College of Design

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.

An exhibit at the LaVerne Krause Gallery in Lawrence Hall held March 10-14 showcased work by five Arts and Administration Program graduate students who cofounded The Feminist Museum, a website committed to helping break the glass ceiling for women in the art world. Their exhibit Object/Subject: Femininity in Contemporary Culture prompted lively discussion about feminism and the male-dominated art world (51 percent of visual artists are women yet only 5 percent of art on display in U.S. museums is by women).

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art presents a selection of Works Progress Administration (WPA) prints, which have been on long-term loan to the museum from the federal government since 1956. Curated by Merrit Thompson, a senior in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, the exhibition is on view in the Morris Graves Gallery through July 27, 2014. The show supports the Eugene Public Library’s 2014 Big Read (F.

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. 

Asked what Pacific Northwest Preservation Field School project he’s most proud of since the annual projects began twenty years ago, Associate Professor Emeritus and Field School Founding Director Don Peting defers. “That's a Sophie's Choice question,” he says. “It's like your children—you can't isolate and favor any one.” 

Associate professor of architecture Mark L. Gillem can now add FAIA to his credentials. Gillem, PhD, AICP, and principal at The Urban Collaborative, is among 139 AIA members recently elevated to the prestigious College of Fellows by the 2014 Jury of Fellows from the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Ecology and the Architectural Imagination, a new book by Brook Muller, A&AA associate dean and associate professor of architecture, examines how to integrate architecture with complex ecological systems and speculates on future intersections of these domains.

Thanks to four years of transnational efforts by UO in Portland architecture students, the first two buildings of a new campus for Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) recently opened near the historic center of Lviv in western Ukraine.

UO architecture Associate Professor Gerald Gast and graduate students from the Urban Projects Workshop of the Department of Architecture in Portland developed the master plan for UCU’s new Stryiskiyi Park campus.

Students in the “American Philanthropy” freshman seminar have selected KindTree Productions, a Eugene-based nonprofit organization, to receive a $5,000 grant from Wells Fargo.

Students learn to practice the fundamentals of charitable giving by partaking in the annual course, which is offered through the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management. Groups form to consider local nonprofits that either applied for the grant or were nominated by students. Students visit the nominees to gather information and craft an argument that their organization is most deserving.