Department of Art

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the Digital Arts BFA Exhibition featuring Chantel White, Courtney Harrington, Dennis Lukowski, Jacob Berthelson, Grady Augustine, Melanie Shoemaker, Manny Gomez, Peter Rails, and Toma Griffey. The BFA show is on May 11th in the Alumni Center Ballroom “C”, from 5pm-9pm.

This event offers visitors an opportunity to discover how years of work have developed this group into the artists that they are today. They are working in a diverse range of digital media including Web development, video game engine experimentation, digital painting, real-time video, and many more. There will also be a group project that should prove to be an extremely unique experience for visitors.

There will be light appetizers catered by Kites, free to all guests! And a CASH only bar for those of you of age to enjoy a beer or red/white wine. Hope to see you there!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

Email: classgraduate@gmail.com
Web: http://digitalarts.art.ksu.edu/bfa/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/307869255949589/

Kansas State University BFA students Kaley Debrick, Toma Griffey, Beth Hanna, Aaron Logan, Megan Quigley, and Dustin Smith are featured in the fifth of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions opening May 7, 2012 in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the fifth of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Kaley Debrick, Toma Griffey, Beth Hanna, Aaron Logan, Megan Quigley, and Dustin Smith. The artists will present an exhibition of their work from May 7 through May 11, 2012 in the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, first floor Willard Hall. Gallery hours are 10am – 5pm, Monday through Friday. There will be a reception for the artists on Friday evening, May 11th, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm, in the gallery.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Painter Kaley Debrick considers her art making a risk-taking adventure, keeping alive the childhood curiosity informed by the privilege of growing up in the countryside with 40 acres of land to roam. She vivid memories of encountering her grandmother’s oil paints and considers her a major influence in becoming a painter. Debrick’s rich colorful oil paintings are based on studies of the natural world. They play with the idea of opposites; transparent verses opaque, pattern verses simplicity, tangibility verse ambiguity. The works relish in the intricate, insignificant and overlooked details of nature. Like the 40 acres she roamed as a youth, she invites you to wander, to look, to ponder. Like nature, her paintings always have something that invites investigation.

As a child, photographer Toma Griffey wanted to be an astronaut, the president, or a mermaid. She was advised that she could be either, or all three. What kid wouldn’t want to be a astro-pres-a-mermaid! Now grown-up, she has been unable to confine herself to one discipline dividing her time between Photography and Digital Arts. For her photography thesis work she uses her skills to alter perspectives and create images that defy expectations. Her images, super-imposing natural imagery onto the human form, demonstrate her interest in the way nature and humans were made to interact. Nature almost looks foreign when it is placed on the human body as skin.

Ceramicist Beth Hanna remembers, as a child, sneaking out part of her dinner to the mice that lived in the shed, bringing home every stray she found, or loving the carefree dandelions more than the narcissistic roses. Then she noticed the dandelions being sprayed with poison – labeled a weed, the mice were trapped, and strays went to the pound. It was from these early experiences that she saw the war that exists between the mechanical, industrial world of humans and the quiet, innocent world of nature. Her new ambitious ceramic work is a very large flower, arising from the depths of the earth. Installed in the gallery as an apparition of all the flowers that have been crushed and destroyed by the building placed upon it. The work represents all natural vitality extinguished in the name of human progress.

Painter Aaron Logan grew up in Northeastern Kansas near the small town of Horton. He was able to explore his interests in art through involvement in 4-H, a Grifted and Talented program, and the availability of college-level courses at the near-by community college in his high school years. He began his studies at University of Kansas, but transferred to Kansas State to include studies in illustration as well as painting. He has contributed illustrations and comics to the K-State Collegian since 2009. His figurative gouache and oil paintings relish in the curves found in the body and in the flow of human hair. While seeking beauty in the figure, the work also addresses society’s emphasis on conformity to social norms. His paintings attempt to question the ideal “Barbie and Ken” models in American society.

Growing up in Hays, Kansas, photographer Megan Quigley was a competitive dancer. She was constantly having her photo taken. She soon became fascinated with the artistry and control of the photographer as much as that of the dancer. For her current work, she has photographed exclusively in the botanical gardens at Kansas State University. Working with only natural light of the garden facility, manually controlling the focus on each image, she conveys the texture, shape, and many different colors of each organism. These colorful prints present a distinct aesthetic exposing unique and expressive objects and moments in time.

Sculptor Dustin Smith was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas and surrounded himself with books about dinosaurs and bugs. After flirting with graphic design, he realized that he liked making objects with his hands. His large metal sculptures are inspired from observing the insect exhibits at county fairs in his youth. The work seeks to elevate the patterns and colors of the “insignificant” little creatures, but also address the disturbing yet intriguing way that they were killed and preserved for our viewing pleasure. The large metal creatures appear dark and lifeless, a former shell of what beauty they once carried when they were alive.

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

Funded in part by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee

Kansas State University BFA students Whitney Box, Garrett Kostbar, Shannon Nicks, Hunter Scott, and Victoria Tillson are featured in the fourth of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions opening April 30, 2012 in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the fourth of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Whitney Box, Garrett Kostbar, Shannon Nicks, Hunter Scott, and Victoria Tillson. The artists will present an exhibition of their work from April 30 through May 4, 2012 in the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, first floor Willard Hall. Gallery hours are 10am – 5pm, Monday through Friday. There will be a reception for the artists on Friday evening, May 4th, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm, in the gallery.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Growing up on a farm in Linwood, Kansas, photographer Whitney Box developed an interest in photography and cameras at a young age. She soon began experimenting with unusual scenes on the farm. While studying in Florence, Italy, she began experimenting with street photography, leading to a 2nd place award in the Lorenzode’ Medici Artists in the Streets competition. In her current color photographs, she seeks to find the abnormal in the normal. She accesses her idea of abnormal by revealing lifeforms in a moment of vulnerability. Consisting of left behind carcasses or other decaying objects from the world, these photographs consider the human relationship with the inevitability of death.

Photographer Garrett Kostbar grew up in Colorado and Kansas in a household surrounded by dolls. His mother provided a creative model by designing and making porcelain dolls as well as collecting. After first pursuing an interest in graphic design, he found his true passion in photography but struggled with content issues. A documentary film on fetishes lead him to explore more complicated and dark imagery that he fabricated from his imagination. Acquiring some dolls that his mother had made as well as parts of dolls – often broken, cracked, or disfigured, he has developed a process of creating imagery and setting up his own unique black and white still-life photographs. His imaginative world is one overrun with dolls, just as his house had been when he was growing up.

Metals artist Shannon Nicks grew up in Olathe and Overland Park, Kansas always involved in some kind of performing arts. While living in Turkey, she was first exposed to working with enamel on copper and became inspired, ultimately abandoning the performing arts for making art objects. In her current work, she has found inspiration in a diverse set of organic structures – organisms that attach and grow on top of other organisms. Her copper vessels focus on the beauty that can come from this relationship.

For painter Hunter Scott, whether it is architecture, decoration, apparel, or art, the idea of aesthetic beauty has always captivated him. Fueled by his mother, an educator, he became interested in Greek mythology and studied and copied imagery of greek gods and goddesses. This inquiry lead to ultimately being completely captivated by Botticelli‘s Birth of Venus. After a brief excursion into literature and psychology, he discovered that his true interest in art was still driven by his early exposure to classical traditions. In this current work, he employs a grandiose scale to reflect themes of excess and egotism, while the sumptuous medium of oil paint evokes desire and tradition. The works combine source material ranging from Baroque vanitas to contemporary haute couture ads, inspired by a milieu that praises the exquisitely decorated, while simultaneously criticizes the flaunting of material wealth. With this duality ingrained into his being, these paintings become a visualization of this internal battle: an attraction-repulsion to luxury and decadence.

Growing up in Manhattan, Kansas, sculptor Victoria Tillsonwas surrounded by a strong-willed and hard working family whose walls were lined with a macabre mixture of animals in jars, periodic tables, encyclopedias of severe birth defects and diseases, test tubes, and classical music records. Through good times and bad, art became a lifeline, it was a constant and a source of healing. The same inquisitive creativity and therapeutic escape through art has stuck with Tillson throughout her life and she found an application for it in the dirty physicality and problem-solving nature of sculpture. Her unyielding cast iron figures embrace, share, and celebrate an emotional struggle and defiance. Indications of the process in which the figurative sculptures were made, such as mold lines and rebar, are exposed to show a history of the piece just as our physical and emotional scars reveal the history of our lives and where we’ve been.

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

Funded in part by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee