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Fall 2012
MAIN GALLERY
UT Art Faculty Show
November 16 - December 9
The faculty of the UT Department of Art will present an exhibition of their work in keeping with the fall 2012 theme of Reclaim + Collaborate. The exhibit opens Friday, November 16 with a reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the CVA. The reception is free and open to the public.
UT Holiday Art Sale
November 30 from 6:30 - 10:30 p.m.
(at the CVA)
Affordable artwork and unique gifts created by University of Toledo faculty, students
and alumni.
M12 is an artist collective that creates interdisciplinary site-based artworks, research projects, and education/outreach projects. M12 will create a project connecting rural sensibilities with midwest urbanism, working in collaboration with University of Toledo students, faculty and our community.
CLEMENT GALLERY
Daniel Farnum will present photographic works that document Michigan’s urban farms. Farnum’s portraits of participants in this new industry include hipsters, neighborhood teenagers, unemployed factory workers and restaurant owners. These portraits address the eclectic nature of community and optimistic passion for sustainable living.
BFA Exhibition 2012
The University of Toledo Department of Art showcases the work of its Bachelor of Fine
Art Students
April 9 – May 13
The Center for Visual Arts Gallery will soon display the outstanding artwork of graduating BFA students Joseph Buehrer, Ali Fisher, Julia LaBay and Rachelle Raymer-Gilbert. These emerging artists will be featured in UT’s (Bachelor of Fine Arts) BFA Thesis Exhibition 2012 April 9 through May 13.
Joseph Buehrer, from Temperance, Michigan, uses drawing, photography and digital media, creates artwork to illustrate a fictional narrative titled “The Divine”. “The Divine”, authored by Buehrer, is a chronicle of a dystopian future, a world slowly recovering from an environmental disaster and ruled by a totalitarian government.
Ali Fisher, a Division I Collegiate Runner from Lebanon, Ohio, creates artwork that combines drawing, printmaking, photography and digital technology to analytically explore the duality of control and chaos found in athletic experience.
Julia LaBay, from Holland, Ohio, working primarily with sculpture, revisits her personal history for inspiration. Rather than creating realistic portraits of past experiences, LaBay seeks to create metaphorical interpretations that serve the present.
Rachelle Raymer-Gilbert, from Vallejo, California, explores the nature of motherhood, utilizing photography as her medium. In particular, Raymer-Gilbert records moments and objects that symbolize the transformative nature of the mother and daughter relationship.
- Raymer - Gilbert
It is emotionally difficult for me to let go of my little girl. My teenage daughter, Lauren, has surpassed the rite of passage that entails her loss of interest in toys. There is a remarkable change in her feelings and attitude as she becomes fiercely independent and matures into a young woman. I am faced with the challenge of accepting this inevitable growth. At times, our relationship is strained and that tension causes agony for me. Admittedly, I recognize my need, as her mother, to let go of the toys that symbolize her childhood. I anticipate Lauren will appreciate my efforts to acknowledge her as a young woman as I let go of the toys I have saved throughout the years.
I have photographed them in a way that not only documents them as objects but also expresses the importance of the memories they elicit.
- Labay
All of my work is autobiographical and is derived of memories and feelings I have experienced. I enjoy mixing traditional and non-traditional materials within my work to create distinctive compositional narratives.
I revisit significant events in my life for inspiration. Rather than create a realistic portrait of those experiences, I seek to create a metaphorical interpretation of the past.
- Fisher
This work combines acrylic mediums, photographs, bib numbers and digital filters to analytically explore the duality of control and chaos as an athlete. Developed out of my life as a Division I Collegiate Runner, I am illustrating the chaos I experience during a race using video footage, layers of acrylic colors and screen-printed numbers applied to the Tyvek paper. The control, however, is that I choose the colors I paint and screen-print, as well as the awareness I allow the viewer to see when looking at my pieces. In addition, the screen-printed numbers that I apply to the Tyvek paper are a form of control, because I am using my own personal bib numbers to reflect my personal experiences.
As a runner I battle issues of staying in control with myself, both physically and mentally. Aside from the visual representation of chaos and control, I want the viewer to understand what can be lost and what can be attained during a race. The pixilated pattern foreshadows the desired goal of a race, and how the runner wants everything to happen. However, because the grid is laid out in a desired controlled fashion the chaos around us hinders that from actually happening. Whether it is from the amount of runner's around myself, or the negative attitude that can affect the race completely, I want the viewer to appreciate the fragility of being in control.
- Buehrer
The following pieces represent a collection of cells and concept art for my comic The Divine. The story takes place in a dystopian future, controlled by a totalitarian government, where the world is slowly recovering from an environmental disaster that nearly wiped out humanity. Tim, a twenty-two year old male, who at a young age discovers that he possesses the gift of immortality, decides he is going to use his newfound ability to unite the world against the oppressive powers that dominate the world.
The pieces on the wall are displayed in a constellation fashion to, simultaneously, display a single moment in the story, and reveal other moments in the cannon, which are captured breaking apart at ascending and descending intervals. The single isolated moment is meant to give the viewer a glimpse into this world and create intrigue into the story and its characters. The display also intends to establish a feeling of fluidity, breaking away from the traditional act of laying panels on a page.
The characters are drawn digitally in Photoshop, using different drawing styles from very quick and sketchy to a much more painterly style. I also incorporate other forms of media such as photographs for backgrounds. This method of combining the two mediums gives the work depth that separates it from most traditional comics. The use of photographs in combination with the drawings also creates a connection with the viewer by presenting them with something real and familiar. This affinity with the viewer creates a sense that this world and its characters could actually exist. It is also a way to reference certain social issues that affect our world today, such as poverty, the dilapidation of property, and rebellion against higher authority.
Landscape and Reclamation 2011 – 2012
The University of Toledo Department of Art hosted three artists in a series of exhibitions and events exploring Landscape and Reclamation. The exhibits ran September 6 and run through October 23, and werel be held in the UT Center for the Visual Arts main gallery and Clement Gallery, as well as the 1st Floor Gallery in the Secor Building in downtown Toledo.
Landscape and Reclamation events included:
Guest Artist Receptions
Friday, October 14, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Center for the Visual Arts and Secor Gallery
Coinciding with the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s popular Gallery Loop, the
Department will host artist receptions at the CVA and Secor Galleries.
Landscape and Reclamation Symposium
Saturday, October 15, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m
Memorial Field House Auditorium (Room 2100) and Atrium
This interdisciplinary symposium brought together a range of artists and others to
discuss the ethical, environmental, and political implications of contemporary attitudes
toward, and uses of the land. Visiting artist Deborah Bright presented the keynote
address followed by a panel discussion and reception.
Artist Statement
Deborah Bright
I made my first trip to Israel in 2005 with my partner, an Israeli-American whose
maternal grandparents emigrated to Palestine as Zionist pioneers more than a century
ago when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire. As we toured the ancient monuments
and archaeological sites, we noticed other ruins nearby that were left unmarked or
even actively disguised as something they were not. It finally dawned on us that these
were all that remained of 350-400 Palestinian villages that were depopulated between
1947 and 1952. Little by little, we began to notice all around us telltale signs of
that other landscape that lies just beneath and behind the present one and troubles
its surfaces.
In archaeology, a ‘destruction layer’ denotes the cataclysmic end to a stratum of
settlement, often signified by a layer of ash and rubble. What we discovered in contemporary
Israel is a “destruction layer” that was born of violence but is still unfolding in
real time: stone foundations succumb to encroaching vegetation; bricked-up masonry
shells await ‘adaptive reuse’; a crumbling mosque, shorn of its rich ornament, stands
mute in the middle of a shopping mall; remnants of a tile floor are embedded in the
lawn of a suburban park.
Magritte noted that ‘Everything visible conceals something visible.’ As a photographer,
I have always been drawn to landscapes with secrets. Sixty years after their owners,
builders and caretakers fled them in the panic of war, these “Arab landscapes” are
a disruptive and ghostly presence in the Israeli landscape. They are spaces of trauma,
not only for the 2 million descendants of Palestinian refugees who inherit old door
keys, yellowed Ottoman-era deeds and toxic memories of expulsion, but also for those
who moved into those homes and harvested the abandoned fields.
http://www.deborahbright.net/
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Deborah Bright, internationally recognized and |
A panel discussion was followed after the keynote address. Chris Burnett |
Light and Landscape 2010 – 2011
The University of Toledo Department of Art hosted a series of events exploring the relationships between light and landscape as a catalyst for works of art. The series included: a group exhibition of invited artists; artists’ lectures, and a workshop for UT art students. The exhibits were held in the Gallery of the UT Center for the Visual Arts (CVA). The lectures took place in the Haigh Auditorium of the CVA.
Light and Landscape Group Exhibition
Sage Dawson | Ivan Fortushniak | Charles Matson Lume
August 23 to October 3, 2010
The series began with a three-person exhibition featuring: Sage Dawson, Ivan Fortushniak, and Charles Matson Lume. In her new body of work, Excavations, Dawson constructs large-scale mixed-media prints to “map” urban sites and territories
in an unexpected light. Fortushniak’s work “investigates the corrosion of historical
landscape paintings and our environments through traditional and contemporary painting
techniques.” Lume created a new site-specific installation in the CVA engaging its
unique “play of light.”
Artist’s lecture by Charles Matson Lume
Thursday, September 2 at 7:00 pm in the Haigh Auditorium
Artist’s lecture by Sage Dawson
Friday, September 24 at 6:00 pm in the Haigh Auditorium
Light And Mass 2009 – 2010
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The University of Toledo sponsored a series of events exploring the role of light
and mass in works of art. UT Faculty Exhibit slideshow |
Cast Light and the Wheel 'O Fire
slideshow |
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Light & Mass Lecture Series: September 2, 4 to 5 p.m.– Brent Dedas, Visiting Assistant Professor of Drawing, "Light and Mass in the Creative Process: From the Studio to the Classroom"
This talk opened the series by looking at issues of light and mass from both the professional
and pedagogical perspectives. The artist used his work and that of students to further
the discussion regarding light and mass in contemporary art.
September 16, 4 to 5 pm – Lawrence Anderson-Huang, Professor of Astronomy and Director
of the Ritter Planetarium, "The ‘Weightiness’ of Light"
Lawrence Anderson-Huang covered theories of light from ancient times to the present,
considering spiritual, particle, and wave concepts leading to understanding the "weightiness"
or "volume" of light-filled spaces. These observations will be used to illuminate
qualities of light that appear in works of art.
September 30, 4 to 5 pm, Melissa Kempke and Eric Sobel, Students in the Art History
Program (in consultation with Mysoon Rizk, Associate Professor of Art History), "Projecting Expression: The Art and Times of William Kentridge" (Melissa Kempke)
The talk discussed innovative South African artist William Kentridge, describe his
cinematic techniques for projecting drawings in time, and explore the connections
between his art and politics, including the history of South African apartheid.
"Art in the Dark: Shedding New Light on 'Blackness'" (Eric Sobel)
By manipulating light and mass (or lack thereof), David Hammons recalls the theatrics
of Yves Klein, addressing racism in the process, along with museum practices and assumptions
about black artists. An exploration of complete darkness and blue light, _Concerto
in Black and Blue_ (2002), among other Hammons works, undercuts many African-American
stereotypes while exposing the multifaceted nature of "blackness."
Urban Cairn
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Internationally-known ceramic artist, Laurie Spencer worked |
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During fall semester 2009, ceramics artist Laurie Spencer joined the UT art students to develop a coil-built clay structure called “Urban Cairn.” “Urban Cairn” was built in the courtyard of the UT Center for Sculptural Studies building at 535 Oakwood, across from the UT Center for the Visual Arts, adjacent to the Toledo Museum of Art.
“Urban Cairn” derives its name from its form. Cairns are conical structures that often served as markers in a number of ancient cultures. They can vary greatly in size and style, depending on materials and purpose. “Urban Cairn” will be roughly 7-8 feet tall and, when complete, will allow visitors to stand within it and experience its unique acoustical features as well. “Sounds resonate in a wonderful way inside the domes and particular tones will vibrate within your body when you talk or hum. It is a warm feeling of being enveloped by the sounds,” Ms. Spencer says.
Ms. Spencer, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a nationally and internationally acclaimed artist who has exhibited throughout the world. She also teaches ceramics at Holland Hall, a liberal arts and college preparatory school in Tulsa. Tom Lingeman, UT Professor of Art, SEA grant recipient and coordinator of the Urban Cairn project, says, “We invited Laurie Spencer because we felt her work would involve the greatest number of students and would enhance the beauty of the courtyard environment. At the same time the work will contrast visually with the surrounding urban area.”
Some may remember that Ms. Spencer created a similar structure, entitled, “Phoenix Cairn,” on the grounds of the Toledo Botanical Gardens in 1989. It is still in the park and can be found near the entrance in the shade garden. “I see the domes as a spiritual space. They create an atmosphere of quiet contemplation,” Ms. Spencer adds.
The exact size and shape the Urban Cairn dome ultimately took, depended on a variety of factors. Ms. Spencer provided the initial design and demonstrated construction techniques to the students. But it was the students who built the structure, adding their own collective creative spark as they went. The structure was built by stacking 3-4 foot sections of clay, rolled into rope-like shapes. After that, the clay was allowed to dry and then the structure was be fired in a kiln built onsite around the piece itself. Under the supervision of Ms. Spencer, the students also built the fiberglass kiln.
UT Art Department Chair, Debra Davis, said the experience was tremendous for the students.“This was a unique opportunity for our students and the general public. Working side-by-side with an artist of this caliber, the students have had hands on experience related to the construction of a monumental ceramic sculpture, as well as gaining an understanding of the complexities of planning and creating a large public artwork.”
In addition, there was be an exhibit of Spencer’s work in the Grey Gallery & Sculpture Garden at the Center for Sculptural Studies. The exhibit, “Laurie Spencer: The Urban Cairn Project,” ran September 4 through October 18. It included photographs, designs and elements connected with the project.
The Urban Cairn project was made possible by a grant from The University of Toledo Office of the Provost. Mr. Lingeman says “We felt very fortunate to have funding from The University of Toledo in the form of a Strategic Enhancement Award. It allowed us to greatly enrich our university curriculum.”
