| 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! | | | Department, Student, and Faculty News | | | | The School of Art and Art History has created an innovative second track to complement the historic Iowa Idea.
Global and Interdisciplinary Connections will allow students to count courses from another humanities discipline toward their B.A. degree in Art History, thus enabling majors to learn more about the crosscurrents of art history with languages, cultures, religions, politics, and philosophies.
Students can now earn a double major in Art History and either American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Languages and Literatures, Classics, English, French, German, History, Italian, Philosophy, or Religious Studies. Art history majors will connect with scholars in other disciplines, thereby reimagining the Iowa Idea in a global context.
Find out more about the Global and Interdisciplinary Connections Track. | | | The Jacques de Caso Visual Archive and Library (JCVAL) is the cover story in the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art Fall 2021 Newsletter. De Caso, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of California, Berkeley, is known for his contributions to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European sculpture. In 2006, he donated his extensive research collections to the School of Art and Art History.
These priceless gifts included a collection of 25,000 original black and white photographic negatives taken by de Caso and over 30,000 digital images. The Office of Visual Materials at the School of Art and Art History undertook the project of scanning the photographic negatives, cataloguing the collections, and making the images available online.
Unmatched in scope, both collections contain a large number of works preserved in museum inventories and private collections that are not generally accessible for scholarly research and rarely known to the public.
The article was written by Alice M. Phillips (PhD Art History 2012), Curator of the Office of Visual Materials and specialist in nineteenth-century French art. | | | | Sculpture and Intermedia MFA student David Hurlin created a visual design and performed the work Our Body in Interval in collaboration with dancers from the Department of Dance for Dance Gala 2021 at Hancher Auditorium.
The choreography was a collaboration by the performers with Tony Orrico, Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Intermedia.
Performance Statement: "This work is inspired by Arawana Hayashi's mindful movement practices and her development of Social Presencing Theater as a series of social practices that promote system-health and generate emergent qualities that make change possible. Our embarkment utilizes these practices to interrogate the choreographic process as a system, sensing "what our bodies wanted to do" from the place of stillness, and using Hayashi's attention to "stuck-ness" as points of processual pivot. With a sense of the sonic-scape and our physicality as one social body in evolution, we attempt to distinguish between our assertions, prioritizing an action-confidence that is deeply relational rather than highly individualized." | | | Synergy is on view at ICON Gallery in Fairfield, Iowa, through November 27.
This exhibition features low-relief assemblage work of three significant women artists from Iowa City: former Curator of the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, Kathy Edwards Hayslett; Professor Emeritus of Painting and Drawing, Sue Hettmansperger; and current Adjunct Professor of Art, Cheryl Jacobsen.
Collage and assemblage are prevalent and relevant contemporary art practices with many global roots and branches. These practices are wonderful tools for communicating both disjunction and linkage, particularly regarding time, memory, and histories. When spaces, objects, fragments of objects, and text are represented, re-represented and combined, new juxtapositions and compositions are created, which present layered references and content.
A walkthrough with the artists has been scheduled for Friday, November 12th, 7:30-9:30 pm, and will be broadcast live at www.facebook.com/ICON.gallery at 8:00 pm.
Read more in a Daily Iowan feature article: Iowa City women with a synergistic ambition | | | | The School of Art and Art History is excited to host the Mid America Print Council 2021 Members' Juried Exhibition this year, on view in the Eve Drewelowe Gallery, Visual Arts Building, through November 6.
The exhibition was juried by Mildred Beltré (MFA Printmaking 1995) and Jennifer Hughes (MFA Printmaking 2002), and features 53 works by 42 artists.
Alex Fox (BFA Printmaking with Honors 2021) was awarded first prize for his work Ecydis Remains (dyed muslin, screenprint, yarn). Check out Fox's work on his website and Instagram.
View more images of the exhibition and the award-winning prints on the Mid America Print Council's Instagram. | | | Please welcome JD Whitman (MFA Sculpture, MFA Photography 2019) to the University of Iowa's Graduate College External Advisory Board! JD will be representing the School of Art and Art History, specifically Studio Arts, for a three-year term.
Whitman was selected by the Associate Provost for Graduate and Professional Education and Dean of the Graduate College to serve on the GCEAB, which advises the dean and advocates for graduate education at the University of Iowa.
View Whitman's art and practice on her website and Instagram. | | | | Claire Whitehurst (MFA Painting and Drawing 2020) has a solo exhibition, Mississippi Shade, at Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles.
The exhibition features new colorful paintings on paper which consist of imprecise concentric circles, intersecting biomorphic forms and cilia-like lines that relate to nature and science.
The exhibition and artist interview are online through November 9 and the in-person show opens in April 2022.
Follow Whitehurst's work on her website and Instagram. | | | Serena Stevens (MFA Painting & Drawing 2021) has a solo exhibition, Clover & 4th, at Postmasters Gallery in New York City through November 27. Both interiors and exteriors depict the locations around her home on the outskirts of Iowa City. Un-rushed and unpopulated, they are at once deeply personal and neutral, empty and loaded, grounded and luminous.
Clover & 4th is Stevens' second solo exhibition of new large-scale paintings at Postmasters. Her previous exhibition, Iowa Dream, was reviewed by the New York Times.
View more on Stevens' website and Instagram. | | | | Justin Bailey (MFA 3D Design 2016, MA 2015) recently held a solo exhibition, Traces I was Here, at the Cecille R. Hunt Gallery, Webster University, in St. Louis.
With a background in both sculpture and design, Bailey embraces both worlds to create design that takes an experimental approach to form and structure within functional objects.
Through the design and fabrication of furniture, objects, and lighting, Bailey seeks to better understand the essential utility of canonical objects within our homes.
Bailey is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Eskanzi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University. See more of his work on his website and Instagram. | | | Joan Stuart Ross (MFA Painting and Drawing 1968, MA 1967) maintains her studios in Seattle and in Nahcotta, Washington state.
Originally from Boston, Joan has exhibited her paintings, drawings, and monotypes and has taught Art in the Northwest since 1968. Currently she has been focusing on a series of large Brave Space mixed media drawings and encaustic/collage paintings.
She is pictured with her work at RiverSea Gallery in Astoria, Oregon, in September 2021. | | | |
