woods Hall in the heart of the UA campus on Woods Quad. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/. For more information, contact the gallery at (205) 348-2783 or go to https://art.ua.edu/gallery/sgg/.
Leftovers: Checa Baldarelli MFA Thesis Exhibition
Tuscaloosa. — Graduate student in printmaking Checa Baldarelli will present her master of fine arts thesis exhibition, Leftovers, at the Sella-Granata Art Gallery on UA campus, March 19-29, 2018. A reception for the artist will be held Thursday, March 22, 4-6 pm. Baldarelli finds delight and potential in the wide variety of found objects and materials she collects and works with, including paper, plastic, textiles, wood and metal. She writes, "As a kid I watched my father build houses, sew Halloween costumes, and find purpose for discarded items. Helping me construct projects for school out of cardboard and salvaged wood, I realized you could transform objects and materials to give them new life. Repurposing has, naturally, led me to become a collector. Collections come in all shapes and sizes; they know no limits. I tend to collect things I see potential in, items that will be useful to me, as well as objects that make me giggle and question why on earth did someone have this to begin with! I love these magical moments of discovery and want to share them through my work." Working with these found items makes her wonder about their "past" and how they change as they intersect with her reality. Baldarelli writes, "Objects, much like people, have histories. They are formed and as time passes they evolve. A crack here, a bend there - slowly they become different. By combining gathered and collected materials, I translate my memories of people, places and experiences into mixed media sculptures. Inspired by the age of DIY craft and repurposing, my work combines, rearranges and transforms salvaged materials, giving them a new purpose." Francesca Baldarelli is a graduate student in printmaking with an assistantship. She has taught Introduction to Printmaking and 2D Design. She has assisted in Color Theory, Drawing II and Intro to Printmaking. Baldarelli received the BFA, cum laude, in painting and printmaking from Youngstown State University in 2012. She attended the Chautauqua Institution School of Art in Chautauqua, NY, in 2014 and the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice in 2010. She received a UA College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Council Fellowship in 2015, the CISA Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institute Scholarship in 2014. At YSU, Baldarelli received a four-year American Legion Auxiliary Scholarship, a Study Abroad Grant, Venice, Italy, in 2010 and the Student Art Association Painting Award in 2009. Baldarelli presented her MA thesis exhibition in February 2017 at the Sella-Granata Art Gallery on UA campus. Her work combining printmaking and ceramics was in the group invitational exhibition, Clay Review 3, at the Abernathy Arts Center in Sandy Springs, GA, in 2017. She also participated in the UA Graduate Student Exhibition in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery and in Hopelessly Hopeful at Gray Gallery in Philadelphia. Baldarelli has exhibited her work in the Chautauqua Institution Student Exhibition at the Fowler Kellogg Gallery, Chautauqua, NY. Her Graduating BFA Show was held at the John J. McDonough Museum, Youngstown, OH. She has been included in several group exhibitions at Bliss Hall Gallery at Youngstown State University, including Streets of Venice, Prodotto di Venezia and Gypsy Town, a collaborative installation with Teresa Soos. Her art website is http://fmbaldarelli9.wixsite.com/portfolio. 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 Sella-Granata Art Gallery is open Mon. through Thurs., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in 109 Woods Hall, in the heart of UA campus. Woods Quad and Woods Hall is a five-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/.
Tobias Layman MFA Thesis Exhibition
Graduate student in sculpture 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 5-7 pm. Layman works in kinetic sculpture created from wood, metal and found objects. He writes in his artist statement that his sculptures are something more than the run-of-the-mill machine. They "share experiences and sensations for an audience. The rough and unrefined aesthetic give the machines character and personality. The machines play with found objects in a way to trigger memories for an audience. Without the object the machine is a just a machine, but with the object the machine now has a sentient purpose. The object serves as a way for the machine to better engage with an audience. A conversation is started, centered around the found object. The machine tells a story and, in turn, generates stories from an audience. The machine will tell the same story in the same manner, but the audience will interact with that story and change it in their own way. This is the intent of my kinetic sculptures. They are the means for people to share a common bond and relation with a machine, but also interact and engage with other people." Tobias Layman is a graduate student in sculpture , 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. See videos of Tobias Layman's kinetic sculptures here: http://talsculpture.weebly.com/videos.html. A gallery talk he gave during the department’s 2017 Graduate Student Show about his work process is in a video here: https://vimeo.com/240537838. 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.
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 pursues research in racially-based housing discrimination in her native Birmingham. The residue of redlining continues to haunt the city’s black neighborhoods. Morgan traces the data of mapping with her photography: “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 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 link: http://art.ua.edu/academics/graduate-programs/art-requirements/. 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 http://art.ua.edu/gallery/smga/.
“Abject of Desire” – Joani Inglett MFA Exhibition
Graduate student Joani Inglett will present her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Abject of Desire, March 23-30, 2017, at the Sella-Granata Art Gallery in Woods Hall on UA campus. The public is invited to a reception for the artist, Thursday, March 30, 4-6 p.m. Joani Inglett is a ceramic artist from Athens, Georgia. She received a BFA in ceramics from Kennesaw State University. She said that in her art work, she "now explores the limits of material through trial and error." Inglett has participated in invitational and juried exhibitions around the country and was awarded a fellowship to Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, Tenn. She is a member of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. 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/. Funding support for the Sella-Granata Art Gallery comes from the UA Department of Art and Art History. Admission to the gallery is free. The gallery is located at 109 Woods Hall in the heart of the UA campus on Woods Quad. Hours are Monday through Thursday 10:00 – 4:00 p.m. 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) 348-2783 or go to http://art.ua.edu/gallery/sgg/.
“This Then This:” Sydney Ewerth MFA Exhibition
Graduate student Sydney Ewerth will present her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, This Then This, March 1-10, 2017, at the Sella-Granata Art Gallery in Woods Hall on UA campus. The public is invited to an Art Night reception for the artist, Thursday, March 2, 4-6 p.m. Atlanta native Sydney Ewerth received her BFA with a concentration in sculpture and ceramics from Augusta University (formerly Georgia Regents University) in Augusta, Ga. During her candidacy for the MFA at the University of Alabama, she has taught and assisted classes on various topics in ceramics and drawing. In the summer of 2016, she attended a two-week ceramics workshop at the Oxbow School of Art in Michigan. She also apprenticed under artist Amy Pleasant. In 2015, Ewerth was juried into five ceramics exhibitions from New York state to Louisiana. She won an honorable mention in the Lux Center for the Arts’ Mug Shots Juried Exhibition in Lincoln, Nebraska. She is a member of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and UA’s Crimson Clay Club. Ewerth's art website is here. 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/. Funding support for the Sella-Granata Art Gallery comes from the UA Department of Art and Art History. Admission to the gallery is free. The gallery is located at 109 Woods Hall in the heart of the UA campus on Woods Quad. Hours are Monday through Thursday 10:00 – 4:00 p.m. 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) 348-2783 or go to http://art.ua.edu/gallery/sgg/.
MFA Exhibition Explores Adoptive Child’s Experience
UA graduate student in studio art Liam Ward will present his Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, titled 24, at the Harrison Galleries, February 28-March 19, 2017. A First Friday reception for the artist will be Friday March 3 from 6-9 pm. In the images of 24, Ward, who is an adopted child with no information about his birth parents, explores an inner world where he combines fantasy and experience. In his exhibition statement, he writes, "The idea of having no knowledge of the most profound moment of my life, my own creation, is a terrifying and somewhat humorous experience. I am creating family history of a family I have no knowledge of, while at the same time projecting my own experiences from my adolescent years onto them." The images on exhibit are only an excerpt - "a single frame" - of Ward's imagined world. Because the viewer also has limited knowledge, Ward expects that the viewer will participate by filling in the parts we don't know with our own projections, much like Ward's own experience of his birth parents. In that way, he wants "to make the viewer aware of the fiction involved within these images and realize what it means to be a parent and a child." Liam Ward received the BFA in studio art from State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 2013, graduating with honors. Ward was a teaching assistant at the Maine Media Workshops, Camden, Maine, at SUNY Plattsburgh and at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa. He participated in the SPE South Central Conference Exhibition in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 2015. Recent publications include American Spirit, BOAAT and in Photographers Forum , in which he was a finalist in their Best of Photography Contest in 2016. He is a member of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) and serves as a graduate ambassador for UA’s Graduate School. 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/. Harrison Galleries hosts a First Friday jazz reception from 6-9 pm on the first Friday of the month in downtown Tuscaloosa. Harrison Galleries is located at 2315 University Boulevard and is open Monday through Friday, 12 noon to 5:00 pm, and by appointment: (205) 464-0054.