2016
AUBURN UNIVERSITY
studio
DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY
faculty exhibition JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART, AUBURN UNIVERSITY JANUARY 23–MARCH 20, 2016
DESIGN BY Janet Guynn © 2016 Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University Auburn University is an equal opportunity educational institution/employer.
studio Nicole Andreoni Barb Bondy Jon Byler Allyson Comstock Wendy DesChene Chuck Hemard Lauren Alyssa Howard Andrew Kozlowski Zdenko Krtić Jeffrey Lewis Lindsay M. McCormick Paul J. McCormick Jessye McDowell Christopher McNulty
AUBURN UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY
Taylor Robenalt
art history Emily C. Burns Joyce de Vries Kathryn Floyd Karen Sonik
2016
AUBURN UNIVERSITY
studio
DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY
faculty exhibition JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART, AUBURN UNIVERSITY Bill L. Harbert Gallery and Gallery C
T
he oldest accredited art department in the southeast, Auburn University’s Department of Art and Art History continues to emphasize excellence, innovation, diversity, and critical thinking, both in its course curricula and informal mentoring of its students. As an occasional instructor in the department and through interaction with students here at the museum, I hear frequently, “classes are hard!” But it’s not a complaint, for each has really gained something of value, which is of course the reason they are in school. Yet, such instruction occurs not exclusively in the lecture hall or studio. The same students describe learning by example from the professors they have come to know and respect during their time on campus. This is because the department’s faculty is composed of serious artists that also teach and historians who conduct meaningful research and are eager to share their passion and experience with young scholars just starting out.
Auburn’s studio faculty members exhibit internationally and have achieved wide recognition for their creative endeavors—acknowledged through significant grants, fellowships, and acquisitions by public and private collections. The art historians publish regularly with respected presses and journals, they present research in symposia and conferences, engage with museums and other institutions at home and abroad, and likewise are recipients of noteworthy grants and awards. You will see that evidenced in abbreviated form among the pages to follow. Exposure to such activity by their mentors offers students real-world examples of the struggles and rewards that lie ahead in their chosen fields and the level of dedication that is required for success. This triennial presentation of recent art by the professors, adjunct instructors, and studio staff at Auburn University’s Department of Art and Art History demonstrates the wide range of creative production taking place at the school.
Traditional media and subject matter appear alongside twenty-first-century processes and materials. Old and new often merge in evocative ways in single works. Besides ceramics, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture, the exhibition features work in video and computer-generated imagery; all of which are disciplines taught in the department. Artists Nicole Andreoni, Barb Bondy, Jon Byler, Wendy DesChene, Chuck Hemard, Lauren Alyssa Howard, Andrew Kozlowski, Zdenko Krtić, Jeffrey Lewis, collaborating partners Lindsay and Paul McCormick, Jessye McDowell, Christopher McNulty, Taylor Robenalt, and Department Chair Allyson Comstock epitomize the high level of accomplishment expected and achieved at Auburn. We celebrate their achievements here. This publication, in addition to serving as a record of the exhibition with notes on participating artists, recognizes Auburn’s distinguished Art History faculty and documents selected recent scholarly activity by Drs. Emily Burns, Joyce de Vries, Kathryn Floyd, and Karen Sonik. The staff of the museum along with the exhibiting artists and art historians gratefully acknowledge Dr. Joseph A. Aistrup, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, for his generous support in the production of this catalogue and for his strong advocacy for the arts in general. My personal thanks are owed to Jessica Hughes, curatorial assistant at the Jule Collins Smith Museum, without whose tireless efforts the success of this project would have been greatly diminished; also, Janet Spivey Guynn, for design work in the museum’s publications and exhibitions that is never less than superlative; and to Todd Hall and Delanne Robertson for their meticulous and sensitive touch in installation presentation.
Dennis Harper Curator of collections and exhibitions
studio
The Relic, 2011, intaglio, 5 x 6 inches (image)
nicole ANDREONI Adjunct Instructor Fundamentals and printmaking
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Intimacy requires dialogue, transparency, reciprocity, and self-disclosure. It is emotional, physical, and sexual. It speaks of desire and longing. It exists within relationships between people, within physical and formal spaces, and among artist, subject, material, and viewer. It is often connected with private utterances or actions and comes from a close or long association. In my work, I seek to explore the intimacies of daily life and personal relationships. Images of women, body parts, and landscapes establish a sense of the familiar, while more abstract images create a sense of the unknown. The work strives to make the personal more accessible through shared experiences of love and desire, sexuality, vulnerability, beauty, the sacred, and the mundane.
Nicole Andreoni received an M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 2010 and a B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 2003. She also studied at Temple University in Rome, Italy from 2001–02. Her works on paper have been shown in numerous national exhibitions. Recent activity includes a solo exhibition at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA, and group shows at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA, and White Box Gallery in New York, NY. She has taught printmaking, drawing, and 2-D design as Instructor of Record at VCU and the University of Richmond. At Auburn University she teaches Fundamentals and Printmaking and has led workshops for the Summer High School Art Experience. From 2014–15 she was Gallery Director at Fieldwork Projects, the Department of Art and Art History’s extension gallery.
Open System 4, 2015, graphite on paper, 30 x 22 inches
barb BONDY Professor Drawing
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: My research inquiry is centered on metacognition (thinking about thinking). Within the scope of this interest, I bridge art and science, primarily through drawing, to consider the role of the brain, mind, and consciousness in constructing one’s everyday reality. I am currently involved in a collaborative research project titled Drawing and Cognitive Neuroscience. The project aims to determine if there are connections between brain plasticity and learning to draw.
M.F.A., Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; B.F.A., University of Windsor, Ontario SELECTED EXHIBITIONS: Number Inc.: Art of the South, Hyde Gallery, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN, 2015 INSIDE OUT: Selections from the Kentler International Drawing Space Flatfiles, Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, 2013 Suspension, Staniar Gallery, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, 2013 Soft Science, Ilges Gallery, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA, 2012 Summer Has Just Come, Sans Quoi Gallery, Okayama, Japan, 2012 Uncovered: Prints from the Kentler Flatfiles, Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, 2012 Draw(n) Out, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 2013 Box III: SouthXeast BOXED: 5 Southeastern Artists, Whitespace: The Mordes Collection, West Palm Beach, FL, 2011 The Drawing Room, (DRAWN Vancouver), Pendulum Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, 2010 Point, Sweet Lorraine Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2010
beacon #1, 2015, found objects, MDF, electric motor, brass, steel, acrylic paint, 72 x 25 x 18 inches
jon BYLER 3-D Studio Coordinator, Adjunct Instructor 3-D design and sculpture
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Through imagery lifted from common everyday objects, places, and situations, I try to subvert the complacency induced by our sound-bite culture. Embracing the contradictions in the world around me, I synthesize and re-contextualize the information that I soak up into objects that are on one level dazzling and fun, while at the same time creating situations that encourage and require contemplation. I am deeply interested in discarded artifacts of our industrialized existence and how we as humans interact with them, and through them, with each other. Questions in my stories masquerade as punch lines and bad jokes, but the obvious answers often turn toward pathos through their gross inadequacy.
M.F.A., University of Wisconsin–Madison; B.A. (German Studies), Lewis and Clark College SELECTED EXHIBITIONS: Wiregrass Biennial, Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, AL, 2012 National Young Sculptors Competition, Hiestand Galleries, Miami University, Oxford, OH, 2009 Love isn’t Always Enough, Biggin Gallery, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 2007 Government Work, 7th Floor Gallery, Madison, WI, 2004 Home Fires Burning, The Wendy Cooper Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2004
Antarctica: Micro, Macro and In-between #4 (views: Anvers Island, iceberg near Half Moon Island, bacteria), 2014, chalk pastel on cotton rag paper, each panel: 12 x 18 inches
(Detail)
allyson COMSTOCK Professor and Department Chair Drawing, hand papermaking, and installation
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: The drawing series Antarctica: Micro, Macro, and In-between serves to raise questions about how we view and understand the natural world and, in particular, Antarctica. Multiple perceptions of the Antarctic environment are presented to create an enlarged understanding of Antarctica.
M.F.A., Arizona State University; B.A., Occidental College FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS: National Science Foundation Antarctic Artist and Writers Program Grant, 2013 Artist Fellowship, Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY, 2009
A panoramic view presents the grandeur of the Antarctic landscape. A
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
microscopic view, typically only seen by research scientists, presents macro and micro views onto a near view of the Antarctic landscape.
303 Days a Year, The T.E.M.P. Gallery at Kentuck, Northport, AL, 2014; The Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, AL, 2013; Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, 2011
As these visual narratives are experienced, the importance of perceptions
Botanic/Organic, Union Street Gallery, Chicago Heights, IL, 2012
Antarctica at its deepest level. The third view, the artist’s view, layers the
relative to what one knows, understands, and values in nature is discovered. The familiar broad landscape view and the scientists’ microscopic view are brought together by the artist’s view to create an understanding of the relational nature of the two. What happens at the smallest (microscopic) level in the Antarctic environment affects the big landscape view that is so well known and admired, and vice versa. The ultimate goal is to create a deeper appreciation of the Antarctic environment and of the natural world in general.
The Wiregrass Biennial, The Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, AL, 2012 Close Observations, Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA, 2010
Still from Pollock /Dogg, 2015, digital video, a “Wench” collaborative production with Nichola Kinch
wendy DESCHENE Associate Professor Installation, 2-D, digital media, and environmental practice
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Art is least interesting when it goes to a gallery to die or falls asleep on a wall. Street tactics, appropriation, liberation, collaboration, satire, education, and activism drive my process. As an artist, I am powerful. Join me in the protest and get art off its ass. When we get tired, we will draw.
M.F.A., Tyler School of Art at Temple University; B.F.A., Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec SELECTED RECENT ACTIVITY: Arrr…t, solo exhibition, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan, 2015 Mothology, solo exhibition and residency at St. Norbert College, De Pere, WI; supporting grant: National Endowment for the Arts, Artworks Program, 2015* ESPACIO ENTER: International Festival of Creativity, Innovation, and Digital Culture, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Tenerife, Canary Islands, 2015* The Institutionalists, The Drawing Center, New York, NY, 2014 “Moth Project,” Marfa Dialogues/St. Louis, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, MO; project grant: The Pulitzer Foundation, 2014 The Moth Project, solo exhibition, De Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, Netherlands; residency grant: Landscape Laboratory, Buitenwerkplaats, NL, 2014* PlantBot Responds, solo project/exhibition, Oulu Museum of Art, Oulu, Finland; residency grant: Kauppilanti KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre Finland, 2014* Art in Odd Places (AiOP): The Artifacts, Colonel’s Row, Governors Island, New York, NY, 2014* (*In collaboration with Jeff Schmuki, Assistant Professor, Georgia Southern University)
Untitled, Okaloosa County, Florida, 2012, pigment print, 42 x 50 inches
chuck HEMARD Associate Professor Photography
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Images in the series Pine explore remnants of old-growth longleaf pinelands across the southeast United States, one of America’s most
M.F.A. with Distinction, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, 2004; B.A., Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi, 1999
significant landscapes and bio-diverse ecosystems that prior to European
SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS:
settlement covered some 90 million acres from Virginia to east Texas and was all but wiped away.
Celebrating Contemporary Art in Alabama: The Biennial, Troy-Pike Cultural Arts Center, Troy, AL, 2015
This is more about a place than a tree. I am after a sense of the
SPE Southeast Juried Exhibition, Center for Visual Arts, Greenville, SC, 2015
momentous and sacred: what I can experience in the present that gives a tiny glimpse of insight to both past and future. I seek a place where time is tangible and puts me in my place as a human in a much larger narrative. We eventually became part of the earth’s narrative, and I get the feeling we used to understand more thoroughly our role by being better listeners and proceeding with humility, with less aggressive need for short-term control, and I like to be reminded of this.
Pine, Georgine Clarke Alabama Artist Gallery, Montgomery, AL, 2014 In Praise of Trees, Photoplace Gallery, Middlebury, VT, 2014 Legacy, Troy-Pike Cultural Arts Center, Troy, AL, 2013 Art of Georgia, Office of the Governor, Georgia State Capitol, Atlanta, GA, 2013 Looking at the Land: 21st Century American Views, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island, 2012 Soft Science, Illaes Gallery, Corn Center, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA, 2012 AWARDS: Individual Artist Fellowship, Alabama State Council on the Arts, 2014
Naïve, 2015, mixed media, 11 x 11 x 4 ½ inches
lauren alyssa HOWARD Adjunct Instructor Drawing, painting, and sculpture
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: I am interested in the dichotomies of emotion associated with one’s relationship to home. Defensiveness and aggression, apathy and empathy, and the inevitability of either acceptance or resignation are portrayed in drawings and small sculptures. The work is rooted in an investigation around the feminine self and the inherent issues surrounding the stereotypical Southern domestic space. It is a vehicle by which to express underlying aggressive feelings that are directly tied to my own feminine self, which is a direct aversion to my traditional upbringing. In my work,
M.F.A., Interdisciplinary Art, University of South Florida, 2009; B.F.A., Drawing, University of Georgia, 2005 SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS: How Did I Not See This Coming, Fieldwork Projects, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 2015 We Travel Light, Centro Cultural de España, Los del Patio, Panama City, Republic of Panama, 2015 Dirty South, Mammal Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 2015
unlikely interactions between human and animal, religion, sex, and gender
Prepare Now, Front Gallery, New Orleans, LA, 2015
combine through subtle gestures and more overt content in my pursuit
FICSPLICE, Mom Gallery, Austin, TX, 2015
of love, loss, and the disorientation of self, as I continue to grapple with a
Habitual Humility, Humidity, and Ghosts, 4-D Studios, Tampa, FL, 2014
contradictory inner emotional dialogue.
Practical Feminism, Radiator Gallery, Long Island City, NY, 2014 Spatial Disruption, Morean Art Center, St. Petersburg, FL, 2014 Paper in Particular, Columbia College Gallery, Columbia, MO, 2014 Traces, Here Arts, New York, NY, 2013 The 17 Tips Project, Sleeth Gallery, West Virginia Wesleyan College, Buckhannon, WV, 2013
(Left to right) Even; Floral Mt.; Soft Scaffold; each: 2015, relief monoprint, 35 x 25 inches
andrew KOZLOWSKI Assistant Professor Printmaking
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: The inspiration for my work is an ever-ricocheting attention span, resulting in a worldview constructed with pop culture, public radio, punk rock, and conspiracy theories. My recent works, as much as they reflect a complacent embrace of planned obsolescence, focus on a narrative of how objects define our culture and our time. Every object, provided the right circumstances, can survive long enough into the future to speak about the person, most likely long gone, through whose hands it has passed.
Andrew Kozlowski received an M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007 and a B.F.A. in printmaking from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 2003. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, with solo exhibitions at the University of Alabama– Huntsville; 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA; the Philadelphia Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL; Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA; and Studio 23 in Richmond, VA. In 2009 he completed a residency at the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium and was awarded 2011–2012 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship for his work in printmaking.
collapse of the ground beneath our feet, 2014–15, wall installation, encaustic, watercolor, graphite, collage, and mixed mediums on gampi papers, variable dimensions (each sheet 21 x 17 inches, ca. 17 feet overall width)
(Below and right: details)
zdenko KRTIĆ Associate Professor Painting and drawing
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom— ah the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content.” Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays The troubled, yet resilient and beautiful nature of the world is something that I have been attempting to reflect in my work in different ways and, more recently, as a melancholic appreciation for the ephemerality of things. Although I am skeptical about my own obsession and seemingly infinite trust in a huge data of appropriated images, I am (still) unable to leave their “mild content” behind. This ubiquity of images and contrasting representations capable of generating meaning, also serve as an initial stimulus for establishing a sense of time and place. For me, they assert a dynamic idea of history—one that is always mutable and reflective of subjective, and infinite, narrative potentials. In these predominantly modular works, I engage with specific histories, politics, and identities, often by quoting multiple sources and by juxtaposing seemingly unrelated found images and my own pre-existing works, both belonging to varied time periods. It is this deliberate image cross-pollination, this folding of one reality into another, that allows for transcending the limitations of time, scale, and distance. In my work, I wish to foster not only a sense of exploration and discovery but also a recognition of the interdependence of all things. At its best, the resulting work becomes a document of collapsed time.
M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing, University of Cincinnati; B.F.A. in Painting, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb, Croatia SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS: Vernal Pools—Recent Encaustic Paintings and Works On Paper, Temple Gallery of Art, Temple University in Rome, Italy, 2015 Celebrating Contemporary Art in Alabama: 2015 Biennial Selection, Troy-Pike Cultural Art Center, Troy, AL, 2015 Before Departure—Selected Encaustic Paintings, Kennedy-Douglass Center for the Arts, Florence, AL, 2013 Today’s Visual Language: Southern Abstraction, A Fresh Look, Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL, 2012 SELECTED RECENT AWARDS AND ACTIVITIES: Visiting Artist, The American Academy in Rome, Italy, Visiting Artists and Scholars International Residency Program, 2015 Encaustic Painting Workshops, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb, Croatia; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL, 2015 Excellence in Research Award, College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University, 2014 Individual Artist Fellowship, Alabama State Council on the Arts COMMISSIONED AND PUBLISHED WORK: CNN editorial features, CNN Digital Art Gallery: Power—America’s Choice, 2012 CNN Reflects on the Nation Ten Years after 9/11, 2011
Towards Ontario, sky & moon, 2008, encaustic on panel, 7 7/8 x 15 inches
Towards Ontario, squall, encaustic on panel, 2008, 7 7/8 x 15 inches
jeffrey LEWIS Professor Painting and drawing
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: My work tends to fall into two genres—landscape and still life. The landscapes, or more accurately, skyscapes, are informed by my memories of upstate New York. Within these works, I’ve incorporated both direct observation and interpretive elements, which deal with the intangibilities associated with perception. What is it that’s retained by our selective memories? How does the temperament of a landscape or an object become so entrenched in our minds that we seem to understand its very essence in some elemental center of our being? The interaction of three influences—intuition, experience, and memory—helps to position our perceived reality within a structure greater than ourselves. During the process of painting, these influences coalesce and gradually emerge, principally in the quality of light found within the painting’s space. That light, in turn, elicits an emotional response from the viewer. The images question the notion of an archetypal landscape while implicitly acknowledging the presence of the Divine. The silverpoint still-life drawings project a concern for order and
M.F.A., M.A., University of Iowa; B.A., University of New York at Brockport SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS: Silverpoint Invitational 2015, Hearne Fine Art, Little Rock, AR; Greg Thompson Fine Art, Little Rock, AR, 2015 51st Annual Dimensions, Associated Artists of Winston-Salem, Winston-Salem, NC, 2015 Bi-State Art Competition, Meridian Museum of Art, Meridian, MS, 2014 Dadian @ 25 Invitational Exhibition, Dadian Gallery, Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, 2014 77th National Midyear Exhibition, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, 2013 The Silverpoint Exhibition Invitational, The National Arts Club, New York, NY, 2013 81st Annual Cumberland Valley Artists Exhibition, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD, 2013
quietude. The object’s placement emphasizes a sense of dignity and
CO-CURATOR:
monumental existence in a suspended time—a time transcending the
Lustrous Lines: Contemporary Metalpoint Drawing, 2015/16, Humboldt Arts Council, Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, CA
particularity of object or place. Ultimately, the relationships between the content and the formal elements reconstruct a diffuse tranquility of a vision lost, hence establishing a sense of solace and a spirit of healing so needed in the disquieting times in which we live.
Working in collaboration: Untitled, Montgomery, AL, 2015, digital inkjet print, 14 x 21 inches
lindsay m. and paul j. MCCORMICK
ARTISTS’ STATEMENT:
LINDSAY M. MCCORMICK
THE LORE THAT CREPT THE SOUTH
Adjunct Instructor 2-D Foundations
It has been rumored to grow a mile a night and
M.F.A. in Photography, Purdue University, 2015; M.A. in Studio Arts, Photography and Digital Media, University of Saint Francis, 2011
that an open window serves as an invitation for its entry. Entangled in Southern culture and a campy
SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS:
subject intermittently revisited by journalists, the
Personal Space, a collaboration with the Dubuque Symphony, Gallery C, Dubuque, IA, 2015
myth of kudzu developed deep roots—spreading further than the plant itself. This work serves as a visual representation of the lore that surrounds the creeping vine that never truly ate the South.
Regarding Leisure, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL, 2015 Hunter/Gatherer, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, 2014 Contemporary Photography Exhibition, Philadelphia Photo Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 2014 Estudio Abierto: Interactive Art & 3D Animation, hiperTROPICO, Medellín, Colombia, 2014 PAUL J. MCCORMICK Technology Specialist Adjunct Instructor M.F.A. Studio Arts, Electronic and Time Based Art, Purdue University, 2014; M.A. Studio Arts, Photography and Digital Media, University of Saint Francis, 2011 SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS: Personal Space, a collaboration with Dubuque Symphony, Gallery C, Dubuque, IA, 2015 Them? Robotic Interventions, Frontier Gallery, Lafayette, IN, 2014 Public by Default, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 2014 Set in Motion: Under the Surface, Fountain Gallery, Lafayette, IN, 2014 Voices X, Voices from the Warehouse Gallery, Dubuque, IA, 2014
Untitled (Chalet), 2015, digital print of 3-D modeled image, 32 x 32 inches
jessye MCDOWELL Assistant Professor and Exhibitions and Lectures Coordinator Digital art
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Make it Real is a series of landscape-based compositions created entirely with 3-D modeling software. This body of work continues my artistic exploration of the cultural narratives surrounding technology. Complicating our Manichean tendency to view technology in terms of its potential for complete destruction or salvation, the work is neither utopian nor dystopian, occupying a space of both criticality and pleasure regarding technology and its attendant tropes. Drawing upon the history of landscape painting, in particular Albert Bierstadt and the Hudson River School, the images combine familiar landscape elements—lakes, mountains, snow—with materials and palettes that are recognizably “unnatural,” plastic, and manufactured. The rendered works have the
M.F.A., University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, 2011; M.A. in Media Studies, New School University, 2004; B.A. in English, DePaul University, 2000 SELECTED RECENT AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS: Alabama State Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, 2015 Vermont Studio Center: Partial Fellowship for Artistic Merit, Johnson, VT, 2015 Gary Brown ePortfolio Project Faculty Cohort Award, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 2015 Elected Member, New Media Caucus Board of Directors, 2015–17
appearance of photographs, suggesting the use of physical models or
SELECTED RECENT ACTIVITY:
dioramas in their creation. The fact that the images have no original
2015 Vermont Studio Center Residency, Johnson, VT, 2015
referent, however, reflects the increasing fluidity of the boundaries between opposing cultural categories of representation: real and fake; natural and synthetic; representational and imaginary; nostalgic and futuristic. While technological advancement continues to inspire utopian optimism, our lived realities, which are thoroughly infused with our digital existences, are often characterized by a pervasive alienation, and we tend to idealize a “natural,” more real way of life that we imagine we’ve left behind. This ambivalence gives way to a simultaneous pleasure in the excesses of today, longing for an intangible authenticity of yesterday, and hope for a future perfected by technology. These conflicting impulses inform the works in Make it Real, where slick surfaces and livid colors define spaces that hover between fantasy and horror.
Make it Real, Murray State University, Murray, KY; The Front Gallery, New Orleans, LA, 2015 Glitch Cult, curated by Lydia Anne McCarthy, Essex Flowers, New York, NY, 2015 Electron Salon, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA, 2015 Eureka!, Allcott Gallery, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, 2015 Incite Insight, Fort Collins Lincoln Center National Juried Exhibition, Fort Collins, CO, 2014 Screening: Experimental Film Fest Portland, Portland, OR, 2013 Screening: Distributed Utopia, Galerie White, Paris, France, 2013
Exchange, 2013, polyurethane, steel, and wood, 10 x 5 x 9 inches
christopher MCNULTY Professor Sculpture
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: My recent work portrays how environmental space penetrates the body, creating relationships among individuals, species, and objects. These relationships undermine simplistic borderlines between our bodies and the space around us, and radically challenge our imagined separateness from the world. Within the respiratory system, the “outside” is always already “inside,” rendering such distinctions ambiguous and problematic. My current works represent the intimate connections that the spaces of the respiratory system form among individuals and the environment by inverting space and form: the forms represent the space within and between bodies, while the space around the forms implies the bodies’ absence.
M.F.A., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2000; B.A., Lawrence University SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS: Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA; Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, San Antonio, TX; Rochester Art Center, Rochester, NY; Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, GA
(Left and above: front and back views)
Contrasting Points of Views, 2015, porcelain, underglaze, cone 6 glazes, and gold luster, 20 x 15 x 12 inches
taylor ROBENALT Adjunct Instructor Ceramics
ARTIST’S STATEMENT My new body of work features clusters of animals and flowers constructed out of porcelain with glaze, gold luster, and underglaze applications. With each piece created in the series, the flower clusters
M.F.A. in Ceramics, University of Georgia, 2011; B.F.A. in Sculpture, Southern Methodist University, 2006 SELECTED RECENT ACTIVITY:
become more abundant and ornate, and the animals seem to multiply
De-La Naturalaza, Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, OH, 2016
as if the work itself is alive and fertile. The overall black-and-white
Small Ones, Cinema Gallery, Urbana, IL, 2016
color scheme and the pops of color in the pieces are all important to
Artists Invite Artists Residency, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, ME, 2016
the work. These color motifs attempt to express all the emotions that I personally face on a daily basis. The coloring of the entire body of work is a comment on how life can become so rigid in the midst of the fluidity of growth, death, and rebirth. The bright colors of the flowers illustrate the blossoming of life and offer a contrast to the rigidity of everyday responsibility. The final touches of gold luster offer an overall sense of purity to the body of work and allude to the strong sense of achievement and pride that comes with positively facing life on a day-to-day basis. I view the work as a metaphor for how life is always transforming itself— constantly bringing forth a new chapter of unforeseen existence.
Black and White and Gold, Blackfish Gallery, Portland, OR, 2015 The Act of Flourishing, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Gallery, Gulfport, MS, 2015 Un-Wedged, Pottery Northwest Gallery, Seattle, WA, 2015 Imagine The Fantastic, LH Horton Jr Gallery, Stockton, CA, 2015 Sarasota Art Collection, The Ringling School of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL, 2015 Porcelain Clusters, The Baobab Tree Gallery, Bradenton, FL, 2014 History in the Making VIII, The Genesee Center for the Arts, Rochester, NY, 2014
art history
“Puritan Parisians: American Art Students in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.” In A Seamless Web: Transatlantic Art in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Cheryll May and Marian Wardle. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Press Scholars, 2014, 123–146.
Auburn University students participating in the Department of Art and Art History's Paris program in 2015, visting the Gustave Moreau Atelier with Dr. Burns
emily c. BURNS Assistant Professor of Art History Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European and American art
RESEARCH STATEMENT: My research considers Franco-American artistic exchange in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, addressing how the arts played a role in constructions of national identity. I am currently completing a book manuscript about the role of the American West in French visual culture, and will turn next to a monograph based on my dissertation, “Innocence Abroad: The Construction and Marketing of an American Artistic Identity in Paris,” 1880–1910, that analyzes the ways in which American artists performed and parodied ideas of cultural belatedness in response to French expectations about American culture.
Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis, 2012 RECENT FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS: Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, France, 2015–16 Tyson Scholars Program, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2014 International Fellowship, Art and the American Midwest, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, 2014 RECENT PUBLICATIONS: “‘Of A Kind Hitherto Unknown’: The American Art Association of Paris in 1908.” NineteenthCentury Art Worldwide 14, no. 1 (Spring 2015). “The Itinerant John Mix Stanley and the Circulating Spectacle of the West in MidCentury America.” In Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015, 3–31. “Revising Bohemia: The American Artist Colony in Paris, 1890–1914.” In Foreign Artists and Communities in Modern Paris, 1870-1914, edited by Susan Waller and Karen L. Carter. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015, 186–209. “The Old World Anew: The Atlantic as the Liminal Site of Expectations.” In Framing the Ocean, 1700 to the Present: Envisaging the Sea as Social Space, edited by Tricia Cusack. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014, 37–54. “Puritan Parisians: American Art Students in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.” In A Seamless Web: Transatlantic Art in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Cheryll May and Marian Wardle. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Press Scholars, 2014, 123–146.
Joyce de Vries, Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances: Gender, Art, and Culture in Early Modern Italy. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2010. Research for this book was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy. The book was awarded a Millard Meiss Publication Grant from the College Art Association.
joyce DE VRIES Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the Women’s Studies Program Visual and material culture and gender issues in early modern Italy
RESEARCH STATEMENT: My expertise is the visual and material culture of Italy, 1400–1700. In my publications on Caterina Sforza, I explore a ruling noblewoman’s patronage and collecting practices and the ways she harnessed culture to stretch accepted gender roles. My current research focuses on the domestic interior in early modern Bologna, and I am working on an article on the rise of Bolognese art criticism and the subsequent surge in collecting the work of local painters. I am completing another article, “Gender and Art in the Renaissance,” for Oxford University Press, and recently presented my research on “The Visual Imagery used in Anti-Trafficking Efforts in Alabama” at the Southeast Women’s Studies Association conference.
Ph.D., Art History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002 BOOK PUBLICATION: Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances: Gender, Art, and Culture in Early Modern Italy. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2010. SELECTED ARTICLES: “Caterina Sforza.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, edited by Margaret King. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. “Caterina Sforza: The shifting representation of a woman ruler in Early Modern Italy.” Lo Sguardo: Rivista di Filosofia 13/III (2013): 165–81. “Fashioning the Self in Early Modern Europe: Gender, Consumption, and Material Culture.” Journal of Women’s History, 23/4 (2011): 187–197. “A Princely Lifestyle on a Limited Budget: Caterina Sforza’s Patronage as Regent of Imola and Forlì,” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia, XXII, n.s. 8 (2010): 193–210.
Visitors looking at public sculpture at dOCUMENTA(13), June 17, 2012, Kassel, Germany. Photo: K. Floyd Page spread from “Moving Statues: Arthur Grimm, the Entartete Kunst Exhibition, and Installation Photography as Standfotografie.” Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Kneeling Woman illustrated.
The Museum Fridericianum at dOCUMENTA(13), June 20, 2012, Kassel, Germany. Photo: K. Floyd
kathryn FLOYD Associate Professor of Art History 20th-century German art and the history of exhibitions
RESEARCH STATEMENT:
Ph.D., The University of Iowa, School of Art and Art History
My research is broadly concerned with the history of art in twentieth-
SGA Outstanding Faculty Member Award, College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University, 2011
century Germany with a specific focus on the history and historiography of art exhibitions and their mediation in catalogues, photographs, and
RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
film. I have conducted extensive research on the history of documenta,
“Moving Statues: Arthur Grimm, the Entartete Kunst Exhibition, and Installation Photography as Standfotografie.” In Exhibiting the German Past: Museums, Film, and Musealization, edited by Peter McIsaac and Gabriele Mueller, 187–208. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.
an on-going exhibition series founded in 1955 in Kassel, Germany that takes place twice a decade. My current book project explores a set of installation photographs of Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Expressionist sculpture Kneeling Woman (1911) taken at various modernist exhibitions from the 1912 Cologne Sonderbund exhibition to the first documenta in 1955. I am also currently serving as guest editor of a special issue of the journal Dada/Surrealism that explores the history of avant-garde exhibitions.
“Georges Adéagbo: Between Artwork and Exhibition.” In Exhibiting Outside the Academy, Salon, and Biennial, 1775–1999, edited by Andrew Graciano. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate Press, 2015. “Future Objects / Object Futures: Object Oriented Ontology at dOCUMENTA (13) and Beyond,” Seismopolite: Journal of Art and Politics (special issue on “The Future of the Biennial,” ed. Paal Andreas Bøe) 6 (Feb. 2014): http://www.seismopolite.com. “Simulated Journeys: Travels through the Documenta Photo Albums.” In The Photograph and the Album: Histories, Practices, Futures, edited by Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller, and Theresa Wilkie, 275–314. Edinburgh and Cambridge, MA: MuseumsEtc., 2013.
At the British Museum
karen SONIK Assistant Professor Ancient Mediterranean and Near East
RESEARCH STATEMENT: My current research focuses on myth and art in Mesopotamia, anthropological and cognitive approaches to art and aesthetics, and the representation of marginal and feminine figures in the ancient Near East.
Karen Sonik earned her Ph.D. in the Art & Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, with a specialization in Mesopotamia, from the University of Pennsylvania. Recent publications include a co-edited volume on The Materiality of Divine Agency (2015) and an article on “Pictorial Mythology and Narrative in the Ancient Near East” (2014). She has received funding from the Kolb Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Philosophical Society.