With his recent gift to the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art’s Permanent Collection, alumnus Thornton Willis’ art has found a home for his artistic legacy to live on through teaching and exhibiting. Willis, considered a second generation abstract expressionist, and his wife, art historian Vered Lieb, gave 27 paintings and two sketchbooks to UA last fall, in what Willis described to the College of Arts & Sciences’ Collegian as “a gift of appreciation for the time I spent here as a graduate student and how it enriched my life.” “I owe thanks to William Dooley who took the time to come to New York City and handpicked each work. It feels just natural that I give back what I can. Although my career path took me to the North, my roots in many ways remain in the South,” Willis told the Collegian. Thornton Willis earned his MA in art in 1966 (the equivalent of today’s MFA) from The University of Alabama’s department of art and art history, where he came to study under the renowned abstract expressionist Melville Price, who taught at UA from 1958 to 1970. While still in school and considering a move away from Tuscaloosa to New York City, Willis asked the advice of visiting artist Theodore Stamos, a close friend of Mark Rothko’s, if he should leave to study painting. Willis said that Stamos replied, “Why would you do that? You have Mel Price here.” So he stayed, learning from his primary professors Price and Howard Goodson. He eventually made his way to New York after graduation, going on to a successful career in art. Now UA students will be able to experience Willis’ artistic legacy without leaving Tuscaloosa. Along with the 29 works gifted this fall, the Permanent Collection holds eight other paintings by Willis, for a total of 37 pieces. Studying Thornton Willis’ art in person brings the rich history of the ideas and techniques of American twentieth-century painting to life before students’ eyes. For more information about the UA Department of Art and Art History and its programs, visit our website: https://art.ua.edu/academics/or contact the department at (205) 348-5967.
SMGA Exhibit Gathers Art from Its Varied Collections
Com-bine - Selections from the Permanent Collection will be in the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art August 23 - September 28, 2018. The public is invited to a reception Thursday, September 6, 5-7 p.m. Tuscaloosa – At least once a year, the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art features work from its Permanent Collection, a trove of works on paper, prints, paintings and small sculptures by notable artists, gathered over the years since Sarah McCorkle Moody began the collection in 1950. Since that time, donors with a connection to the department have contributed to its richness – alumni such as artists and collectors William Hall, and Jim and Myra Morgan, for example. These collections within the Permanent Collection showcase the individual connoisseur’s expertise and taste. The Farley Moody Galbraith Family Purchase Fund, endowed by Sarah Moody's descendants, allows the director to also select art for the collection, often by artists whose works have been shown in the gallery during the exhibition season. Choosing what will hang in this show from the more than 1,500 art works in the Permanent Collection might sound overwhelming, but Bill Dooley, director of the gallery, has many years of experience in curating this annual event. “I look at what has been shown in previous years, but then I work intuitively. I try to choose work with a variety of materials, created in different time periods and with different artistic approaches.” For this show, he has selected celebrated artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Alice Neel, Robert Rauschenberg, Kenny Scharf and Deborah Willis, who work in a wide range of subject matter, medium and approach. “I want this show to call attention to the diversity of work in our collection in terms of the provenance of each work, the collector or donor, and to show the breadth of the art we have here,” says Dooley. Dooley and exhibitions coordinator Vicki Rial are excited about showing the newly framed Book of Clouds by the preeminent artist Helen Frankenthaler, a large color woodblock print given by William and Sara Hall, retired master printer of Pace Prints in New York and an alumnus of the department. Hall visited the SMGA last year to give a gallery talk on an exhibition that featured prints from the William and Sara Hall Collection. Students and faculty were able to see the unframed Frankenthaler print up close and hear Hall describe the process of creating the print from the artist’s painting. Wayne Miller's deceptively bright work in pigment on paper with neon, It Reminded Him of the Woman in Yokohama, from the Jim and Myra Morgan Collection, will be a literal highlight of the exhibition. The Morgans, both alumni of the Department of Art and Art History and Alabama natives, founded the Morgan Gallery in Kansas City in 1969, became friends with artists and collected their work over the years. The Morgan family donated a portion of their collection to the SMGA Permanent Collection a few years ago. Their ties to Alabama were reflected in the artists they represented, including two prominent Alabama artists who were also UA alumni: Frank Fleming and William Christenberry. Along with highlights from collections within the Permanent Collection, the show features several University of Alabama alumni and former faculty, from renowned artists like William Christenberry, to second generation abstract expressionists Thornton Willis and his teacher Melville Price, whose sketchbook drawings, a gift of Barbara Gillette Price, were done during the time he taught at UA from 1958 to 1970. Image credit (above right): Helen Frankenthaler, Book of Clouds, 2007, aquatint and porchoir on woodcut with handcoloring, printed on 3 sheets, image and paper: 35 5/8 x 68 1/4 (overall), William and Sara Hall Collection, Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. Image credit (right): David Bates (American), White Roses, 2007, woodcut, William and Sara Hall Collection, Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art is supported by The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Art and Art History. For further information, contact the gallery at 348-1891 or go to our website: https://art.ua.edu/gallery/smga/. Garland 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/. For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
Alumni News from The Loupe, Spring 2016
This fall at UA’s Majors Fair for undergraduates, we featured the variety of career choices available to art majors and masters students — and the news from our alumni bears this out! KAREN GRAFFEO (MFA 1987) exhibited 20 mixed media images and 30 lenticular (3-D) images in a solo exhibition, Cuba: de lo profundo del alma (Cuba: Soul Deep), in January at the Julio Larramendi Gallery of Photography in Havana, Cuba. As this issue goes to press, Graffeo, UA Honors College instructor Chip Cooper and Cuban photographer and gallery owner Julio Larramendi have a 3-person show, Troika: Cuba Soul Deep, at the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art in Tuscumbia. Graffeo plans two more trips to Cuba this spring and summer to continue her work. Graffeo, Cooper and Larramendi will also exhibit their project at the University of Montevallo’s Bloch Hall Gallery of Art in the fall of 2016. In 2015, Graffeo exhibited Let Us Now Praise the Roma at the Odessa Woolfolk Gallery at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and then at the Walnut Gallery in Gadsden (directed by UA art alumnus Mario Gallardo [MFA 2002]). The photographs, part of a long-running project for which she has been awarded several grants, document the culture of the Roma, or “gypsies,” inside refugee encampments, caravans, slums and housing projects in Italy. In 2013, Graffeo was selected as a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Romania and in 2005 she was named University Scholar at the University of Montevallo for her documentary photography work in Roma communities and refugee encampments in Europe. Graffeo is professor of art and director of the photography concentration at the University of Montevallo. JIM NEEL (MFA 1973), associate professor of art at Birmingham-Southern College, was awarded a 2016 John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/Industry Residency, in order to create a large-scale installation piece, Archeological Fragments. Now that he has returned from Wisconsin, he has three upcoming exhibitions scheduled in the state of Alabama: BSC in October, the Huntsville Museum of Art in mid-November with Karen Graffeo and UA’s Sarah Moody Gallery of Art in January 2017! Neel's website is here: https://jimneel.com/. DARIUS HILL (MFA 2014) and wife, artist Bethanne Hill, and their children were featured in the January 2016 issue of Family Circle magazine article, “Modern Life: A Biracial Family Shares Their Story.” Hill, an award-winning artist, has headed the visual arts department at the Alabama School of Fine Arts since 2000. LACI JORDAN (BA 2011, digitial media) has been working her way up, from a designer at Creative Campus to a graphic designer at Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles. All along, Jordan has done freelance design work and had her own company, So Laci Like, where she specializes in branding, digital illustrations, web and art direction. Her portfolio is www.lacijordan.com and she says, “you can find me creating fresh artwork at www.solacilike.com.” Three photographs by SARAH CUSIMANO MILES (MFA 2010), from her series, Solomon’s House (her MFA thesis exhibition at UA), have been included in a major exhibition at Brown University, Dead Animals, or The Curious Occurrence of Taxidermy in Contemporary Art. Her photos are alongside works by renowned artists Damian Hurst, Richard Ross and others. In addition, Miles’ Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) is featured on the cover of the exhibition catalog. Miles teaches at Jacksonville State University where she has contributed to the transition of the traditional film-based photography program to a digital-based curriculum. She also maintains a commercial photography business based in Gadsden. KHARA KOFFEL (MFA 2003 in sculpture and photography), associate professor of art at MacMurray College, has had artwork accepted to Telling Tales, a national, juried exhibition at the TEJAS Gallery in Dayton, Ohio. Koffel’s work was were accepted to three juried shows: Small Works 2015 at Main Street Arts Gallery in Clifton Springs, N.Y. Gendered Perspectives: An Investigation into Gendered Identities, Hartman Center Gallery of Bradley University, Peoria, IL. Koffel was one of 126 artists from nearly 700 entries to have work accepted to the 14th annual Small Wonders, at Circle Gallery in Annapolis, sponsored by the Maryland Federation of Art. MICHAEL MCALLISTER (BA 1971) wrote in via our online alumni update form. As a student, Mcallister concentrated in printmaking under Richard Zoellner. He works as a security guard at the Troy-Pike Cultural Arts Center. He has worked as a security guard at the Montgomery Museum of Art and has police training from the State of Alabama. Since graduation, ALLY MABRY (BFA 2014) has worked as a graphic production artist in Austin. In October, she was awarded the 2015 MarCom Gold Award in the Informational Category for “Lockout Tagout - LOTO Is Not A Choice” by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. Mabry also won the 2015 Gold ADDY in the Tuscaloosa Advertising Federation Student ADDYs for Magazine Design for UA Honors College’s Mosaic Magazine. MENG TONG (MA 2014, art history) has interned at the New Orleans Museum of Art since June 2014. She was accepted into the PhD program of the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas in East Asian Art. Tong’s research at UA focused on Buddhist cave arts along the overland Silk Roads during the medieval period. She traveled to Dunhuang, China, to study the Mogao Caves, a major Buddhist pilgrimage site on the Silk Road. The trip was funded in part by the Research and Travel Fund of the UA Graduate School, Capstone International and the Department of Art and Art History. VIRGINA ECKINGER (MFA 2014) is an Artist-in-Residence at Craft Alliance Center of Art + Design, specializing in clay. Eckinger teaches Craft Alliance’s community outreach and educational programs and is the Clay Studio Manager at Craft Alliance’s Grand Center location. She exhibits her work nationally. She recently exhibited her work at Paperworkers Local in Birmingham. ALI HVAL (BFA 2015) has been accepted to graduate school for fall 2016 at The University of Iowa’s School of Art and Art History, to concentrate in painting and drawing. She was awarded a teaching assistantship and a tuition waiver for all three years, as well as a $2,500 scholarship the first year. As a senior at UA in the spring of 2015, Hval was awarded one of only ten nationwide Windgate Fellowships. Read more about Hval here. Lori Taylor (BFA 2015, printmaking and painting; minor in business management) works at Michaels in custom framing. Taylor's professional profile is here. Erik Hestevold (BA 2011, studio art and philosophy) is a Graduate Research Assistant to Dr. Nikolaos Panagopoulos at UA in marketing. He also is working with Alabama Heritage on a project to analyze and understand the magazine’s readership. In April, Patricia Lynn Davis (BFA 2010) presented her thesis exhibition, Don’t Worry, for the MFA degree from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Department of Art and Art History. A whole passel of our alumnae — as well as a current student and an instructor — are part of the exhibition at Union Grove Gallery, UAH, in Huntsville! AMY FEGER, KAREN GRAFFEO, AYNSLEE MOON and HEATHER WHIDDEN, as well as current grad student CELESTIA MORGAN and instructor CHARLOTTE WEGRZYNOWSKI join the Alabama Women’s Caucus for Art’s first juried exhibition, Intimate Spaces, May 21-July 2. JILL HAMRICK ENGLAND’s (BFA 2008) Southeastern Scenery: Through the lens of Jill H. England, will be on display in the Leo Reynolds Gallery of the Gadsden Museum of Art, May 6 — June 24 2016. England is also a member of Birmingham’s Paperworkers Local (see page 1). Jennifer Kurtz (BA 2005) is now membership and community development manager for the Girl Scouts of North-Central Alabama. THORNTON WILLIS (MA [MFA] 1966) had an exhibition, step up, in March and April at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York City. Claire Lewis Evans (MFA 2015) just installed a new bouquet of her colorful large-scale mobiles at the Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment venue in Huntsville. Actualities will be up through July 9. Alumni and students, we want to know what you are doing these days. Contact Rachel Dobson: rachel.dobson@ua.edu OR fill out the online form here: http://art.ua.edu/alumni/. Thank you! [s16]
Past, Present and Future: the SMGA Permanent Collection
Image Credits
The Permanent Collection, housed and cared for by the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, was created in the 1960s as a unique and integral component of the Department of Art. The majority of the collection is dedicated to works on paper including graphic prints and photography. Also included are paintings, drawings and small sculpture. Numerous gifts of art have been directed to the gallery’s collection by donors with ties to the university. The gallery has made it a practice to purchase several works each year. The gallery has pursued an initiative to enhance diversity among artists represented in its collection. Over time this collection has grown to more than 1,500 works. These works are under the care of the gallery and it is a privilege to share them with the university in this exhibition. New storage facilities for Sarah Moody Gallery of Art With the support of the College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Alabama and the Farley Moody Galbraith Support Fund, new storage facilities are now in use. The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art is in the process of moving its Permanent Collection from existing storage in Garland Hall to new facilities located across the street from Garland Hall in the Bureau of Mines building complex. The new 1,880 square feet of storage and curation facilities are a great addition to our ever-expanding collection of Modern and Contemporary art. Both flat file and vertical storage capabilities have been expanded with state-of the-art storage systems. The goal is to also build out a curation space that can allow for the gallery staff to prepare works for exhibits and service works in the collection to add to their stability and safekeeping. A new system of climate control enables a year-round maintenance of stable temperature with remote monitoring capabilities that alert university and gallery staff to any changes in interior climate. Once the entirety of the gallery collection is in place, all 1,427 works of art will be under a single roof. Phase II will entail relocating support materials for the collection such as framing equipment, exhibition and research files and related materials, and other related gallery records. View images of the new curation space on Flickr. More about the Permanent Collection and Its History Within the collection are prints by the late Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925-2008). His work was featured in the gallery in 1991 as the inaugural Farley Moody Galbraith Endowed Exhibition. The Galbraith endowment provides support for exhibition programming devoted to nationally acclaimed artists. When it is possible to do so, the gallery seeks to purchase artwork from notable contemporary artists to add to its holdings. Over the years a number of artists have been featured within the exhibit program schedule of the Sarah Moody Gallery including: Carrie Mae Weems, Cora Cohen, Thornton Willis, Jasper Johns, Sally Mann, Deborah Willis, Ida Applebroog, William T. Wiley, William Christenberry, John Newman, Judy Pfaff, Vernon Fisher and Tony Scherman. As the permanent collection expanded, the College of Arts and Sciences recognized the need to upgrade collections facilities for the gallery. Farley Moody Galbraith (1920-2013) produced a significant shift in the momentum of the gallery with the establishment of endowed programming support. Her endowment, along with the support of the College of Arts and Sciences, has changed the complexion of our university gallery. We are a highly regarded programming arm of the Department of Art and Art History that offers university and community patrons of the arts many opportunities for visual arts cultural enrichment. Mrs. Galbraith established her financial support and directed a change to the name of the gallery so as to reflect the name of her mother, Sarah McCorkle Moody (1890 – 1977). Sarah McCorkle lived in Tuscaloosa and was a longstanding supporter of the art department. She maintained friendships with faculty and students of the department and supported students by purchasing their artwork. Young students, who typically lack a buying public, were supported by her generosity. She touched the lives of many with her affection for the cultural arts. She donated artwork from her collection to the gallery and made a cash gift to the gallery to support facility renovations to the Garland Hall location. Then called “University Art Gallery” became the “Moody Gallery of Art” under the directorship of Angelo Granata (1922–2009), Professor of Sculpture. He established a dedicated operating budget with the College for the gallery and oversaw the cataloguing and storage procedures for its permanent collection. Mr. Granata was one of the founding faculty members of the Department of Art, served as department chair and gallery director during his tenure at UA. In his capacity as gallery director, Granata worked diligently, building the permanent collection so that it had a focus and served as a survey art collection that represented trends in contemporary art practices primarily in graphics, prints, photographs and works on paper. There were some opportunities to acquire paintings and small sculpture, but their higher costs usually posed limitations. More reasonable artwork to be acquired was in print form. He secured occasional federal matching support for buying works for the gallery collection. This he undertook while also maintaining a schedule of changing exhibitions. One such exhibition was dedicated to the paintings of Lee Krasner (American, 1908-1984). Known primarily for her marriage to Abstract Expression’s Jackson Pollock (American, 1912 – 1956), Krasner was a painter in her own right. Her painting sensibilities while married to Pollock co-mingled with his. Angelo Granata worked with Marlborough Gallery, New York to bring both she and her paintings to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She was well received in the department and cherished her Alabama visit. It included a trip to southwest Alabama to visit Gee’s Bend (Boykin, Alabama) and its quilters. In the end, the gallery acquired a painting from her White Rage series produced in 1965. This abstract painting is probably the most prominent work in the gallery’s holdings. Over the years the gallery has acquired several privately held collections that have broadened the collection while complementing its contents. Two recent collections include: the Morgan Family Collection that was donated in memory of university alumni, the late Jim and Myra Morgan of Kansas City; and the William A. and Sara Hall Collection. Hall earned his BFA degree from Alabama and serves as Master Printer for Pace Prints, Inc., New York. --William T. Dooley, Director [Loupe Spring 2015]
Dreaming Local Over and Under – Recent Works by William T. Dooley
October 3 – November 1, 2013, Ferguson Center Art Gallery, The University of Alabama Opening Reception Thursday, October 3, 5-7 p.m. in The Ferg In his own quiet and understated way, Bill Dooley has kept up a breakneck pace of production for the past 25 years at The University of Alabama. From time to time, he reveals the paintings and drawings he continually creates behind the scenes, while producing exhibitions for renowned artists ranging from Robert Rauschenberg and William Christenberry to Chakaia Booker and Mel Chin. Now is one of those times. The exhibition of new work Dreaming Local Over and Under features Dooley's small oil-on-canvas paintings, drawings in oil pastel, graphite, gouache, watercolor and gesso, and studies for future pieces. Vicki Rial, exhibitions coordinator at the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, an artist and a longtime observer of Dooley's art work, notes that while his palette is bright, his paintings have an unexpectedly subtle effect on the viewer. "His work is not always what it seems on first approach. It is very likable; the colors and texture are quite beautiful, but the longer you look, the more you see layered through and between the paint. This aspect of layering asks the viewer to pay attention to what is going on beneath as well as on the surface." Dooley writes about his processes and his approaches: "I lean toward indefinite sources such as memory and glance that can be thought of as unresolved, undeclared, perhaps a little undone. My artwork seems to tighten the visual information to a point of breaking. An odd result is usually a work that is quirky and clumsy…rarely does platonic beauty follow." "Nature continues to be a worthy subject for me. The desire to have some of relationship with it, while romantic, is also sensible. I have learned to pay attention to the cycles and patterns that define the seasons, the weather, time, and nearly everything for which we have a definition. It is possible to build paintings and various forms of artwork using practices and methods not unlike those used by insects and birds. I have found a relationship between materials and method that offers purpose to my art making." William Dooley received his M.F.A. from the University of South Carolina. He joined The University of Alabama's Department of Art and Art History in 1988 and serves as associate professor and director of the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. Dooley's own works of art have been included in more than 75 regional and national exhibitions, including more than forty juried competitions. His works are in numerous private collections and museums including the South Carolina State Museum at Columbia; The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; the University of South Carolina, Columbia; and the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama. Since 1988, Dooley has directed and curated a schedule of changing exhibitions at the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art for such internationally acclaimed artists as Gregory Amenoff, Ida Applebroog, Chakaia Booker, Mel Chin, William Christenberry, Cora Cohen, Jack Earl, Vernon Fisher, Cheryl Goldsleger, Jasper Johns, Lee Krasner, Sally Mann, Ed McGowin, Elizabeth Murray, John Newman, Brian Novatny, Robert Rauschenberg, Tony Scherman, Carrie Mae Weems, William T. Wiley, Deborah Willis and Thornton Willis. He has contributed essays for exhibition catalogs and expanded checklists on George Baselitz, William Christenberry, Vernon Fisher, the Paul R. Jones Collection, Samuel Mockbee, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Judy Pfaff, Ilona Rich, Carrie Mae Weems and Thornton Willis, and he has served as Alabama Regional Editor for Art Papers. Since 2002, Dooley also has contributed his expertise in exhibits management to Rural Studio, an architectural design/build program at Auburn University, serving first as a visiting project reviewer and then as advisory board member. Dooley teaches art museum practices, drawing and graduate seminars in studio research. For further information, please contact William T. Dooley, wtdooley@ua.edu | www.wtdooley.com or Rachel Dobson, rachel.dobson@ua.edu
Thornton Willis featured in The Loupe
Don’t miss our special section in the Summer 2013 issue of The Loupe that features alumnus and renowned abstract expressionist painter THORNTON WILLIS (MA 1966).
Abstract Expressionist Thornton Willis at the SMGA
THORNTON WILLIS: STRUCTURAL ABSTRACTION features abstract oil paintings that represent art work spanning a decade: lattice paintings, triangle paintings and his latest work. What his art works have in common is the “allover surface plane held in tension, between figure and ground, as an interwoven field,” writes Lance Esplund, arts contributor to the Wall Street Journal. ALUMNI YEARS -- Thornton Willis earned his MA in art in 1966 (equivalent to today's MFA) from the University of Alabama's department of art and art history, where he came to study under the renowned abstract expressionist, Melville Price. Willis writes about his teacher: "Mel encouraged me to paint and to go, in a sense, wherever the painting might take me. Eventually it did take me to New York City where I have lived and worked since 1967...I still hold to the tenants of Abstract Expressionism as Mel taught it and lived it. Painting is a powerful means of expression, an important cultural element that must be encouraged within modern society in order that society may be made whole. Mel believed this and lived his life accordingly." AWARDS -- Thornton Willis’s awards include a painting fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, painting and printmaking fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Fellowship, the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Painting Fellowship. Willis was awarded membership in the Southern Mississippi College of Arts and Letters Wall of Fame, his undergraduate alma mater. He has art work in more than forty collections, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo; the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC; the Herb and Dorothy Vogel Collection in the National Gallery, Washington, DC; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Denver Museum of Fine Art; and the Portland (OR) Art Museum. Read and view more about Thornton Willis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_Willis (extensive bibliographic and online references) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsdot7YjGM