"Art Talk", a video by Prof. Daniel Wildberger and filmmaker Isabel Machado portraying
the Department of Art throught the eyes of six students, is now online. Check it out!
Anna Maranise, University of Memphis Studio Art Student, presents work at the Masur Museum 51st Annual Juried Competition
February 27 - June 14, 2014
Above image: Distance, 2013, paper mache, wire
University of Memphis 8th Annual Art Education Alumni Juried Art Exhibition
March 6-27, 2014 The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art
Opening Reception Thursday March 6, 2014 3:30 - 5:30 pm Awards at 4:30
The University of Memphis Annual Art Education Alumni Juried Exhibition features area
K-12 art educators who are graduates of the University of Memphis Art Education Program
or who have completed coursework at the University during their teaching preparation
or careers.
This exhibition is held each year during National Youth Art Month and is in accordance
with the mission and vision of the University of Memphis, the Art Department, and
the Tennessee Art Education Association. The Department of Art is proud to honor excellence
in arts education in Tennessee and innovation in community outreach.
Reflections – New Work by Lawrence Matthews III
Reception Fri. 2/28 5-7 pm Exhibition will run 2/24-3/14
Box Gallery presents “Reflections” by artist Lawrence Matthews. “Reflections” is a
collection of moments and memories from the history of the African American struggle
in America. The work serves as snapshots into the pain, suffering, discrimination,
and ultimately, the strength of African American people. By using imagery that spans
from slavery until now, Matthews allows the viewer to reflect on his or her own judgments
and placement in history.
Box Gallery is the student-run gallery at the University of Memphis, and is located
in the Arts and Communication Building, 3715 Central Ave, room 100.
"Coffin Recycling: Funerary Culture in a Time of Economic Crisis" – A Public Lecture
by Dr. Kathlyn Cooney
Friday, February 28, 2014 Lecture: 7:00 pm Reception: 6:30 pm Location: Fountain View Suite (room 350) University Center, University of Memphis
Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney, PhD, associate professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture in
the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California
Los Angeles (UCLA), will discuss her current research on the ancient Egyptian funerary
customs.
Dr. Cooney's presentation will focus on the funerary culture – especially coffins
– of the 21st Dynasty (ca. 1075 - 945 BCE) as she attempts to understand the pressures
and motivations which allowed the ancient Egyptians to justify what in earlier periods
is thought to have been an abhorrent practice – turning out the burial of an ancestor
to facilitate one's own funeral and status in the afterlife.
This event is co-sponsored by the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology and the
Tennessee Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt.
For more information about the lecture, click here.
This free public event will take place on the campus of the University of Memphis.
For more information about Dr. Cooney, visit her website.
"A Tale of Two Egyptians: The Coffins of Nespawershefyt and Nakhtefmut"
Helen Strudwick is an Egyptologist in the Department of Antiquities and coordinator
of exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the University of Cambridge, England and
archaeological director of the Cambridge Theban Tombs Project.
The coffins of Nespawershefyt and Nakhtefmut are two of the highlights of the Egyptian
collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum. The coffins and other burial equipment of these
two men, who served in the Temple of Amun at Karnak some 70 years apart, reveals two
very different approaches to preparing for death in ancient Egypt in the early first
millennium BCE. Helen Studwick will explore the significance of their differing selections
of burial equipment and materials, while highlighting both their range of choices
and access to resources during this critical period in ancient Egyptian history.
Similarly, the way these beautifully decorated coffins came to the Fitzwilliam Museum,
one at the beginning and the other at the end of the 19th century, reveals a great
deal about the development of Egyptology.
This free public event will take place on the campus of the University of Memphis.
This event is co-sponsored by the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology and the
Tennessee Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt.
For information contact the IEAA at (901) 678-2555.
Watch video of Laura Kina talking about "War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art", which she co-curated
with Wei Ming Dariotis at the DePaul University Art Museum.
Opening Reception: Friday, February 21, 2014 5:30-8:00PM Artist Talk: Thursday, February 20, 2014 7PM (location on campus ACB 310) All events are free
and open to the public Where:The Martha and Robert Folgelman Galleries of Contemporary Art University of Memphis
Department of Art Art and Communication Building 3715 Central Ave. Memphis, TN 38152
You won't find Elvis or surfboards or funny umbrella-topped cocktails in Kina's dystopic
Blue Hawaiʻi. Drawn from family albums, oral history and community archives from Hawai'i
and Okinawa, these ghostly oil paintings employ distilled memories to investigate
themes of distance, longing, and belonging.
Featuring new works and a selection from her ongoing Sugar series (2009-present),
the setting is Kina's father's Okinawan sugarcane field plantation community, Piʻihonua,
on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi near Hilo.
Her obsession with blue was inspired by the indigo-dyed kasuri kimonos repurposed
by the Issei (first generation) "picture bride" immigrants for canefield work clothes,
and colored by stories of hinotama (fireballs) shooting from the canefield cemetery
into the night sky. Blue Hawaiʻi echoes the spirits of Kina's ancestors and shared
histories of labor migration.
Laura Kina is Vincent de Paul associate professor of Art, Media, & Design at DePaul
University. She is the coeditor, along with Wei Ming Dariotis, of War Baby/Love Child:
Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013); cofounder of
the DePaul biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies conference; and cofounder and co-managing
editor of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies. Her solo exhibitions include
Sugar (2010), A Many-Splendored Thing(2010) , Aloha Dreams (2007), Loving (2006),
and Hapa Soap Operas (2003). She has exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center, India
Habitat Centre, Nehuru Art Centre, Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, the Rose Art Museum,
the Spertus Museum, and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience.
View the digital exhibition catalog featuring an essay "Okinawan Diaspora Blues" by
Wesley Uenten, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies San Francisco State University
Video shows the Department of Art through the lens of its students
Assistant Professor in Graphic Design Daniel Wildberger and videomaker Isabel Machado
are putting the finishing touches on “Art Talk” - a video about the impressions and
aspirations of six University of Memphis art students.
The video will be in our new vimeo and facebook pages soon. Stay tuned.
Jordan Eagles is currently showing his work at The Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary
art / University of Memphis.
Sunny Montgomery presents her Caseworks exhibition: The Porcupine Effect February 8, – March 19, 2013 at AMUM. In the lobby of the Communication & Fine Arts
Building
I approach the five spaces of Caseworks as rooms where things happen rather than miniature
galleries. The opportunity to investigate these rooms coincides with reading about
the brain, or more specifically how learning causes physical changes in the brain.
The Art of Memory, a memory system (the idea for which is credited to Greek poet Simonides)
in which objects representing ideas or memories are placed within a real or imagined
physical space – a "Memory Palace" or "Theatre of Memory." The space and the objects
only exist in one's mind. One then can 'walk' through the mental space at leisure
– examining objects and recalling memories. The process by which memories are linked
to spatial places cements them in the mind. The fascinating bit, as John Crowley describes
in his novel Little, Big, is that seemingly unrelated memories/ideas/objects tend
to interact on their own:
"...it can happen—if you practice this art—that the symbols you put next to one another
will modify themselves without your choosing it, and that when next you call them
forth, they may say something new and revelatory to you, something you didn't know
you knew. Out of the proper arrangement of what you do know, what you don't may arise
spontaneously. That's the advantage of a system. Memory is fluid and vague. Systems
are precise and articulated. Reason apprehends them better."
Babette Shaw, Melanie Spilman (MFA 2003) and Beth Edwards present work in the herstories exhibition at Memphis College of Art's Hyde Gallery. It opens on January 31 from
6-9 and runs through March 1. The gallery is located at 477 S. Main.
What does it mean to be a woman? The answer to this question may be as diverse in
scope and perspective as is the history of humankind, but a new exhibition will attempt
to open the conversation. herstories opens Jan. 29 and will run through March 1 in
the Hyde Gallery, Nesin Graduate Center, 477 S. Main. An opening reception will be
held on Friday, Jan. 31 from 6–9 p.m.
The exhibition is curated by Haelim Choi Allen, assistant professor of art at Union
University in Jackson, Tenn. Allen immigrated from Korea to the United States in 1976
with her parents and two younger sisters and grew up in the suburbs of Washington,
D.C. She is a three-time alumna of the University of Maryland at College Park, most
recently receiving her MFA in painting and sculpture.
AMUM is excited to announce the 31st Annual Juried Student Exhibition February 8 –
March 19, 2014 Opening reception Friday, February 7, from 5-7:30 p.m., with awards
announced at 6:30.
This annual competitive exhibition showcases work by University of Memphis art students.
Students who have taken an art class in the past year may submit up to two works in
any media. An outside judge, invited by the Department of Art, will select the work
to include in the exhibition and award winners. Miranda Lash, Curator of Modern and
Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, is the judge for the 31st Annual
Juried Student Exhibition. At NOMA Lash manages the 20th and 21st century permanent
collection, the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden and temporary exhibitions
of contemporary art including Dario Robleto: the Prelives of the Blues, Swoon: Thalassa
and Wayne Gonzales: Light to Dark/Dark to Light. A native of Los Angeles, Lash received
her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and her master's degree in art history
from Williams College. The Art Department is hosting a lecture by Lash at the University on Thursday, January
23, 7 PM in the Art & Communication Building (ACB) Room 310. Exhibition awards are provided by The Art Center, Inc., The University of Memphis
Graduate School, Friends of the Art Department and Art Museum. Lash has selected an
installation by Freeman Brown III, entitled Descendants, for the ArtLab Award. Brown
describes this interactive laser installation as focusing on the symbolic nature of
stars provoking contemplation with stimulating visuals, intense audio and a profound
narrative.
Descendants by Freeman Brown lll / ArtLab / February 8, 2013 – March 19, 2013
This interactive installation is in conjunction with the 31st Annual Juried Student
Exhibition and focuses on the symbolic nature of stars. It is intended to provoke
contemplation that goes beyond oneself through stimulating visuals, intense audio
and a profound narrative. The installation is "relational," or designed to engage
the audience, because the concept behind the piece is inclusive of all mankind. Furthermore,
the reactions, internal dialogues and conclusions of each viewer is essential, as
they attest to the validity of truth in the same manner that verbal responses signify
a previous act of listening. Whether concrete or unworldly, the realization of truth
is inevitable – even if it's only realized subconsciously.
Jordan Eagles: BAR 1~9January 24~ February 28 The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries
of Contemporary Art Art and Communication Building
The Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art is excited to announce Jordan Eagles: BAR
1~9 January 24~ February 28 The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary
Art, Art and Communication Building • University of Memphis
Art education professionals in Tennessee have selected Dr. Donalyn Heise as the TAEA
Special Needs Art Educator 2014.
Dr. Heise will be honored with this top award at the three-day TAEA Professional Development
Conference in Nashville. There will be an Awards Banquet on Thursday, October 24,
7:00 p.m. The conference is sponsored in part by the Tennessee Arts Commission.
The Tennessee Art Education Association is a non-profit organization whose mission
is to advance quality visual arts education through advocacy, leadership, professional
development, and to promote a cohesive professional community.
Dr. Donalyn Heise is Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Memphis.
Her research focuses on the transformative power of art and its ability to foster
resilience in diverse populations. Recent publications include, Fostering Resilience
Through Art; Overcoming the Odds: Harnessing the power of art to foster resilience;
Differentiation of Instruction in the Artroom, Playing it Safe in the Artroom, Implementing
an Art Program for Children in a Homeless Shelter; and Integrating art, reading, and
technology. She developed the Cups for Cancer project and co-coordinates the University
of Memphis Community Art Academy.
Dr. Heise developed new courses that provide art education majors opportunities to
teach art in a community setting to participants with a variety of needs, such as:
The Ronald McDonald House which supports cancer patients and their families, Martha's
Manor which supports mentally challenged adult women, the Family Exchange Club which
supports victims of domestic violence, and St. Peter's Manor which is a residential
home for senior citizens. She and Dr. Bobick co-coordinate the University of Memphis
Community Art Academy, which has been held at various locations, such as the Charles
Powell Community Center, the Davis Community Center, Lester School, and Willow Oaks
Elementary School. Dr. Heise has been giving free art lessons to the elderly in the
Memphis area. She collaborates with Dr. MacGillivray on an art and literacy program
for mothers in recovery and their children in a homeless shelter. This engaged scholarship
effort involves undergraduates and alumni and addresses issues in the community by
focusing on fostering resilience through art.
She has received multiple grants and has conducted over 100 workshops and presentations
at the state, national and international levels. Topics include Alternative Art Education,
Differentiation of Instruction, Fostering Resilience Through the Arts, and Teaching
Art to Children in Crisis. She has delivered a keynote address at the Maine Art Education
Association Conference titled, Art for Healing. She is dedicated to engaged-scholarship
and often invites undergraduate art education majors to present with her at local,
state and national conferences. Dr. Heise created partnerships that provide undergraduates
opportunities to collaborate with others in the field. Her work has been shared internationally
at the U.S./China Joint Education Conference at Beijing Normal University, in Jamaica
and in Canada.
Dr. Heise is always willing to share her expertise with others and continues to inspire
future generations of leaders. She has made numerous contributions at the local, state,
regional, national and international levels to advocate for quality art education
and art for underserved populations.
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