BFA Thesis Exhibition 3, Spring 2012

Kansas State University BFA students Courtney Harrington, Armando Minjarez, Tyler Perkins, Jesse Smith, and Kate Trimmell are featured in the third of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions opening April 23, 2012 in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the third of five BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Courtney Harrington, Armando Minjarez, Tyler Perkins, Jesse Smith, and Kate Trimmell. The artists will present an exhibition of their work from April 23 through 27, 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, April 27, from 5:30 to 8:30 pm, in the gallery.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Photographer Courtney Harrington solidified her interest in design and photography while working on her high school yearbook in Shawnee, Kansas. From there curiosity lead her to seek out the best photographers and designers for inspiration. At the same time she was becoming interested in the imagery she encountered at her grandparent’s farm. The old leaning barns or sheds are a particular focus offering distinctive character, and so many hidden treasures. But these older structures and equipment are slowly disappearing. For her thesis work, she is composing images of what the normal farm looks like today – it is mainly half old and half new. She also reflects this in her photographic process. She uses an old technique of film shooting with a large format camera with a medium format roll back along side documenting with her digital SLR camera as well.

Ceramicist Armando Minjarez was heavily exposed to music, theater, literature and craft as a youth in Chihuahua Mexico, on the northern region of the country just south of the US border. He credits his passion for art to his mother and grandmother – helping him develop a tactile and visual vernacular with materials and for fostering a more intangible set of artistic skills. His colorful ceramic and mixed media installation concerns the endless imagery that attacks the human subconscious everyday. His work addresses the creation of overwhelming amounts of consumer waste by-product, which is indiscriminately dumped onto our environment, negates any reverence to nature itself, and it destroys and divides healthy communities.

Photographer Tyler Perkins was born and raised in Southwest, KS in Dodge City where he participated in many drawing and painting classes as well as several small community art contests including a winning poster design for the Dodge City Round-up Rodeo. After studies in graphic design, he became more passionate for photographic images with the rural or western feel that he grew up in. His large color digital prints of abandoned rusty vehicles involve capturing light in specific timed exposures. This process of using light allowed him the ability to interact with the vehicle at night using a colored flashlight applying layers of different colored light like a paintbrush.

Growing up in a rural area, ceramicist Jesse Smith entertained himself through exploration of his environment and the objects that he encountered in daily life. He found joy in deconstructing items such as electronic devices just to see what was inside, often not getting them reassembled quite right. In his new ceramic structures, he is once again deconstructing common objects, but this time reconstructing them in ways that he finds formally and conceptually appealing. Through this process, the source object becomes abstracted and loses many of it’s recognizable features. Often, multiple elements from various objects become combined to create a new object entirely.

Growing up in Wamego, Kansas, printmaker Kate Trimmell just dabbled in art with a few sketches and some short stories. It wasn’t until later that she started to use drawing as a way to express herself. For her thesis work, she uses music as a trigger, exploring how humans incorporate familiar visual images to along with what they are hearing. The resulting unpredictable images draw a bit from Max Ernst and his graphic novel Une Semaine de Bonté (“A Week of Kindness”). It consists of Victorian illustrations that had been cut and pasted together. In the same sense as Ernst, she is creating new meanings by reorganizing images from the Victorian era. Her work differs from his, though, by adding her own graphic imagery to the mix.

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

Madison “Ke” Francis lecture, “Narrative Work”

Artist Madison “Ke” Francis to present “Narrative Work”, April 3 in the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, Willard Hall, Kansas State University

Admission is free and open to the public.

Ke Francis is a narrative artist that has been actively producing artwork for more than forty years. He and his wife Mary are the co-owners of HOOPSNAKE PRESS, a fine art press that publishes artist books and prints. His book works, paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures are in over thirty major public and private international collections including:  The Getty Museum, National Gallery, National Museum of American Art, High Museum, New Orleans Museum of Fine Art, San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, Yale / Sterling Memorial Library, Van-Pelt Dietrich Collection, The Polaroid Collection, and the Ginsburg Collection in Johannesburg, South Africa among many others.  He has had more than fifty one-person and two-person exhibits. Most recently, Mr. Francis had a one-person exhibit of sixty-one works at Terrace Gallery, Orlando City Hall that ran until January 6, 2012, a one-person exhibit of fifty books and prints at the Ringling College of Art and Design during November of 2011 and a one person exhibit at the Orlando Museum of fine Art in January of 2011.

http://www.hoopsnakepress.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: Rabbit Trap, Tar Baby, and the Flood; Woodcut, 30 x 40 inches

reBIRTH: MFA Printmaking Exhibition

reBirth: MFA Printmaking Exhibition

for Nathan D. Edwards

Mark A. Chapman Gallery Willard Hall,  Kansas State University

March 26 – April 6, 2012

Reception Friday, March 30 5:30 – 8pm

Art Dept listed in “Year Of Intriguing Discoveries”

Professors Mike McMann, Digital Arts, and Jason Scuilla, Printmaking, were featured in “K-State Researchers Provide Year Of Intriguing Discoveries.”

Electrifying research leads to safer etching process. Jason Scuilla and Michael McMann, assistant professors of art, wanted to find nontoxic alternatives to the traditional printmaking technique, which involves etching copper plates with acid baths. The two experimented with various alternatives before developing their own method, called Shu-la. Find out more at http://bit.ly/hUVs0d.

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

Visiting Artist: Robert Rivers

Tuesday, May 5, 4:00 PM

Little Theater KSU Student Union

Sponsored by the Print Society

Robert Rivers has been Professor of Art in Drawing and Printmaking at the University of Central Florida since 1980. He earned his M.F.A. from the University of Georgia. “Rivers controls and balances opposing forces within his art. Romantic and classical tendencies coexist; brooding, even horrific, images encounter the humorous and comedic. While his work is grounded in traditional techniques and demonstrates a richness of art historical awareness, it is also uniquely, intensely personal.” – Theo Lotz

Visiting Artist: John Dowell

Thursday, April 2, 2:30 PM

Mark A. Chapman Gallery

A Professor of Printmaking at the Tyler School of Art of Temple University, he has had 49 one person exhibitions at prestigious venues including the 35th Venice Biennale, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His work is represented in the permanent collections of 70 museum and public collections. With the Visual Music Ensemble, he has performed concerts in the US and Europe, using his works on paper as the music scores. He has also created print commissions, a 30′ ceramic wall installation, and a 35′ glass window piece at the Korman Suites in Philadelphia.

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

Feral Prints

Feral Prints
ARTISTS INSPIRED BY THEIR STUDIES IN ROME

Chapman Gallery
116 Willard Hall

October 13 – 24
Reception: Wednesday, October 15th 5 – 7 PM

Ronald Abram, Dennis Ahearn Jr., Daniel Dallmann, Christopher Davison, Richard Hricko, Thomas Lyon Mills, James Munce, Alexis Nutini, Robert Rivers

Curated by Jason Scuilla, Assistant Professor of Printmaking, Kansas
State University