BFA Thesis Exhibition 5, Spring 2012

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

BFA Thesis Exhibition 4, Spring 2012

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

BFA Thesis Exhibition 2, Spring 2012

Kansas State University BFA students Megan Burke, Jacqueline Franden, Anna Ginder, Christina Klein, and Cortney Ryan are featured in the second of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions opening April 16, 2012 in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the second of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Megan Burke, Jacqueline Franden, Anna Ginder, Christina Klein, and Cortney Ryan. The artists will present an exhibition of their work from April 16 through 20, 2012 in the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, first floor Willard Hall. Gallery hours are 9am – 5pm, Monday through Friday. There will be a reception for the artists on Friday evening, April 20, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, in the gallery.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Printmaker Megan Burke was born in Wisconsin in 1988. Her prints depict the connections we attempt to forge in effort to close a self-imposed gap in understanding – the way we try to relate to each other in the midst of trying to figure it all out.

Ceramicist Jacqueline Franden remembers making pinch pots in elementary school and along with other creative activities this formed her interest in visual art – particularly photography and ceramics. In addition to her studies at Kansas State University, she studied abroad at West School of the Arts in Carmarthen, Wales. Her functional work is based on sophisticated forms with smooth surfaces which are dressed in regular yet intricate patterned surface designs. The surface patterns are informed by the designs found in quilting, fractal geometry, and rosettes.

As a lifelong Kansas native, photographer Anna Ginder’s first creative outlet was poetry. She discovered that through writing she could store her thoughts forever. A disposable camera soon replaced written words, as the resulting images could immediately be tacked up on her wall to fill up the empty space, not only in her room but also in the fading memories in her mind. For her, seeing something exciting immediately demands a possession of it. For her thesis work, she turned to portraits of people and their possessions using a process designed to create an uncertainty about the subject. She wants the viewer to speculate about the person and their chosen object and create their own narrative as to what it could reveal.

Painter Christina Klein considers the farm in rural Kansas where she was raised as a perfect think tank for any creative mind – with nearly an unlimited access to supplies and access to a large open space. The farm also inspired her early interests in depicting nature. However, a study-abroad experience in Austria and Germany inspired a turn to expressionist portraits and surreal architecture. In her thesis work, she observes spaces with unique architectural elements, tries to dissect them through her painting process, and invent unusual spaces that could not exist in reality. Utilizing multiple perspective and vantage points, she engages the viewer in the architecture so that each time someone looks at the painting, they can find something they may not have noticed before.

Photographer Cortney Ryan comes from a lineage of artists – both her grandmothers were painters. Inspired by their work, in her Wichita, Kansas high school years she was obsessed with making art. Later, her experience working as a studio manager in a Wichita photo studio confirmed her interest in photography. Her thesis work focuses on detailed images of the human body, showcasing how each body part is truly a unique piece of art. Through her attention to color and light, she composes the human body in a way that the eye doesn’t normally perceive it.

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

Peter Frank lecture, “The Expansion of Art in America”

Curator and Art Critic Peter Frank to present “The Expansion of Art in America”, April 10 in the Little Theater in the Student Union of Kansas State University

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the lecture “The Expansion of Art in America” by Peter Frank on April 10, 3:30 pm in the Little Theater in the Student Union on Kansas State University campus.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Peter Frank is art critic for the Huffington Post and Associate Editor for Fabrik magazine. He is former critic for Angeleno magazine and the L. A. Weekly, served as Editor for THEmagazine Los Angeles and Visions Art Quarterly, and contributes articles to publications around the world. Frank was born in 1950 in New York, where he was art critic for The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News, and moved to Los Angeles in 1988. Frank, who recently served as Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum, has organized numerous theme and survey shows for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Venice Biennale, Documenta, and other venues. McPherson & Co.‑Documentext published his Something Else Press: An Annotated Bibliography in 1983. A cycle of poems, The Travelogues, was issued by Sun & Moon Press in 1982. Abbeville Press released New, Used & Improved, an overview of the New York art scene co-written with Michael McKenzie, in 1987. Frank has taught and lectured extensively throughout North America and Europe.

This event is a part of the Kansas State University Department of Art Visiting Artists Series for the 2011-2012 Season.

Funded in part by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee

Image information: 2010 portrait by Joost de Jonge

Sangram Majumdar lecture, “the unknown shore”

Painter Sangram Majumdar to present “the unknown shore”, March 8 at the Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University

Admission is free and open to the public.

Sangram Majumdar thinks of his paintings as conversations between the notion of the familiar and the questions it raises through the medium of painting. Working against the factual nameability, the paintings are extensions of this metamorphosis. He has an MFA from Indiana University and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent solo exhibitions include Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, NY; Rothschild Fine Art, Tel Aviv, Israel and selected group exhibition venues include Tracy Williams Ltd. (curated by John Yau), NY; American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition, NY; US Embassy, Sierra Leone and the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan. His awards include the 2009-10 Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Space Program Grant, a MICA Trustees Award for Excellence in Teaching, two Maryland State Art Council Individual Grants in Painting, and two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants. His work has been reviewed on Hyperallergic.com, The Brooklyn Rail and the Huffington Post. Since 2003 he has been teaching painting and drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is represented by Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, NY. Sangram Majumdar lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

http://www.sangrammajumdar.com 

This event is a part of the Kansas State University Department of Art Visiting Artists Series for the 2011-2012 Season.

Funded in part by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee

Image information: face mask, 20 x 24 in, oil on linen, 2012

BFA Exhibition 3 Press Release

Jason Booher, Maggie Deckert, Katie Hubbell, Sara Jensen, Emily Reinhardt, and Anne Russell are featured in the third of four BFA Thesis Exhibitions in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the third of four BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Jason Booher, Maggie Deckert, Katie Hubbell, Sara Jensen, Emily Reinhardt, and Anne Russell – all studio art graduates. The artists will present an exhibition of their work from April 26 through April 30 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, April 30, 5-9 pm, in the gallery. Admission is free and open to the public.

Salina, Kansas native Jason Booher, credits family creative projects around the house and assisting his father in construction projects to his becoming a sculptor. Booher’s sculptural processes include brainstorming, mold making, wax casting, and pouring metal. “I try to create forms that viewers can decipher and relate to on a personal level,” he says. Advertising has a profound effect on his present work.  He states, “Watching the flash art used to create these advertisements gave me the inspiration to create forms using the repetition of a single object to create a whole.” He applied this approach to express his concerns on national petroleum dependence.

Photographer Maggie Deckert is looking for a hidden world we overlook in our everyday lives. Using the architecture, streets, and energy of Chicago as her subject, she takes an intuitive approach to each photograph. She wants her photographs to evoke a sense of mystery and wonder, showing the true beauty of the subject. She says she seeks out the uncommon in the common, “I take my findings and put my own artistic twist on each photograph.”

Painter Katie Hubbell says she like things “fleshy and raw.” This is represented in the pigs that have often appeared in her paintings. She says, “The rough yet transparent skin of the pig fascinates me, they are gross and slimy, seaming ready to explode but are really beautiful.”  She applies the oil paint in thin and juicy layers of paint as if she is applying a layer of skin or flesh. She states, “I like to use oil paint with lots of oozing medium.”  Hubbell’s works often involve a juxtaposition between things that are beautiful yet somewhat repulsive. “I enjoy the dialogue – my interest in the pigs has evolved into an expanded vocabulary of mold, flesh, food, landscapes, decay and organic sticky things,” she says.

Born and raised a country girl, Sara Jensen first pursued a degree in architecture and interior design, but found she preferred delving into alternative photographic processes. She wants to make things that most people wouldn’t find interesting – visually arresting. She states, “My current work involves digital imagery of architecture combined with the treatment of mid 1800s salt printing techniques.”  Combining the two techniques, digital and alternative, she has found a balance between control and comfortable imperfections.

Ceramicist, Emily Reinhardt was determined to become a photographer until she dipped her hands in clay. Her current work is an investigation into the aesthetic of botanical illustrations and garden plans as structures. She states, “I use textbooks as my resource… images of microscopic plant cells, specific and dissected plant segments, and entire garden plans give me the examples that I need of the manipulations brought upon plants by humans.”  For her, creating her sculptures out of clay, she feels she is manipulating an elemental material that relates directly to nature. For Reinhardt the use of science and art play vital roles when discovering nature. “From the cellular level all the way to segments of the plants themselves, my forms investigate the control of an organic and natural structure,” she says.

Anne Russell is a printmaker and photographer, from Columbia, Missouri, a small college community that, as she states, “has helped to shape the work that I make.” Inspired by a quote from Anais Nin: “We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly,” Russell focuses her visual investigation on the egg form. “Throughout history the egg has been used in art to symbolize fertility, life, promise, and opportunity,” she says in her artist statement. For Russell, the egg symbolizes original perfection, a place with no beginning or end, no before or after, no time or space or light, a place that is wholly feminine. She states, “Through the process of printmaking I examine, challenge, and respond to the accepted interpretations of the egg symbol.”

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

Source /Contact :  Nelson Smith , Instructor/Visiting Artist Coordinator
Department of Art
Kansas State University
ndsmith@ksu.edu

Kansas State University Department of Art
322 Willard Hall
Manhattan KS 66506
785-532-6605

BFA Exhibit 2 Press Release

Christie Coffman, Kaley Cornett, Alexandra K. Janezic, Sarah Lomasney, Adrienne Scoggins, and Rachel Scribner are featured in the second of four BFA Thesis Exhibitions in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the second of four BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Christie Coffman, Kaley Cornett, Alexandra K. Janezic, Sarah Lomasney, Adrienne Scoggins, and Rachel Scribner – all studio art graduates. The artists will present an exhibition of their work from April 19 through April 23 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, April 23, 7-9 pm, in the gallery. Admission is free and open to the public.

Ceramicist Christie Coffman’s parents let her explore all options in choosing activities – play musical instruments, try every sport known to man, perform in theatre productions, and to make art. “Clearly, making art was one of the things that I chose to keep as a permanent activity in my life,” she says. Coffman’s ceramic work consists of thrown forms that have been altered structurally with attachments and inspired by spiritual warfare and its effect on earthly conflict found in works by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein and Frank Peretti. She uses porcelain, evoking the idea of purity, against a darker clay body with more grit, which portrays the more unrefined base nature of evil. She states, “I left the forms unglazed so that the pieces would be more exposed, raw and truthful.”

Growing up, photographer Kaley Cornett spent a little pocket change on a disposable camera and captured her childhood memories. “That is when I first enjoyed being able to hold (in my hands) what I saw with my own eyes,” she says. For Cornett, photography is the medium of the split-second – a decisive moment that in the blink of an eye lends meaning to what is happening around us. She states, “I would love to use my camera like Alice’s rabbit hole – open an unexplored world, a place of curious self-expression, but also a world of new beginnings, new chances, new relationships, and new stories.”

Born in the town of Orange, Texas and raised in Buffalo, New York, painter Alexandra K. Janezic spent her adolescent life repressing her artistic inclination while attempting to embrace the scientific and analytical interests of her peers. But all attempts at conformity were in vain, and it became apparent that there was no possible alternative to studying fine arts. In addition to the traditional mediums of paint, paper, and pen, Janezic has found new interests that shroud themselves in the ordinary forms of newspapers and magazines. She states, “I feel these media are best described as the remnants of days, lives, places rather than the simple scraps of paper that they are constructed upon.” These remnants are deconstructed and then reconstructed, and although they may be composed of bits and pieces, they no longer retain their remnant qualities. “We are left with a new whole,” she says.

An Indiana-born, Kansas-raised sculptor, Sarah Lomasney’s work has been highly influenced by the fantasy worlds that she is surrounded with on a daily basis – the works of Tolkein, Pullman, Rowling and Martin, video games like Blizzard, or the films of Tim Burton. After an intense interest in 3D animation and illustration, Lomasney chose sculpture. She states, “I fell in love with sculpture during my first metal casting and have been doing it ever since.” Using sculpted characters of fictional tree giants she creates archetypal moments. The figures demonstrate “the same types of events that we do, first love, celebration, injury, childrearing and aging and death but deal with them differently through the process of a much longer life span,” she says.

Adrienne Scoggins discovered photography in high school. She states, “I realized I had a passion for composition and capturing moments through a camera.”  Scoggins’ photography work has evolved with a focus on portraiture. In this exhibit she has chosen to depict her friends. She states, “The images I came up with are what I would call vintage portraits with a modern twist.”  She carefully styles her models, choosing outfits that are inspired from 1950’s fashions, with simplistic, classic makeup. Often shooting her portraits at dusk, she seeks warm tonal values. These are tones, “representing youthfulness… sensitivity, and natural beauty,” she says.

Growing up, painter Rachel Scribner was surrounded by family members who wove detailed tapestries of their pasts, while teaching her about what it meant to be a woman. She describes her work as “an introspective exploration of the montage of subconscious heirlooms which are woven into a young woman’s soul.” Scribner uses the paint’s unifying and transcendental nature to construct parallel worlds that represent her observations on these themes. Composed by using found photographs that are spliced together with familiar and fantastic imagery in ambiguous space, she considers the paintings to be windows into our common illusions and psyches. She says, “My own life story meshes with my understanding of the past, and imagination of what exists beyond the two worlds of past and present. This body of work is a part of the search to discover the meanings behind living a life in a world of reality and fantasy, innocence and maturity, and yesterday and today.”

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

Source/Contact: Nelson Smith, ndsmith@ksu.edu

Kansas State University Department of Art
111 Willard Hall
Manhattan KS 66506
785-532-6605

MFA Thesis Show: Adam Achey, Painting

MFA Thesis Show:

Adam Achey Painting MFA Thesis Show
Chapman Gallery 116 Willard Hall

Show Dates: April 5 – 16, 2010
Gallery Hours: 10 AM – 5 PM Monday – Friday

Artist Reception 5 PM Friday April 9, 2010

Gail Gregg Visiting Artist

Painter, Gail Gregg Lecture
Thursday, February 4, 4:30pm at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art on the Kansas State University campus

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art, in collaboration with The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art will present a lecture by nationally recognized painter, Gail Gregg, Thursday, February 4, 4:30pm at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art on Kansas State University campus.
Admission is free and open to the public.
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Visiting Artist: Roger Shimomura

Thursday, March 26, 2:30 PM

Mark A. Chapman Gallery

Painter, Roger Shimomura’s “An American Diary” is a 60-minute PowerPoint survey of his paintings, prints, and experimental theatre pieces that span a 40-year career. The talk illustrates how this work has been propelled by various historical and political events as well as his own physical environment that has been constantly filled with his collections ranging from Walt Disney memorabilia to World War II stereotypes of Asian people.

Professor Shimomura is this year’s Commerce Bank Show Juror.

Funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee