G N I M O HOMEC I N M U L ART BY A
CHRIS BEESTON ALI FITZGERALD KATY MIXON ANNIE TEMMINK MCNAIR EVANS PARK MCARTHUR CHRIS RACKLEY RUSS WHITE
Homecoming: Art by Alumni marks the first curated group exhibition featuring Davidson College alumni to appear in the Van Every/Smith Galleries since the opening of the Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Arts Center 25 years ago. In celebration of this significant anniversary, we have selected artworks by eight talented artists who graduated between 1993 and 2018. In our research, these artists stood out for their shared interest in creating work about the human body.
INTRODUCTION Surprisingly though, there are very few images of actual bodies or people in the exhibition. Instead, you will encounter unique works that allude to the body, such as Russ White’s wallpaper and sculptural installation exploring surveillance and the policing of the body. Titled The End is Fear, the wallpaper draws inspiration from Minneapolis Neighborhood Watch signs that White noticed popping up around his neighborhood. The sign depicts a grid of nine placid, orange eyeballs and the phrase, “WATCH FORCE: If I don’t call the police, my neighbor will.” In White’s version, however, the eyeballs are angrier, more suspicious or fearful, darting in every direction, as an indicator of White’s view that “America needs to stop calling the cops on itself.” Police Lines visualizes our fraught relationship with law enforcement. White notes, “any attempts at solving the problems of over-militarized and over-tasked police invariably become tangled in emotion on all sides. The barricades go up, physically overwhelming yet woefully inefficient.” Park McArthur’s work often depicts the inability of particular social spaces to accommodate all bodies, including her own. For example, Ramp Scheme 160 Main Street presents a detailed plan drawn by the artist’s grandfather for the construction of a ramp he ultimately built to facilitate McArthur’s entry into a friend’s
residence. Her photographic series, Overlook Park 1-5, depicts a picnic table in a public space that is not compliant with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Encircling the table with her wheelchair, McArthur illuminates the utter inaccessibility of a space meant for congregation and participation. The apt title conflates the site of the photographic series with the artist’s name and her personal feelings of disregard or neglect. Ali Fitzgerald’s graphic novel, Drawn to Berlin, also illuminates issues of identity and displacement, in this case specific to the artist’s experience teaching comics to asylum seekers in a refugee shelter in Berlin. Excerpts from her novel depict a situation that is at once dire and profound, filled with moments of disillusionment, uncertainty, and loss, as well as hope, trust, and compassion. One of the strengths of Fitzgerald’s graphic novel is the way she weaves in historical information, illuminating connections between today’s migrants and those from the 1920s, as well as visual indicators of the rise of far-right nationalism, including through the return of Fraktur, a font once favored by the Nazis. Chris Rackley is working simultaneously on two bodies of work, paintings and contraptions. Works such as Walk in Crater conflate the two practices, making use of an oil painting backdrop within his interactive works that
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often place the viewer at the center via live, closed-circuit video. Rackley finds inspiration in special effect tricks, scale models, fake realities, science fiction films, and landscape paintings that evoke wonder, though he is uneasy about models, arguments, or theories — scientific, theological, or otherwise — that claim to make sense of everything. His works on view in Homecoming reinforce his goal to create experiences that fall somewhere between campy and sublime. Chris Beeston is also inspired by science fiction, as well as scientific and technical knowledge. He gathers bits of scrap metal and other objects from the streets of New York, including street sweeper bristles such as those assembled into Capsule (Street Sweeper Bristles). His knack for repairing electronics is evident in Lamp 5 and other works in which he transforms found items, such as paper, Tupperware, and empty pill bottles, into new objects. Though he notes the work is often about ignoring the body, there is an obvious relationship between the discarded, mass-produced, household objects that comprise his sculptures and the humans who make, buy, utilize, and eventually, throw these items away. Further, the meticulous, intricate assemblages allude to the artist’s hand and mind; wonder, planning, calculation, dexterity, patience, and craftsmanship are all visualized through objects that ultimately are greater than the sum of their parts. Katy Mixon also makes use of discarded objects to create works such as A Limp Truce, Plucked, and Sprinkle. Utilizing used hand rags from her own painting practice Mixon recycles them into new, large-scale works much like the scrap-fabric quilts that inspired them. Mixon’s hand is evident in the creation of the patterns on the rags, made through the gesture of wiping and wringing, as well as in the gesture of embroidery and construction
of the quilts. The artist compares her process to agriculture: harvested scraps from previous works are grafted onto new substrates, as seeds to germinate new works. Crops of kaleidoscopic color, pattern, and form emerge as the pieces grow. Annie Temmink similarly utilizes recycled materials, in her case cardboard and fabric, to create her costumes, headwear, and accessories, often with the goal of movement through performance. Blue Beast is the first in a series of experiments where the costumed figure is meant to depict an inner feeling. The accompanying performative video illustrates how this feeling might manifest if the beast is let loose. McNair Evans’s project, The Cardinal, southbound 161217, visualizes the artist’s 18-hour Amtrak train ride from Chicago to Grand Central Terminal in New York. The 33-page accordion-folded work is displayed unfurled, a presentation that requires the viewer to physically move through space to experience the work, 255 inches in length. The continuous linear form presents portraiture, the fleeting landscape, and the lyrics of 19th-century railroad ballads in an effort to trace class division, industrialism, and railroads across multiple generations. Homecoming: Art by Alumni is an example of the incredible, diverse work being produced by just a small sampling of the talented artists who have passed through the Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Arts Center over the past twenty-five years. We are delighted to share these works with you and look forward to highlighting the accomplishments of more of our alumni in future iterations of Homecoming. Lia Newman, Director/Curator BELOW: McNair Evans Jr., The Cardinal, southbound 161217, 2018
Exhibition Checklist: Capsule (Street Sweeper Bristles), 2018 Street sweeper bristles, stainless steel hardware 12 × 30 × 12 inches Cube Cloud, 2015 Plexiglas, polystyrene foam, monofilament 10 1/4 x 10 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches Eight Toroids, 2018 Paper, glue 3 7/8 × 7 × 7 inches Lamp 5 (USB), 2017 Acrylic box, LEDs, USB power supply, wire, electrical components, steel 4 3/4 × 2 1/4 × 2 1/4 inches Courtesy of the artist and Patrick Parrish Gallery
Chris Beeston was raised in rural North Carolina and moved to New York after receiving a BA in Studio Art at Davidson College in 2008. He has been a studio assistant to Tom Sachs since 2009. His work has been exhibited in New York at Patrick Parrish Gallery, Coustof Waxman, Colette, and The Hole. His studio is currently based in Ridgewood, Queens.
MCNAIR EVANS JR. ’01 b. 1979 Laurinburg, NC McNair Evans Jr. grew up in a small farming town in North Carolina, and worked summers repairing cross-ties and railroad track on a 32-mile freight line. He discovered photography as an anthropology student at Davidson College while recording the oral history of an Appalachian family in Madison County, NC. McNair continued his education through one-on-one mentorships with Mike Smith of Johnson City, Tennessee, and photographer Alec Soth. His first monograph, Confessions for a Son (Owl & Tiger, 2014), explores the lasting psychological landscape of his father’s death through a once successful, North Carolinian farming empire. His subsequent project In Search of Great Men follows that trajectory by combining original photography with first-person stories by individuals traveling on passenger rail that illuminate tensions between private lives and society’s expectations. Evans’s photographs are held in major public and private collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
TOP TO BOTTOM: Cube Cloud, 2015; Eight Toroids, 2018; Capsule (Street Sweeper Bristles), 2018
CHRIS BEESTON ’08 b. 1985, Mooresville, NC
The Cardinal, southbound 161217, detail, 2018
and his work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications, including Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Financial Times, as well as on the cover of William Faulkner’s novel Flags in the Dust. Evans received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016 and is an active guest lecturer at universities and institutions nationwide. He is represented by Sasha Wolf Projects, New York, Euqinom Gallery, San Francisco, and Tracey Morgan Gallery, Asheville.
Exhibition Checklist: The Cardinal, southbound 161217, 2018 Archival pigment and ink on paper, pigment prints, archival adhesive 9.75 x 255 inches Courtesy of the artist and Euqinom Gallery
Ali Fitzgerald is an artist and writer living in Berlin. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Times. Her work has also been published in the Guardian, New York Magazine: The Cut, Modern Painters Magazine, McSweeney’s and elsewhere. Her art has been exhibited internationally, including at the Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, the Center for Book Arts, New York, and the Austin Museum of Art, Texas. In 2017 she was awarded the Cornish CCS fellowship at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont and in 2018 the Georgia Fee Residency at Artslant in Paris. In the spring of 2018 she collaborated with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on a series of drawings about Magritte. Her critically acclaimed graphic memoir Drawn to
ALI FITZGERALD ’04 b. 1984, Oakland, CA
Berlin (Fantagraphics), about teaching comics in refugee shelters and Berlin’s evolving relationship to Bohemia and immigration, was recently named one of the top ten comics of 2018 by New York Magazine: Vulture. She has conducted visual storytelling workshops at the National Library of Germany, Frankfurt; the University of Bath; and Shakespeare and Company, Paris.
Exhibition Checklist: Excerpts from Drawn to Berlin graphic novel
PARK MCARTHUR ’06 b. 1984, Raleigh, NC
Exhibition Checklist: Overlook Park 1-5, 2017 Chromogenic prints 8 × 12 inches AP from Edition of 5 plus II AP Courtesy the artist and ESSEX STREET, New York Ramp Scheme – 160 Main St., 2013 Graphite on paper 8½ × 11 inches Private Collection
Park McArthur was born in 1984 in Raleigh, North Carolina, and currently lives and works in New York. She holds a BA from Davidson College, North Carolina, and an MFA from the University of Miami, Florida. She participated in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. McArthur has had solo exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery, London; Lars Friedrich, Berlin; Yale Union, Portland, Oregon; ESSEX STREET, New York; and Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 32nd Bienal de São Paulo: Incerteza viva, Brazil; and Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York. McArthur is the coeditor, with Jennifer Burris, of Beverly Buchanan, 1978–1981 (Mexico City: Athénée Press, 2015), and co-curator, with Burris, of Beverly Buchanan—Ruins and Rituals at the Brooklyn Museum (2016).
Overlook Park 1-5, detail, 2017
Exhibition Checklist: A Limp Truce, 2018 Oil paint/used hand rags on muslin 56 x 84 inches Plucked, 2019 Oil paint/used hand rags on muslin 72 x 84 inches Sprinkle, 2019 Oil paint/used hand rags on muslin 72 x 84 inches
Katy Mixon is a visual artist working in painting, sculpture, quilting, and photography. She earned a BA from Davidson College and an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is an alumna of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Mixon is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2017 Working Artist Grant and a 2015 Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation Award. She was a finalist for a 2016 William and Dorothy Yeck Young Painters Award and a 2015 VCUarts Fountainhead Fellowship. Mixon’s work has been widely exhibited, including at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary
KATY MIXON ‘06 b. 1984, Orangeburg, SC Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Ackland Art Museum, University of North CarolinaChapel Hill; Spartanburg Art Museum, South Carolina; A.I.R. Gallery, New York; The Painting Center, New York; Target Gallery, Alexandria, Virginia; Rubber Stamp Projects, Miami, Florida; and 701 Center for Contemporary Art, Columbia, South Carolina; among others. She has been the recipient of numerous residencies, including those at Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Amherst; Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Nebraska City; The Hambidge Center, Rabun Gap, Georgia; AICAD Studio Practice Residency, New York; and Byrdcliffe Art Colony, Woodstock, New York. Mixon’s work was published in the 6th International Painting Annual by Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio. She divides her time between Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York.
TOP TO BOTTOM: Plucked, 2019; Sprinkled, 2019
CHRIS RACKLEY ’00 b. 1978, West Columbia, SC Exhibition Checklist: Spacetime Float, 2016 Water, insulating foam sealant, plastic tray, Gorilla Tape, LED strip lights, poster board, clamp lights, colored LED bulbs, wood, digital drawing, inkjet print, foam board, matboard, hardware, power strip, and television set 65 x 65 x 30 inches Whence is the Ground, 2015 Baking soda, wooden balls, fluorescent light, seamless background paper, push pins, clamp lights, colored bulbs, Foamular, digital drawing, inkjet print, foam board, power strips, and television sets 91 x 108 x 64 inches Walk-in Crater, 2012 60-by-72-inch oil painting on canvas mounted on wooden legs, inkjet print reproduction of painting mounted on foam board attached to wooden stand, clamp light, print of digital drawing, television, power strip, and camera 90 x 120 x 72 inches
TOP TO BOTTOM: Walk-in Crater, 2012; Whence is the Ground, 2015
Chris Rackley earned a BA in Studio Art from Davidson College and an MFA from George Mason University. He has worked as an adjunct professor at George Mason University and Winona State University. Rackley’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions regionally and nationally, while his collaborative works with Edgar Endress and the Floating Lab Collective have been exhibited internationally. Rackley is a recipient of numerous awards, including a 2018 Art(ists) on the Verge Fellowship and a 2018 Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Rackley was a 2017/18 Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship Finalist. He currently lives and works in Rochester, Minnesota, where he serves on the Board of Directors and the Art Advisory Board for the Rochester Art Center.
In addition to majoring in art while at Davidson College, Annie Temmink also minored in math. Her costumes, headwear, and constructed accessories have been featured in the World of WearableArt design competition, Wellington, New Zealand, at the Video Music Awards, Los Angeles, California, on stage for The Crucible, Oakland, California, and on the cover of Whurk Magazine, Richmond, Virginia. She draws inspiration from a year spent on Watson Fellowship after Davidson College studying textiles, pattern, and adornment under master craftsmen in Indonesia, Japan, India, Uganda, Ghana, and Tanzania. Temmink currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Exhibition Checklist: Blue Beast, 2018 Blue Beast Sunrise, 2018 Cardboard, wire, fabric, adhesive, video Dimensions variable
RUSS WHITE ’04 b. 1982, Lancaster, SC
Exhibition Checklist: Police Lines, 2017 Wood and paint 88 x 96 x 96 inches The End is Fear, 2019 Wallpaper installation Approximately 12 x 12 feet
Russ White is an artist, designer, and writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Consisting primarily of large-scale, colored pencil drawings and sculptural installations, White’s RIGHT: Blue Beast, 2018 BELOW: Blue Beast Sunrise, 2018
ANNIE TEMMINK ’11 b. 1989, Charlottesville, VA
work relies on a kind of cartoonish realism to investigate complicated social themes. Born and raised in the Carolinas, with a formative stint in Mississippi, he received a BA in Studio Art from Davidson College and spent the next ten years in Chicago working as a high-end cabinet maker. He moved to Minneapolis after marrying a native Minnesotan, and he works out of his studio in the Casket Arts Building in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. He is also Editor of written content for Mplsart.com and Editor-in-chief of In Studio magazine, a biannual publication of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association. BELOW: Police Lines, detail, 2017
Homecoming: Art by Alumni Publication Š2019
Lia Newman, Director/Curator Allison Tolbert, Curatorial Assistant
This publication was produced in conjunction with Homecoming: Art by Alumni at the Van Every/Smith Galleries, March 14, 2019– April 14, 2019.
Designer: Graham McKinney Editor: Stephanie Cash
Van Every/Smith Galleries Davidson College 315 North Main Street, Davidson, North Carolina 28035 davidsoncollegeartgalleries.org All rights reserved. Printed in the United States. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.
COVER: Russ White, The End is Fear, 2019 RIGHT: Ali Fitzgerald, Excerpt from Drawn to Berlin, graphic novel BELOW: Chris Beeston, Lamp 5 (USB), 2017