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Art Faculty Express Themselves |
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Vicki L. Kroll |
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Jan 22, 2002 |
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Members of The University of Toledo art department are showcasing their creations in the faculty exhibition in the Center for the Visual Arts Gallery and throughout the first floor of the center through Friday, Jan. 25.
Works represent several disciplines, including ceramics, drawing, metals, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, new media, art history and art education.
Gallery hours through Friday are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
For more information on the free, public exhibition, call the art department at 419.530.8300.
“Hiking Amongst the Trees for Quite Some Time, J.C. Was Finally Able to See the Forest” by Patrick Dubreuil
"It's just something I started doing a really long time ago — I was really good at drawing stuff right in front of me. I showed a couple people who said, 'That's good, but what about original work?' So my buddies and I started this exercise about 20 years ago trying to get our brains going to draw from our imaginations. It's a different approach to drawing — I take a scribble line from someone and I use that for the first line of my drawing. It's called linear recognition — you take something totally nonobjective and find something recognizable. I made 32 drawings in a book and sent a copy to my dad, and he said these would make cool paintings. I agreed. This is the first time I put text with my work — I had a lot of fun with that."
“Heart Nouveau” by Dan Stewart, instructor of art
“My father had bypass surgery last year. I wasn’t sure exactly what that was and did some research. I became interested in the cartoon, child-like way organs were drawn and labeled in the medical books. I started out learning what was happening to him and at the same time became interested in Art Nouveau, a movement from the early 20th century that features ornate framing devices. The medical illustrations made simple — separating out parts — reminded me of this movement, presenting the heart in panels like a comic book.”
“In the Beginning” by Linda Ames-Bell, professor of art
“This piece is part of a body of work about human overpopulation and is linked to my other piece in the show, ‘6 Billion and Counting.’ Two other pieces from this group are coincidentally currently on view in the national juried competition at Bowling Green State University, ‘Pink Onions.’ The juror of that exhibition is Professor Terry Barrett, highly respected author of books on contemporary art criticism, used as textbooks in many university classes on contemporary art issues, including UT. The subject of overpopulation is something I think about daily as it seems to dwarf all other issues. We humans are busy consuming every other thing on our planet and yet the majority of us do not want to hear about this, preferring the myopia and minutiae of our individual daily existences. For ‘In the Beginning,’ I wanted a simple pared down icon to represent the original sparseness of human presence. The numerals also deal with sparse origins, whether one’s frame of reference is biblical or otherwise. We have gone from few with little impact on our environment to more than 6 billion people on the planet with huge impact on the entire biosphere. Because of the difficult subject, with which many people do not want to deal, I decided to use delicate color and simple numerals almost as in a child’s book, going back to the sort of early clear images we grew with. If viewers can have the issue rather gently held up to the light, the hope is that the images may burn into the brain and come back to haunt so that this pressing issue will be thought of more deeply and the consequences realized.”
“One Trick Pony” by Arturo Rodriguez, assistant professor of art
“I make paintings, prints and mixed-media works that are rooted in my experience as someone who finds it difficult to identify with a cultural group. Although I was born on the island of Cuba, referring to myself as ‘Cuban’ is a label that I don’t feel comfortable with. My memories of Cuba are those of a young boy. My mother and I left the island during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. ‘American’ is a term that I feel does not fit me either, even though I have been living in the U.S. for over 20 years. ‘Cuban-American’ does not describe me either; it is a term for children of Cuban exiles who grew up in Miami speaking Spanglish, but with no real connection to the country. In my recent painting, ‘One Trick Pony,’ I am juxtaposing images from a romanticized reality and from cartoon stereotypes. In working with this disparate visual imagery, I became aware of compositional problems that are inherent when working with two distinct visual realities. As a result, my aim is to ‘morph’ the compositions into a symbiotic whole. The comical nature of my recent works is not only a device to attract the viewer, but also a reminder of what a wonderfully absurd place the world can be. By combining these seemingly eclectic images, I place them in a unique context that elevates their status from kitsch to fine art.”
“Toxicity of General Anaesthesia” by Deborah Orloff, associate professor of art
“‘Toxicity of General Anaesthesia’ explores the similarities between political and physical control, and invites the viewer to contemplate the implications. It's actually part of a larger body of work, 'A Loss of Control,' that combines photographic images and layered texts to analytically address the concept of control in relation to the body. It developed out of my personal experiences with pregnancy, childbirth and a chronic back injury, and my attempts to reconcile the need to be in control even when that was simply impossible. Although personal experiences have caused me to examine my own need to feel in control, and have been the impetus for my current artwork, the pieces are ultimately about much broader
concerns.”
“Red Diatoms” by Barbara Miner, assistant professor of art
“‘Red Diatoms’ is an installation which stems from my ongoing fascination with the nexus of the human/earth/organism interface. It was placed in the foyer of the CVA specifically because I felt a strong need to bring the presence of life and nature into the glass and steel space. I used building foam to create the forms, which were then painted with a mixture of bee's wax, pigment, black pepper, paprika and turmeric. When the south-facing foyer warms up, the wax gives off a lovely honey scent. The entry's ventilation system creates air currents on which the light weight forms dance, which creates a sense of the forms being alive —just what I wanted.”
“Great Wall Feeling (Portal)” by Mysoon Rizk, assistant professor of art history
"While in China last summer, I didn't have a lot of time for travel but did see a lot of the Great Wall. One thing that struck me was how touristy it was — how jarring to be walking along the Great Wall and encounter yelling vendors, each trying to get you to buy postcards or calendars. The piece is also about traveling to countries regarded as Second or Third World, especially when you do not know the language and contact is limited to simple commercial transactions. Things that show up in the piece maybe mark the limits of my interaction with Chinese culture; even though each interaction — in a store, in a marketplace, on the street — had intense qualities and stories to go with it. I also included things I took with me because I wasn't sure I'd find them there — certain toiletries, for example. I tend to be selective of what I throw away. I preserve a lot of things people consider trash, like packaging. The portal idea I borrowed from medieval architecture — the main entrance to, say, a Gothic church where some of the most important messages would be communicated — as well as the kind of plastic ‘screen door’ used in China. Items have been laminated in plastic strips so you can actually move through the door."
“Mail Art Project: Art & Dust” by Joel Lipman, professor of art and English
“Mail Art is an international network of both personal exchange and curated exhibitions that characteristically traces its origins to the Fluxus movement of the 1950s and courses on experimental composition conducted at that time by John Cage at the New School of Social Research. Fluxus artist Ray Johnson (1927-1995), like others associated with the movement, ‘... worked in almost every medium and style [and] is best-known, however, for having established Correspondence, or Mail Art; in the late 1960s he founded the New York Correspondence School, where he circulated his art (handmade postcards and stamps, collages, artists' books, etc.) through the U.S. Postal System, thereby circumventing the conventional gallery circuit and the commercial exploitation of his art,’ according to The Prestel Dictionary of Art and Artists in the 20th Century. Heraclitus is credited with the statement ‘All is flux; nothing is stationary.’ Fluxus and the transitory, ephemeral art actions characteristic of the movement's aesthetic and my ‘Art & Dust’ pieces on exhibit, derive from those 5th-century B.C. origins. I've been active as a mail artist since the 1970s, contributing the term ‘poeMvelope’ to the genre, providing an identifying name for minimal and gestural poems printed by the artist on envelopes. ‘Art & Dust’ displays a series of rubberstamped envelopes I made several weeks after 9-11. The letters and words are approached as physical material. There's unstable tension in the form and function of these mailable works — by design they're ephemeral art objects. Transmission technologies, unstable inks, cheap and non-archival papers, plus the fact that envelopes require opening, hence damaging, in order to examine the contents contribute to this impermanence. The work poses questions examining dust, paper and implicit issues of political stability and toxicity.”
“Pregnant Sky” by Jason Nickel, instructor of art
“This work in particular takes many of my interests in Asian and Zen painting (the strong brushwork and empty canvas) and unites them with my interest in architectonic forms (the wood construction). The fact that the painting seems unfinished is evidence of the reality that experience is unfinished as we participate in it — the metaphor of a sky being pregnant with possibility and uncertainty. I prefer to make work that seems to be ‘in process’ and mysterious, with a strong contrast between the severe lines and angles of carpentry and the chaotic and fluid malleability of paint.”
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