Professor Elise Richman, Painting, exhibited a site-specific art installation, Spring Mascot, at the Woolworth Building in downtown Tacoma at 11th and Broadway through June 30, 2012.
UPS students Michelle Reynolds '12 (first place), Kelsey Eldridge '12 (second place), and Samantha Kielty '11 (third place) were the recipients of the Art History Research Paper Prize for 2012.
UPS student Westrey Page '12, a senior art history major, presented a paper titled "The Mother Archetype in Anselm Kiefer’s Erotic in the Far East: Understanding German Cultural Rebirth in the Wake of World War II", at the First Annual Undergraduate Art History Conference, The Body in Visual Culture, at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on May 4, 2012.
Ecological Public Art: Making a Difference: On May 1, 2012, ecological art curator Patricia Watts and ecological public artist Buster Simpson discussed on all levels what it takes to create a successful public art plan including selecting successful public artworks that are both aesthetically rigorous and sustainable as infrastructure projects. Watts discussed the public art selection process and Simpson presented the longer road to bringing larger environmental projects to fruition while working with the city, state, and federal agencies. Both are concerned with how these types of projects are planned for, funded, and that when they are completed, they are public artworks that make a real difference for both people and the natural world. This event was co-sponsored by the City of Tacoma, The University of Puget Sound Environmental Policy and Decision Making Program, and The University of Puget Sound Art Department.
The Tacoma Art Museum offered a series of lectures April 7 – May 12, 2012, two of which featured Puget Sound faculty members. The first, "Between Icon and Idol: Venerated and Broken Images in Byzantium," by Professor Kriszta Kotsis, Art History, took place on Saturday, April 7, at 1 p.m. The lecture discussed the century-long dispute over the role of religious images, or icons, that shook Byzantine society. On Saturday, April 21 Professor Elise Richman, Painting, presented her Know More Art talk titled "The Art of Remembering". The Vietnam Veterans War Memorial occupies a site of unrivaled honor on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Each year thousands of citizens pay their respects to the fallen soldiers whose names are inscribed on the memorial's movingly stark, black surface. Maya Lin’s youthful vision for the memorial’s minimalist design—so different from heroic, figurative historical precedents—pushed aesthetic boundaries and confounded expectations regarding the purpose of a war memorial. This relatively recent controversy provides a springboard for a broader discussion of the changing cultural expectations of what a memorial is supposed to be, aesthetically, physically, and perceptually.
Professors Janet Marcavage, Printmaking, and Elise Richman, Painting, were featured in a group exhibition of Tacoma artists titled Tacoma, Naturally, at Alley Cat Artists in Ellensburg, Washington, April 6 - 30, 2012.
Professor Kriszta Kotsis, Art History, presented a paper titled “Defining Female Authority in 8th Century Byzantium: The Images of Empress Irene” at the annual meeting of the Medieval Association of the Pacific, in Santa Clara, California, March 30-31, 2012. She also chaired a session there, titled Byzantine and Italian Representations of Christ and the Virgin.
Professor John McCuistion, Ceramics, participated in a group exhibition titled Centered on the Northwest: An Invitational Show Featuring Northwest Clay Artists, from March 26 - April 5, 2012, at the Clay Art Center, 2636 Pioneer Way East, Tacoma.
Professor Linda Williams, Art History, presented a paper titled "Saints Peter and Paul at the Early Colonial Franciscan Monastery of Dzidzantún, Yucatán" for the session she helped to organize, Guiding Souls: Images of Mary and the Saints in New Spain and Peru I, at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, in Washington DC, on March 22, 2012.
During the week of March 19th, 2012, students enrolled in Art 282: Beginning Printmaking exhibited an installation project. The project took place in the Wheelock Student Union, near the Info Center. This collaborative project related to the Hide/Seek exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum and it drew on themes found in the work of David Wojnarowicz and Felix-Gonzales-Torres. Viewers were able to take part of the work with them. Students demonstrated the technique of screenprinting in the Student Union. Students who collaborated on the project: Louise Blake, Caitlin Bovard, Carolyn Corl, Sarah Gulian, Elizabeth Hughes, Emily Johnston, Emily Menk, Steffen Minner, Jennie Noreen, Chris Putnam, Jill Sanford, Erin Wheary, and Emma de Vries. Their professor is Janet Marcavage, Printmaking. This project was supported by the Civic Scholarship Initiative and the Art Department.
Professor Linda Williams, Art History, and her colleague Professor John Lear, History and Latin American Studies, presented a paper, "Rina Lazo: Beyond Diego Rivera and the Taller de Gráfica Popular," on February 25, 2012 in Los Angeles, at the annual conference of the College Art Association, in a session titled Agents of Social Change: Women Artists and Women Patrons in Postrevolutionary Mexico.
Professor Zaixin Hong published "Unveiling and Consuming Art in the Multifarious Spaces of Early Modern China”, Review of James Cahill, Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China (University of California Press: Berkeley, 2010), 128 illns. (112 color), 280 pp., ISBN 9780520258570, £34.95, and Jonathan Hay, Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (Reaktion Books: London, 2010), 229 illns. (223 color), 440 pp., ISBN 9781861894083, £35. Oxford Art Journal, kcr046 first published online February 8, 2012 doi:10.1093/oxartj/kcr046.
In conjunction with the exhibition of their work in the Kittredge Gallery (January 16-February 11, 2012), Nathan DiPietro gave a tempera painting demonstration and talked about his work on Thursday, February 2 in the Kittredge Gallery, and Eirik Johnson talked about his work on Thursday, February 9 in Kittredge 201.
From Farewell to Rehearsal: Critical Thinking from a Chinese Curator of Contemporary Art: On November 9, 2011, Dr. Gao Shiming delivered a public lecture discussing his critical observations on the 2008 Third Guangzhou Triennial and the 2010 Eighth Shanghai Biennale, both of which he curated, by examining theoretical issues of contemporary Chinese art in the context of globalization. Dr. Shiming is a professor and executive dean at the School of Intermedia Art at China Academy of Art. An internationally acclaimed curator and one of the leading theorists of contemporary art in China, Dr. Shiming has organized many major art exhibitions throughout his career. He is currently a research fellow at Sterling and Francis Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts working on a project titled "Rehearsal: Art Without Artwork." This event was co-sponsored by the Art Department and Asian Studies Program.
In conjunction with the faculty show Show and Tell (August 22-November 5, 2012), three of the participants gave informal discussions of their works in the Kittredge Gallery. The talks started with Professor John McCuistion at 2:00 PM on October 5, followed by Adjunct Professor Becky Frehse at 12:30 PM on October 12, and then with Professor Michael Johnson at 2:00 PM on October 27.
