Three UO art professors and a recent UO MFA graduate are joining artists from around the country May 28-30 in the Third Culture Conversations at the Lewis Integrative Science Building (LISB) on the UO campus. The gathering is part conference and part creative/intellectual experiment among nineteen artists and UO scientists, sponsored by the Oregon Arts Commission.
For only three hours in May, two floors of a UO campus building will showcase creative explorations by dozens of emerging artists working in media ranging from ceramics to digital arts and more. The event is a rare peek inside what students in their senior year have accomplished, and it provides an opportunity for the public to interact with the artists—and in some cases, with the art itself.
In Medias Res, the 2014 University of Oregon MFA Thesis Exhibition featuring work by five Department of Art master of fine arts students, will be on view May 3-25 at Disjecta Interdisciplinary Art Center, 8371 N. Interstate Avenue in Portland. The exhibition opens with a free public reception Friday, May 2, from 6-8 p.m. View the artist’s work on the Department of Art MFA exhibition site.
"Look up from your screens. The only adventure is resistance."
That sentiment, by writer-philosopher-anarchist John Zerzan, accompanies the most recent art installation by Department of Art Assistant Professor Christopher Michlig. Michlig asked Zerzan to collaborate with him on the installation for Portland2014, a biennial exhibition that celebrates artists who are defining and advancing contemporary art practices.
The March 25 issue of Art Jewelry Forum spotlights a recent series by Associate Professor Anya Kivarkis. In this work, Kivarkis reconstructs jewelry from the September 2007 Vogue that showcased luxury goods, an issue of the magazine ironically released at the beginning of the Great Recession. Declining to project the message of wealth and power in the opulent pieces of the magazine spread, Kivarkis instead mediates their conventional perfection and material value.
A cover story in the spring 2014 (47:1) issue of Exposure explores UO art Professor Terri Warpinski’s unfolding series of photographs about borders, Surface Tension. “Warpinski places us at the edge of the action with an opportunity to experience [the border] viscerally,” writes photography curator Katherine Ware. “A wall is not a solution but rather a monument to an ongoing crisis.
Experimentation in teaching is not new in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. From the noncompetitive, nongraded studio courses in architecture initiated at the school’s founding to experiments with new media and motion graphics leading to national leadership in digital arts, to pioneering public policy efforts such as Oregon’s land use law, A&AA is a rich environment for trying out new ideas. Enterprising faculty members and students who shared a spirit of collaboration and experimentation and who were not adverse to risk-taking founded the school in 1914.
A student-designed and created drinking cup from the ARTC 410 “Prototyping and Manufacturing” course may end up on a table in Carson Dining Hall or the A&AA Willcox Hearth in the future.
The experimental course, under way in winter 2014, combines the disciplines of product design and ceramics and introduces students to social practice, design, and manufacturing. The class instructs students to formulate a design for a cup that is suitable for UO campus food vendors.
Michael E. Walsh was on track to teach English as a second language in Kenya on a Peace Corps mission when the Vietnam War took his career on an unexpected detour in 1966. He was at Columbia University, training for the Peace Corps at the Institute for Education in Africa, Teachers College, when his draft number came up.
University of Oregon Professor Craig Hickman's tinkering to create a computer drawing program that his 3-year-old son could use has landed him a prominent niche in the 30th anniversary celebration of the Macintosh computer.
