| School of Art and Art History Newsletter | The students, faculty, and alumni of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa create extraordinary art and scholarship. Our monthly newsletter will keep you up to date.
Please submit your news and images for consideration for the SAAH newsletter. We'd love to share your accomplishments! | | | | Assistant Professor Amy Huang is offering a new course on Modern and Contemporary Art in China (ARTH:3225).
Introduction to ​the art and culture of 20th- and 21st-century China, covering the period from 1911 up to the present day. The class focuses on ​contextualizing the art objects, performances, propagandas, and exhibitions produced by the government, business sector, curators, and avant-garde artists and groups in China. Topics include biennales, museums, art districts, luxury brands, and censorship. Discussions and readings investigate artworks and events that speak to China's society and economy, as well as its place in globalization and the international art market.
Image: Yue Minjun’s sculpture of cynically laughing figures outside of Today Art Museum (Beijing), China’s first non-profit private museum.
| | | T.J. Dedeaux-Norris (Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing) is featured in The New York Times for their silent video "Untitled (Say Her Name)" in the group exhibition Show Your Work at 601Artspace in New York City.
"Most artists here don’t show their work so much as point to the systems that determine its value. In T.J. Dedeaux-Norris’s “Untitled (Say Her Name)” (2011-15), the artist, who uses they/them pronouns, tries to separate their lips, which are glued shut. A potent metaphor for the effects of racism and sexism, the silent video evokes a visceral discomfort [...]" — Jillian Steinhauer, The New York Times
Dedeaux-Norris was also a 2022 Finalist for the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art at the Gibbes Museum of Art, awarded annually to an artist whose work contributes to a new understanding of art in the South.
See more on Dedeaux-Norris's website and Instagram. | | | | Follow Art History PhD student Erin Daly's dissertation research trip to Italy and France on her travel blog, Searching Symbols: A Journey to Study the Art of Gustave Moreau.
Daly is specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art. She received the T. Anne Cleary International Dissertation Research Fellowship and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Travel Award for Study on Venice and the Veneto to support her research trip. | | | | Joe Tuggle Lacina (MFA Sculpture 2017) received a 2023 Iowa Artist Fellowship from the Iowa Arts Council. He was recently featured in an article about his numerous projects: Grinnell Artist Finds Meaning in the Making
Tuggle Lacina is a multimedia artist, curator, and designer producing works of sculpture, paintings, furniture, structures (small-buildings), and new media (web-art, NFTs, 3D-prints, XR).
See more on his website and Instagram.
| | | Gretchen Beck (MFA Intermedia and Drawing 1999) has an upcoming solo exhibition, Gan nda Donie Koy, at the Epiphany Center for the Arts in Chicago from March 3 to April 15.
Her work was also selected for the 2022 Online Group Show at HMVC Gallery New York in December.
Beck served as Chair of the Art Department, Professor of Art, Curator, and on the faculty at Concordia University, Irvine, CA, for eleven years. Currently, she is a professional artist. See more on her website.
Image: Ib Kwara, Wayne Hiire, Icerey Kali (triptych), 2022, oil on wooden panels, 12" x 12"
| | | | Marina Ross' (MFA Painting and Drawing 2018) first solo exhibition, Everything was Forever, is on view at Baby Blue Gallery in Chicago through January 14.
The show features a series of sequential oil paintings with sourced imagery from The Wizard of Oz. Grieving the loss of her two-year old son Rafi, the artist studies the impact of trauma on identity through the lens of the iconic protagonist Dorothy Gale, played by Judy Garland.
Using digital projection of the source material, Marina transforms the original technicolor film stills through a painterly approach, to heighten the sense of color and touch.
The show was featured in a Newcity Art review. Visit Ross' website and Instagram to learn more. | | | Linda King (MFA Printmaking 1979) was recently interviewed in VoyageLA. Click here to learn about her career in art making, galleries, and teaching.
"For more than 30 years I have explored art as a metaphor for life; evolution, change, transformation, transition, the minute and the infinite, order and chaos," she says.
King's studio is in Venice, California. See more of her work on her website and Instagram. | | | | Kathi (Branson) Sherby (BFA in Design, Minors in Drawing, Painting, Ceramics 1977), from Guthrie Center, IA, made a career as a graphic designer, art director and illustrator for over 40 years in Austin, TX. She returned to painting and drawing in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
In September 2022, in association with the Bee Cave Arts Foundation and the Hive Gallery in Bee Cave, TX, Sherby's painting Marathon, TX was selected for a juried show in Paestum, Italy. She was one of five artists invited to travel to Italy and participate in several historic ceremonies honoring Texas soldiers who fought in Italy in World War II, an experience she describes as a "once-in-a-lifetime chance for change, exploration, adventure and beyond."
The exhibition honored the 80th anniversary of Operation Avalanche and was organized by Project HOPE, historical and cultural exchange efforts that link the United States and Italy.
See more of Sherby's art on her website. | | | Katie Hargrave (MFA Intermedia 2012) and Meredith Lynn (MFA Painting and Drawing 2011) will exhibit their most ambitious installation to date in the Tennessee Triennial at the Knoxville Museum of Art from January 27 through May 7.
"In Developed, Developing, we call attention to the ways in which history and industry shape outdoor enthusiasts contemporary experiences in so-called public land. The images photographers on 19th century US Geological Surveys captured helped facilitate the annexation of land into US governmental control. These archival photographs are echoed in the imagery outdoor gear manufacturers use to advertise their products. In turn, these conventions are mirrored in social media posts outdoor enthusiasts share to document their travels.
Depictions of the outdoors in national archives photographs, advertising campaigns for recreation gear, and tourist social media posts have uncanny similarities. Together, they represent a choreography of the outdoors, a nearly imperceptible and ongoing relationship between colonizing, capital, and experience. This installation highlights and complicates these connections."
See more of Hargrave and Lynn's work:
katiehargrave.com | @katie_hargrave_
meredithlauralynn.com | @meredithlauralynn | | | |
