Meet Alumna Elysia Lock, Class of 2004

Elysia Lock

I spent from 2004 – 2009ish slowly building my studio practice and taking in as much art as I could, visiting galleries and museums in the States and Europe. I became heavily involved with the Burning Man Community and art scene in general in Chicago around 2009. In 2010 I was awarded a B.U.R.N. art grant with Yva Neal for “The Fungus Humongous,” and joined the Steering Committee. I joined B.U.R.N.’s Art Grant Committee in 2011. I was awarded a grant in 2011 for my interactive glow-drawing piece, “Drawing From Light.”

The one event of which I am the proudest is We Burn: Chicago Burning Man Art. I came up with the idea of an exhibition of art by Chicago burners, presented it to the Steering Committee of B.U.R.N., and they funded it! Both the October 2010 and April 2011 events were a success. I have truly loved curating these events, looking through other people’s art and picking things that speak to me and hopefully others.

Professor of Art History, Donna Sadler, Authors a New Book

We are proud to announce that Donna Sadler, Professor of Art History, will have her newest book, Reading the Reverse Façade of Reims Cathedral: Royalty and Ritual in Thirteenth-Century France published by Ashgate in July 2012

From Ashgate:

Though long recognized as one of the most beautiful works from the second half of the thirteenth century, the magnificent sculptural program of the reverse façade at Reims Cathedral has received little in the way of scholarly attention. Interpreting the iconography in the light of Latin texts associated with the building, its history and its ceremonial use, Donna Sadler assesses the significance of the reverse façade in light of other thirteenth century visual programs associated with the court of Louis IX.

The book’s chapters deal with the history of the cathedral and its architectural antecedents; the iconographic message of the visual program, the meaning of the reverse façade and how it intersects with the overall iconography; the function of the verso and how it is enhanced by the marriage of form and content; and a consideration of contemporary works linked to the court of Saint Louis, concluding with a brief look at the new roles sculpture assumes as it migrates inside cathedrals.

Ultimately this book reveals how the imagery on the reverse façade not only conforms to a system of memory and mode of medieval narratology, but also articulates a dominant ideological position regarding the interdependence of ecclesiastical and royal powers.

Congratulations Donna!

Interview of Mary Ann Athens ’90 in The Artful Parent

Mary Ann Athens on Art in Education

Mary Ann Athens is an amazing Asheville-area elementary art teacher and the mother of two. I first starting hearing about her, her summer camps, and her after-school art programs a few years ago and am excited to finally interview her on The Artful Parent! Here she quotes Einstein and talks about the challenges and importance of art in education.

Continue reading the article on The Artful Parent

Elina Gertsman, Keynote Speaker for Collage 2012

We are excited to announce that Proffesor Elina Gertsman will be the keynote speaker for this year’s Collage!

From case.edu…

Elina Gertsman
Assistant Professor of Medieval Art, Ph.D. Boston University, 2004

Prof. Gertsman specializes in Gothic and late medieval art. Her research interests include issues of seeing, memory, and perception; uncanny animation of inanimate objects; performance/performativity; multi-sensory reception processes; late medieval macabre; materiality and somaticism; and medieval concepts of emotion and affectivity.

She is the author of The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages: Image, Text, Performance (2010), the editor of Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts (2008) and Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History (2011), and co-editor of Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces (forthcoming in 2012). She is currently at work on a book-length manuscript that, while focusing on late medieval Shrine Madonna sculptures, will examine the rhetoric of secrecy, the discourse of containment, and the tropes of unveiling within the context of the increasingly important roles of sight and touch in late medieval devotional art. Prof. Gertsman’s articles appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and collections. A recipient of several prestigious fellowships, she has been invited to speak at many European and American conferences and colloquia, and was a keynote speaker at the Nordic Gender Network conference held in Helsinki in June of 2011.

Meet Alumna Robin Dana, Class of 1997

Robin Dana
I was born in picturesque Savannah, Georgia in 1975. In 1980 I moved with my family to the middle of the state, where I began an ongoing fascination with the lifeblood to the town, kaolin clay.

I earned a BA in Studio Art from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta and an MFA in Photography from the University of Connecticut. Since graduation I have taught photography in the US and abroad through the University of Georgia in Athens, curated art exhibitions, and written on contemporary artists. I have also exhibited my fine art photography in galleries up and down the east coast.

I have been photographing the mining industry in my hometown since 2004, resulting in the ongoing study Kaolin. My recent work from residencies in DC, NY and travel abroad focuses on the scarification of our contemporary landscape. The collection Watershed: How Industry has Changed the Water of the World includes photographs of the Hudson, Potomac, Arno and Tiber Rivers. The international project Superfund: Photographs of Toxic Landscapes is currently underway.

www.rdana.com

studio art open house!

Thursday, December 8, 2011

2:30pm until 4:00pm

Dana Fine Arts Building!

Join us for an inside view of the studios

THURSDAY, December 8
2:30-4

Studio Art Open House! 

DANA FINE ARTS BUILDING
1st floor (Gallery)
Capstone  |  FYS-190-H Text and Image: Buddhist Journeys

2nd Floor
Visual Thinking (ART 160)  |  Fluid Media (AKA painting Art 241/341)  |  Digital imaging (Art 250/350)

3rd Floor
Capstone (seniors)

Refreshments!

Bring your friends/mom/parents/kids/etc!

“Openings” at Java Monkey

Ellie Spresser

“Openings“, my solo show at Java Monkey, was an incredible challenge but also incredibly rewarding. Curating my own work was difficult because not only do I have personal favorites, but I also have pieces I’m less fond of, yet I know others will respond to them. It’s also difficult because you want to include everything, but you also have to consider the limitations of the space. Thankfully a professor and other artists acted as soundboards, helping me create the show. I’m ecstatic about how the show came together. Not only has it re-energized my excitement for photography, but the public has responded to it well. Both my friends and Java Monkey patrons have interacted positively with the work.

The show will be up until the end of November, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out!

Below are some photos of the show and my artist statement.

“Openings” is about mysterious, ephemeral moments. I took these photographs on two separate mornings in geothermal areas around Rotorua, New Zealand. No one photo was the same, even if I held the camera in the same place. Every moment the earth was changing as smoke from the thermal vents rose and moved with the wind. These two mornings left me with a profound respect for the power and fluidity of the earth. It is an experience I will never forget. In spite of understanding the science of thermal vents, I was captivated by the escaping smoke, and tried to convey that feeling of mystery in my photographs.

Ellie Spresser
elliespresser.wordpress.com

Claes Oldenburg’s ‘Expansion of Painting’

Katherine Smith, Associate Professor of Art History

I recently delivered a talk entitled “Claes Oldenburg’s ‘Expansion of Painting’” at the Southeastern College Art Conference. The session was titled “Painting in the Collapsed Field,” a parody of Rosalind Krauss’ famous essay, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” originally published in October in spring 1979. The provocative session, organized by Craig Drennen with David Humphrey, Steve Locke, and Wendy White, was such an enriching experience for me and also the first time I have been the sole historian among artists. I met Craig last year when he engaged in an invigorating Q & A after my talk at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (November 2010). We discussed Oldenburg’s sculpture as painting, which was the topic of my SECAC paper. Later, when he did a studio visit at the Contemporary with our Methods class, I understood his interest in this aspect of my work on Oldenburg as we viewed his own compellingly tactile and cerebral canvases. Thanks, Craig, for a continuing dialogue that has introduced me to your creative practice and those of other contemporary artists, and for an evolving conversation that demands an intellectual rigor I really enjoy and that always helps me reflect on my own work!

Art, Alums and The High! Oh My!

Katherine Smith, Associate Professor of Art History

On November 6, 2011, I spent an afternoon with around fifty Agnes Scott alumnae at the High Museum. We toured the current exhibition of works from the Museum of Modern Art, Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters.  I don’t think I’ve ever had such a large tour group!  It was a joy for me to talk about these works again, as one of my jobs during graduate school was delivering gallery talks on that collection in MoMA’s (old) galleries. I’ll be discussing these works in their larger historical and critical contexts during the Winter Seminar (for Agnes Scott alumnae) in January and February 2012.

I am available to give private lectures as well. Please email kasmith@agnesscott.edu for more information.

Meet Alumna Becky Bivens, Class of 2008

I first read Claes Oldenburg’s “I am for an Art” (1961) in Katherine Smith’s “Contemporary Art and Theory.”  In the text, Oldenburg suggests that he is for an art of anything and everything.  “I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top…I am for an art that flaps like a flag or helps blow noses, like a handkerchief,” he writes.  The beautiful thing about Oldenburg’s text—which takes the form of a long list—is its potential to become infinite.  The last line ends abruptly, and the reader is left wanting to add another item, to find another kind of art to embrace.  At the risk of cheesiness and sentimentality, I want to offer an Oldenburg inspired litany for my Agnes Scott education:

1.  I am for an Agnes that taught me not only how to make art, but also how to think about it.

2.  I am for an Agnes that helped me go to graduate school and get more than a couple of jobs.  (E.g. a Master’s from the University of Chicago in the Humanities, an internship at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and a current position as an instructor for The City Colleges of Chicago.)

3.  I am for an Agnes that offered a safe place to make mistakes, to develop my passions, and to become competent at writing and speaking about them.

4.  I am for an Agnes that has an awesome art gallery.

5.  I am for an Agnes that has an art history and studio art department that works together, which is incredibly hard to find and incredibly exciting.

6.  I am for an Agnes that gave me both a structured, rigorous education AND an enormous amount of creative freedom.

And the list goes on!