Fine Arts Center Gallery

“Sticks, Stones & Bones/Images from Transient Landscapes” an exhibition of 30 multi-toned, silver gelatin photographs by Annette E. Fournet, will be featured in the University of Arkansas Fine Arts Center Gallery November 30 – December 18, 2009. Ms. Fournet will present a public lecture about her experiences photographing in Central and Eastern Europe on Thursday, December 3 at 5:00 pm in Room 213 of the Fine Arts Center. A reception will follow in the gallery.

Fournet, who now lives in Memphis, began photographing Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, just as it was undergoing vast changes after “The Velvet Revolution.” Her photographs document that cultural transition and the sense of nostalgia and regret for the things – both good and bad – that would eventually disappear under the onslaught of change.

Fournet is still making photographs in Central and Eastern Europe and describes her current work as an investigation of ‘wabi-sabi’ in the landscape. The Japanese aesthetic of ‘wabi-sabi’ is defined as “…a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” Her haunting photographs focus on the inconspicuous and overlooked details of everyday life. Fournet’s photographs have been exhibited in solo exhibitions throughout the United States, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The Lost Museum: The Fate of World’s Greatest Lost Treasures is the title of an exhibition by Shaurya Kumar which opens at the University of Arkansas’ Fine Arts Center Gallery on October 26 and continues through November 18, 2009. Kumar based The Lost Museum on analysis of digital archiving methods used to document art and culture. The artifacts in this so-called “museum” are digital prints constructed from images of treasures either missing or destroyed during acts of war and violence throughout history. The images seek to re-create an archival record of works such as a Buddhist mural painting destroyed by the Taliban and a tapestry by Spanish artist Joan Miro that once hung in the World Trade Center in New York. Unfortunately, the instability of digital archiving methods is demonstrated by the degeneration of these important images, which represents yet another destruction of the world’s greatest treasures.

Shaurya Kumar will present a visiting artist lecture on Thursday, October 29 at 5 pm in Room 213 of the Fine Arts Center with a reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.

Kumar is currently an assistant professor of art at Bowling Green State University, where he is developing a new program of Hybrid Art, integrating traditional 2D art methods with digital technology. He holds a BFA from the University of Delhi, India and an MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

For more information about the exhibition and to see images of the work, please visit the artist’s website at:
www.shauryakumar.com

Artwork created by inmates on Arkansas’ Death Row will be featured in the hallway display cases in the Fine Arts Center October 1 – 16. This presentation was designed to complement the current exhibition in the Fine Arts Center Gallery, “Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America.” The Arkansas Death Row inmates artwork includes items made from popsicle sticks, magazine pages, and candy wrappers — as well as a large selection of greeting cards, which are sold to raise funds for the art program’s supplies. While the gallery exhibition features paintings and drawings made by prisoners in art classes, the Arkansas inmates do not have access to such instruction, so their work is all self-designed and limited to the materials they are allowed to work with. Highlights of the display include a shadow box “piano bar” and a chess set — which attest to the inmates’ creativity.

“Cellblock Visions 2009: Prison Art in America,” an exhibition of drawings, paintings and objects made by men and women inmates of jails and penitentiaries in six states, will be featured in the University of Arkansas’ Fine Arts Center Gallery September 21 – October 16, 2009. The exhibition curator, Phyllis Kornfeld, will be on campus to present a lecture surveying prison art in America on Thursday, October 15 at 7:00 pm in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, located in the Fine Arts Center. On Friday, October 16 Ms. Kornfeld will present a Gallery Talk at 2:00 pm in the Fine Arts Center Gallery. Both events are free and open to the public.

The exhibition includes art forms typically created by prisoners, such as handkerchief art and decorated envelopes, as well as more traditionally executed paintings and drawings by these mostly self-taught artists. Also featured are examples of prison ‘folk arts’ such as soap carvings and toilet paper sculpture. “These artists tell the truth, without self-consciousness, unfettered by concepts and theory. This pure expression of individual personality has produced a wide variety of styles and imagery, and at the same time, the commonalities of their imprisonment color every piece.”

Phyllis Kornfeld is the author of Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America. She has been conducting visual arts programs with incarcerated men and women for twenty-five years – from county jail to death row – in eighteen institutions in seven states. She also has a website, www.cellblockvisions.com.

University of Arkansas professor of art, michael peven, will present an exhibition of his recent photographs in the Fine Arts Center Gallery, August 17 through September 16, 2009. A reception will be held on Sunday, August 30 from 1:30 – 3:30 pm.

All of the 69 color photographs are digital in origin and execution and — although it may not be the principal subject matter — the moon is featured in many of the images.

To quote from the artist’s statement: “These pictures recognize the primacy of photography as a realistic system of visual information transfer, and delight in the creation of images that celebrate the visual world as it exists….Some of the images in this exhibit represent ideas I’ve been working with for over 30 years. The ’significant presentation’ of subject, a concept that motivated Edward Weston, has been an overriding concern in my work for a long time. Other ideas are relatively new.”

Forty graduating art majors from both the BA and BFA programs will present their work in the Fine Arts Gallery May 3 – 10, 2009. The annual “Senior Showcase” is the culmination of these students’ undergraduate studies and features artwork in a variety of media, including sculpture, ceramics, photography, painting, and visual design. A reception to honor the Seniors will be held on Friday, May 8 at 6 pm.

Kyle McKenzie presents his MFA Thesis Exhibition, Empty Walls,in the Fine Arts Center Gallery from April 20 – 30, 2009. This exhibition features a series of paintings that depict interiors from the artist’s childhood home, which was recently purchased compulsorily to allow for the extension of a street. After his parents vacated the house, McKenzie revisited the empty space, which he describes as a “shell of (my) former home,” and his paintings document his observations of the empty space.

“I have always been struck by the peculiar way in which light and shadow sculpt the visual world, and I was drawn to the newly abandoned house as a sort of laboratory to observe these situations… the naked simple architecture held a quiet enigma. Increasingly, closely held associations and personal memories flavored my perceptions. The resulting paintings are universal in their depiction of simple domestic spaces, but hold deeply personal reflections on the specific home.”

A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, April 25 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm in the Gallery. For more information: kyle.mckenzie@yahoo.com.

“Physical Reminders” showcases the work of seven internationally and nationally distinguished artists who approach sculpture as physical indicators of time, space, identity, and invisible systems. The object is a point of departure for these artists. In several of the exhibited pieces, the artists see themselves and the viewer as the object in their work, as subject and spectator equally affected by their environment or factors beyond control. Elements of painting, photography, design, and architecture collide with kinetics, sound, light, and real-time information in the same space. Compared to the way sculpture traditionally has been experienced through the sense of sight, these works presented together reflect an information overload in that they require our full attention on additional sensory levels….

Each work in this exhibition challenges the viewer to process and index their work accordingly. Remembering requires recognition and exertion to recall what has been experienced. These works can be seen as strings tied to fingers, sticky notes, to-do lists, and electronic notifications – all visual cues meant to enhance prospective memory. They are also suggestions, ranging from physical to virtual, of an anticipated act which may or may never materialize. (from the Statement by the Exhibition Curator, Bethany Springer, Assistant Professor of Art, University of Arkansas).

The seven artists whose work is featured in “Physical Reminders” are David Gurman (San Francisco, CA), Michael Jones McKean (Richmond, VA), Greg Pond (Nashville, TN), Micki Watanabe Spiller (New York, NY), Claire Watkins (New York, NY), Mike Wsol (Charlottesville, VA), and Lain York (Nashville, TN). Christopher Cook, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, was the moderator for a panel discussion with Jones McKean, Pond, Watkins, Wsol, York and Springer on Wednesday, March 25, which followed presentations by each of these artists about their work.

An intimate group of ceramic teapots and mugs, created by Visiting Artist Kurt Anderson, are now on exhibit in the hallway case in the Fine Arts Center. A studio potter from New York, Anderson will be on the University of Arkansas campus Thursday, February 26 for a Wheel-Throwing Workshop @ 1:30 – 4:30 pm (Ceramics Studio, 326 Eastern Ave.) followed by a Lecture @ 5:30 pm in Room 213 of the Fine Arts Building. The Wheel-Trhowing Workshop will continue on Friday, February 27 @ 9:30 am – 12:30 pm and 2:00 – 4:00 pm, again at the Ceramics Studio. For more information: jhulen@uark.edu or 479-575-2008.

Dr. Paul Crenshaw of Washington University, St. Louis, will present a lecture, “Value and Judgment in Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print” on Monday, March 9 at 5:00 pm in Room 213 of the Fine Arts Center. Dr. Crenshaw will also give an informal gallery talk focusing on the Rembrandt prints in the current exhibition, The Inspired Line: Selected Prints of Albrecht Durer and Rembrandt van Rijn from the Thrivent Financial Collection of Religious Art, at 2:30 pm on March 9. The exhibition will continue through Friday, March 13.