| 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! | | | | The School of Art and Art History is launching two major Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives funded by a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences grant of about $100,000 to continue community dialogue on diversity and increase underrepresented student success in the arts.
These initiatives include hiring a person of color as an interdisciplinary visiting artist and scholar program in collaboration with the Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa Writers' Workshop, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the Center for the Book, and other community organizations.
“It’s gonna have an impact, not only on the School of Art and Art History, but I think for the museum, for the community, for the university at large,” says Professor Isabel Barbuzza, Director of the SAAH Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. “Because bringing important people, people who have a trajectory of success and who make art is compelling.”
Read the full story in The Daily Iowan. | | | Janiece Maddox, fourth-year Ceramics BFA student, is featured in an Iowa Stories profile: Artist finds her footing, and her medium, at Iowa.
At the University of Iowa, Maddox found the tools and encouragement to make art a career. She describes her work as "playful, colorful, and symbolic," and loves that with clay, she can make anything.
"It’s unheard of to have the facilities and resources that we have at Iowa. Because our programs are smaller, you get the attention you deserve as an artist. You have more time to get more acquainted with people," she says. Maddox also received a 2021-22 Excellence In Undergraduate Research Award and leads a student organization called Children of the Clay.
Maddox plans to pursue a postbaccalaureate residency and an MFA. Her ultimate goal is to start an artist-in-residency program in upstate New York.
Follow Maddox's work on Instagram.
| | | | Ella Davis, a first-year double major in art and English and creative writing, collaborated with the Trumpet Studio in the School of Music last semester to create artwork inspired by the music played at their final concert.
Inspired by “Sarabande” by Jean Hubeau, the art is divided into three pieces to represent the three movements in the music. Acrylic paint, dried leaves, and string were all elements incorporated into the piece. In the last piece, the string was drawn through dancers to represent the movement from the Baroque Spanish dance element.
Read more about Davis's art and collaboration in The Daily Iowan's Student Spotlight. | | | Olivia Brunning, BFA Painting student, is featured in a Daily Iowan Student Spotlight. Their BFA Exhibition Hook, Line, and Sinker was on display in February in the Visual Arts Building.
The main theme of their exhibition was the idea of “play”—an activity usually reserved for children—and how playing as an adult is often looked down upon. Brunning also wants to explore how play can be used as a rebellion against oppressive forces and what is traditionally accepted as “adulthood.”
Brunning will graduate in May and eventually hopes to go to graduate school to become a professor.
See more of Brunning's art on Instagram. | | | | Charles Ray (BFA 1975) is featured in The New York Times: Charles Ray Is Pushing Sculpture to Its Limit
"...Ray has channeled his Americana through a profound engagement with the whole history of Western sculpture, from archaic Greek statuary to the bronzes of Rodin and the welded steel of David Smith and Anthony Caro. Classical and modern, universal and particular, grand and everyday, his reclining nudes or wrecked cars appear to slide through time itself," writes Jason Farago.
Ray has four survey exhibitions this season, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Glenstone, Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Bourse de Commerce in Paris. | | | Margaret Hart (BFA Photography 1989) is in the group exhibition What Remains Unexplained at 621 Gallery in Tallahassee, FL.
This exhibition brings together works by the Endpoint Collective (Deborah Carruthers, Gabriel Deerman, Margaret Hart and Mark Roth) investigating issues of connection, replication, and structure through process-based works including printmaking, collage, photomontage and painting.
The works all are multi-layered in both process and content. Each of the artists included boldly engage the social issues of contemporary life through rich, multi-layered imagery and meaningful artmaking practices in the work presented in this exhibition.
Hart is a Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her work explores issues of gender politics and addresses critical issues investigating identity, technology, and personal narrative. Visit her website to see more. | | | | Kelly Clare (MFA Sculpture with Honors 2021) has a solo exhibition, enter / the net / here at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point through April 1.
Clare is an artist and poet currently based in Western Massachusetts. She was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in 2019.
View more on her website and Instagram. | | | Mary Zeran (MFA Jewelry and Metal Arts 1991) is in two separate shows at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Abstract Art from the Collection and Beyond the Prairie: Art from the Collection. Both shows were curated by Kate Kunau (MA Art History 2011).
Zeran is a professional artist living in Cedar Rapids. Her current collage work is abstract in nature. Her process is to paint on archival polyester film with acrylics, cut the painted sheets apart, and laminate them back together.
See more on her website and Instagram. | | | | The Iowa Winter Birds exhibition will go back on display in the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History’s Hageboeck Hall of Birds with a vibrant new background painted by Visiting Assistant Professor Drew Etienne (MFA Painting and Drawing 2021).
Iowa Winter Birds is Etienne's first museum gallery piece destined for permanent display. Learn more about the collaboration in a Pentacrest Museums feature article.
See more on his website and Instagram. | | | Hamlett Dobbins (Painting & Drawing MFA 1999, MA 1998) has a solo exhibition, One Part of My Small Story, at David Lusk Gallery in Nashville from March 15 through April 23.
Since 2002, his paintings have been based on specific memories with family and friends. In the studio, Dobbins translates these feelings into compositions with palettes, parameters and complexities unique to the individual involved, denoted by the series of initials in their titles. Reflecting raw emotional energy, his paintings inspire the viewer to move from simply seeing to deeper perception and mindfulness.
Dobbins teaches full-time at the University of Memphis. His work was recently installed in the permanent Art Collection of Memphis International Airport.
Follow Dobbins's work on his website and Instagram. | | | |
