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Past News
Fall 2007
Gallery Talk with MFA Student Vitus Shell
at Memphis College of Art
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 6:00 PM
Exhibit January 2-30
Memphis College of Art
1930 Poplar Avenue Overton Park
To share more with the public about the UrbanArt Commission's (UAC) 10th
Anniversary Exhibit, currently running at Memphis College of Art (MCA),
the UAC is hosting a Gallery Talk at MCA on Wednesday, January 23rd at
6:00 PM.
Artists Kristi Duckworth, Mark Nowell and Vitus Shell
will be on hand to
discuss their projects. Kristi Duckworth's full scale drawing for the Tree
of Life mosaic at the Cancer Survivors Park is displayed in the exhibit.
Also on display is a scale model of Mark Nowell's sculpture Aspire, which
was just installed at Brewster Elementary in November of 2007. In 2004,
Vitus Shell completed murals for the Orange Mound Community Center, and
has a small sample mural background in the exhibit, as well as a DVD
showing his experiences with the Orange Mound community.
The artists will each talk briefly about their projects
and their creative
process, followed by plenty of time for questions and answers about these
and the other 21 projects on display.
The UrbanArt Commission is celebrating its 10th Anniversary
by partnering
with the Memphis College of Art to show viewers the behind-the-scenes work
of public art. The exhibit, which runs through January, showcases models,
plans, photographs, DVD's, projections and working drawings by some of the
56 artists the UAC has worked with to create close to 70 public art
projects.
The exhibit is part of Interactions/Interruptions:
10 Years of Public Art
in Memphis, a multi-faceted celebration of public art that commemorates
the UrbanArt Commission's 10th Anniversary. In addition to the MCA
exhibit, the project consists of the following components:
• Ten temporary public art projects by one nationally
acclaimed artist,
5 local professional artists and 4 local college-level artists will be
installed throughout Memphis during the month of March.
• An educational pod cast/DVD is being created to acquaint viewers with
information about selected projects, the relevance of the locale of each
artwork, and the history of the UAC and our
mission.
Interactions/Interruptions is made possible by the
UrbanArt Commission
through the generous support of First Tennessee Bravo Awards, Hyde Family
Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, Deupree Family Foundation,
Memphis College of Art, Waddell & Associates, Tennessee Arts Commission,
ArtsMemphis, Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Goodman and Scott and Carolyn
Heppel.
The UrbanArt Commission was formed in 1998 to create
a dynamic, nurturing,
vibrant community through art and design. What began as a small program
incubated within ArtsMemphis has grown into a successful nonprofit that
has overseen the completion of over $6 million in art enhancements.
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Retired
Art Professor Exhibits Retrospective
of His Graphic Works
12/28/2007
OXFORD, Miss. - John L. Winters, professor emeritus of art at the University
of Mississippi, taught on the Oxford campus from 1970 to 1998. During that
time, he also amassed an impressive array of his own artwork, some of which
is to be exhibited Jan. 8-Feb. 17 at the University Museum.
"The Prints of John L. Winters" display in the Adair Skipwith Gallery is a retrospective of the artist's graphic works from 1967 to 1997. The pieces are from his exhibit displayed last fall at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga, Latvia.
A gallery reception is scheduled 1:30-3 p.m. Sunday. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. The museum is open 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-4:30 p.m. Sunday.
Although a regular visitor to Latvia, his native country, Winters had not had the opportunity to exhibit his work there until last year. He received the invitation because of his "high level of printmaking technical mastery," said Marita Berzina, curator of works on paper at the Latvian Museum.
"Winters hasn't specialized in one single technique; he has chosen to use not only the traditional classical methods, but also has gone with the times and mastered new techniques such as photo etching," Berzina said.
Winters said that wanting to be able to teach students various printmaking methods was his inspiration for learning different techniques. He has done printmaking in silkscreen, etching, woodcut and lithography.
"The various techniques give life to the art in different ways," he said.
Albert Sperath, museum director agreed, saying, "Winters' images touch a nerve that one has a hard time identifying. Mysterious, humorous and perplexing are words that come to mind when I view his art."
Born in 1935 in the Bauska district of Latvia, Winter fled to Germany with his family to escape the Soviets in 1944. They immigrated to the United States in 1950.
Winters received his BFA in 1963 from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA in painting from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1965. He furthered his studies at the Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 1969; the Art Students League of New York in 1978 and Fairview College, Peace River, Alberta, Canada, in 1993.
Winters is an honorary professor of the Latvian Academy of Art. With the re-establishment of Latvia's independence in 1991, he founded an annual scholarship for the best creative achievement in the graphic arts by students from the academy's graphics department.
Winters and his wife, Maggie, reside in Oxford.
by Deborah A. Purnell
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New Work by Jennifer Torres
New Work is currently on display at
Meek Hall Gallery 130 from December 17, 2007–January
17, 2008. It features the sculptures of Jennifer Torres. Torres is currently
Associate Professor of Art at the University of Southern Mississippi. She received
her undergraduate degree at Cooper Union in New York City and her MFA degree
from the University of Georgia.
The show is a series of sculptures based around boat and vessel forms. Torres
uses steel, cast iron, wood, and stoneware for this series of sculptures and
installations.
She will be giving a lecture on January 17, 2008 at 2 pm in Meek Hall Auditorium
138, with a reception following afterward.
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Student Art Association Holiday
Auction
The University of Mississippi's Student
Art Association Holiday Auction is just around the corner,
and we are looking forward to seeing you in Gallery 130 at Meek Hall
on Friday, November 9, 2007. The annual auction, one of the Department
of Art's most popular and exciting events, offers artworks by
students, faculty, and alumni, some of whom are nationally and internationally
recognized artists whose works are widely collected. Among the art
for sale will be paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, pottery,
and sculpture.
The gallery will open at 9:00 a.m. for a preview
of the art and will remain open all day. At 5:30 p.m. the Silent
Auction will begin, and it will close at 6:30 p.m. Then the live auction
will
start at 7:00 p.m. and continue until all art is sold. Works for
both auctions will be juried by three Oxford artists, Ashley Chavis,
Kevin
Waddell, and Milly Moorhead.
Work will be sold on a cash-and-carry basis. All work must be paid for by cash
or check that evening, and everything that is sold must be taken away by the
end of the sale. Sorry, we are unable to process credit card sales. Sixty percent
of all proceeds will go directly to the artists and forty percent to the Department
of Art to help support our gallery and visiting artists program.
Beginning at 6:30 p.m., there will be a complimentary reception of food and drink.
Come join us for an evening of art, food, and fun, and also build your art collection!
If you have any questions, please call the Department of Art at (662) 915-7193.
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The Department of Art's
Open House
Please join us on Thursday, October
4, 2007 from 4 to 7pm as we invite members of the community to
the Department of Art’s Open House. This will be a time
to welcome everyone back to view our newly renovated facilities
and see the progress of the students and the department. After
extensive renovations during the summer, the Department of Art
moved back to its permanent location in Meek Hall. The renovations
included new computer labs, painting and drawing facilities,
lecture rooms, an auditorium, faculty offices and graduate studios.
Gallery 130 has also re-opened and begun showing new exhibitions. The
Beth Edwards and Larry Edwards Exhibition will be on view
and the reception is also scheduled for this time.
If you have any questions, please call the Department of Art at (662) 915-7193
for more information.
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Art Graduate Student Among 15 in Nation to
Receive
$15,000 Grant
09/26/2007
OXFORD, Miss. - When University of Mississippi art graduate student Vitus Shell
was 3 years old, watermelons and pickles grew on trees. At least, that's what
he thought. The unusual "fruit trees" were among his favorite subjects
to illustrate.
"I didn't know back then that watermelons didn't grow on trees; that was
just my thing," said Shell, now 28 and in his final year of UM's Master
of Fine Arts program.
Since those early drawings, Shell's "thing" has certainly changed,
transitioning from the desire to be a comic book artist, to the mixed-medium
paintings and prints depicting African-American stereotypes and struggles that
recently earned him a $15,000 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.
The Louisiana native is one of 15 MFA students nationwide to receive the prestigious
award this year. He said some of the funds would go toward a wide-format printer
to increase both the size and quantity of his work, helping to make his message
more widespread. "I'm excited about the grant," Shell said. "I
plan on making my work bigger, and doing that, I can address the problem (of
African-American stereotypes), and it could be more in your face, kind of like
how the problem is for me."
The grant was awarded as part of the Joan Mitchell Foundation's 2007 MFA Grant
Program, which was established in 1997 to help graduate students shift into
art as a career. Shell was nominated for the grant by UM printmaking associate
professor Sheri Reith, who taught him as an undergraduate at the Memphis College
of Art and encouraged him to enroll at Ole Miss.
While Shell was surprised when he received the phone call informing him of
the award, others were not.
" I think (Shell) is very aware of what is going on in the contemporary
art world, and he knows where he fits into it," said Philip Jackson, assistant
professor of art. "It doesn't surprise me that he received the grant, because
he's a very talented individual. I see a lot of things to come. He shows a lot
of promise."
Shell has shown his artwork in both solo and group exhibitions, and his pieces,
such as those in the "SlimCrow" and "Brown Paper Bag Test" series,
address past and present issues in African-American culture.
"My work is really dealing with the black experience, but it is not just
for black people," Shell said. "It is just making people re-examine
what they think black is, and even black folks rethinking what was considered
black. My work is kind of playing around with those stereotypes and how people
are perceived."
Shell's latest series, "Derty South," places colorful images of people
on a backdrop of faded, photocopied, vintage 20th -century advertisements,
to create a parallel between old culture and new.
Shell graduated from the Memphis College of Art in 2000 and, after numerous
exhibits, enrolled in Ole Miss' MFA program as a graduate printmaking student
in 2005. An exhibit of his work is displayed at Oxford's Southside Gallery.
A few can be viewed online at
http://www.southsideartgallery.com/
by Lindsey Phillips
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New Faculty Members
The Department of Art would like to announce the addition
of two new faculty members: Lou Haney;
Foundations and Philip Jackson; Painting