News from the School of Art and Art History
News from the School of Art and Art History

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!

Faculty and Department News

Tony Orrico

Tony Orrico, Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Intermedia, is performing Penwald: 4: unison symmetry standing (2010-) at RIMI/IMIR SceneKunst (RISK) in Stavanger, Norway, February 3-5.

Orrico stands stationary, facing a wall for four hours, and performs a bilateral drawing via a personal movement practice which responds to environmental cues and the felt-topography of his body. He sustains a sense of falling in his visceral body and leverages action from incoming stimuli and their spatial distances. He repeats this engagement at the same time over the course of three consecutive days with subtle variations in approach. On day one, his left hand is dominant (or choice-making) and the right hand instantly mirrors the pathways, points of redirection, and amount of pressure into the wall; including the postures of his hand holding the graphite sticks. On day two, he generates an inverse attention. The right hand is dominant and the left hand is following. On day three, there is neither selection nor following; only a devotion to receptivity, and Orrico breaks form by bending his knees and rising to his toes. The final installation arrives at a spectral display of effort where the non-dominant and fully integrated experience lands central to the work and more disintegrated experience falls to the outer edges.

Visit Orrico's website and Instagram to see more.

Paul S. Briggs

Paul S. Briggs, 2021 McBride Fellow in Ceramics, will be giving a lecture on Wednesday, February 9 at 7:00 pm at the School of Art and Art History, E125 Visual Arts Building. 

Dr. Paul Briggs was born in Beacon, NY and he grew up in the Hudson Valley region of upstate New York. He is presently an Associate Professor of Art Education at the Massachusetts College of Art and Director of the historic Saturday Studios Program. He completed his PhD at the Pennsylvania State University, his MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art and his MA at Alfred University. He researches art making as mindful practice, visual culture and representation in the classroom, and the place of the vessel in contemporary ceramic art.

Briggs is a ceramic artist who primarily uses slab-building and pinch-forming techniques. “Slab-building is my ‘primary’ method of expression. It is what I do to think through ideas and concretely philosophize. Pinch-forming is what I do to find flow and be present. I have a meditative practice. Therefore, my work often explores the inner resources individuals and communities develop in order to maintain equanimity in the face of failing personal supports and demoralizing social systems.”

Learn more on his website and Instagram.

Alumni News

Donté K. Hayes

Donté K. Hayes (MFA Ceramics 2020) was the first Resident Artist of 2022 at Township 10 in Western NC, where he returned for a winter work intensive and a speaking engagement with Warren Wilson College.

During his residency he explored the power of objects to initiate memories of the past, to discuss the present, and bring ancestral wisdom to the future.

Hayes was also recently interviewed on the podcast Tales of a Red Clay Rambler.

Follow his work on Instagram.

Rachel Winter

Rachel Winter (BA Art History with Honors 2012) was appointed Assistant Curator of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University as of January 2022.

Concurrently, Winter is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art & Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she is completing a dissertation that considers the way art museums in the United States and the United Kingdom came to be interested in the idea of contemporary art from the Middle East.

Ryan Standfest

Ryan Standfest (MFA Printmaking 2006) has a solo exhibition of recent paintings and prints titled Dumpster Fire at the Harry & Virginia Murray Gallery at Southeastern Community College in Burlington, Iowa. There will be a closing reception and artist talk on Friday, February 25 at noon.

Ryan lives and works in Detroit and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Oakland University, and the Publisher and Editor of Rotland Press.

Visit his website and Instagram to see more.

Dean Dablow

Dean Dablow (MFA Photography 1974) is featured in the on-line magazine Art Habens, Contemporary Art Review, Special Edition, published in London, UK.

Dablow’s 32-page spread includes an interview and reproductions of his work in painting and photography.

Dablow retired Professor Emeritus in 2007 from Louisiana Tech University where he served as head of the Photography program and as Director of the School of Art.

More of his work can be seen on his website.

Linda Robinson Sokolowski

Linda Robinson Sokolowski (MA and MFA Printmaking and Drawing 1970, 1971) has published her book WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? Enigmas for the Visual Arts Studio which is being marketed by Artmobile.com.

Designed to inspire lively teaching-artists, the text involves 60 challenging problems in still life, landscape and figure which Sokolowski assigned to her Binghamton University art majors who requested she publish a book of these assignments.

The text is accompanied by 150 of her students' works and 20 of her own, and is an effort to encourage artists to invent their own vigorous problems for their curious students.

Serena Stevens

Serena Stevens (MFA Painting & Drawing 2021) is in the exhibition Pretty Big Pictures at The Gangway gallery in Newport, Rhode Island. 

The Gangway writes: "Among the discoveries of 2020 was Serena Stevens, whose New York gallery debut at Postmasters back then was described by Robert Smith in The New York Times as combining 'Midwestern plainness with a slightly forlorn reverie.' Adding, 'Her paintings follow suit, haunting everyday, mostly domestic, people-free scenes with strangeness — largely through her attention to light, paint texture and scale. Ms. Stevens is in the process of mastering a loose, somewhat photographic realism that may reflect an admiration for the paintings of Edward Hopper and Eric Fischl.'"

View more on Stevens' website and Instagram.

Jiha Moon

Jiha Moon's (MFA Painting & Drawing 2002) solo exhibition Stranger Yellow was reviewed by John Yau in Hyperallergic: Jiha Moon’s Artistic Breakthrough 

The exhibition is also featured in The New York Times and The New Yorker: "Stranger Yellow, the title of her appealing, clamorous new show, refers to the color that dominates the works on view, as well as to racist, xenophobic, and sexualized Asian stereotypes and the related dynamics of estrangement and assimilation," writes Johanna Fateman. 

Stranger Yellow is on view at Derek Eller Gallery in New York through February 5. See more on Moon's website and Instagram.

Jered Sprecher

Jered Sprecher (Painting and Drawing MFA 2002, MA 2001) is in the exhibition Re: Representation at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans through February 12.

Curated by Dan Cameron, this two-part exhibition brings together new work by a dozen American painters whose individual styles represent parallel approaches to issues of representation.

From realist figuration passed down through the classical tradition to quasi-abstraction rooted in cartoons, material culture and photography, Re: Presentation purposefully juxtaposes artworks from separate genres to explore the boundaries of contemporary stylistic pluralism, and hopefully underscore the deeper connections between works that at first appear to represent very different traditions. 

Sprecher is a Professor of Painting at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, School of Art. See more on his website and Instagram.

Facebook    Twitter-X    Instagram    LinkedIn