Art Department to showcase year's workFaculty from Delta State University’s Department of Art will present work produced during the past year in the annual Faculty Art Exhibition to be featured in the Wright Art Center Gallery on campus. The exhibit will open with a reception on Nov. 10 from 2-4 p.m. and will remain in the gallery through Dec. 13.
The public is cordially invited to the opening reception and to view the artists’ work throughout the exhibition period. Faculty members worked with a variety of media that will be showcased in the exhibit.
Joseph Abide, associate professor of art, provides work that continues an exploration of visual repetition with wall pieces composed of wood components and paint. Patricia Brown, professor of art, presents the first stages of a future installation using stamped text on silk, as well as a portfolio of wetplate-collodion photographs of metaphorical and nostalgic objects entitled “Find/Found.”
Department chair and professor Ron Koehler continues his work with the human figure, experimenting with a different construction technique. The method utilizes vertical segmenting that allows the different body parts to be moved into a variety of positions in the wooden painted figures.
Michaela Merryday, associate professor of art, offers work inspired by minimalist designs and textures of abandoned industrial structures. By translating their forms and textures into the soft organic material of fleece, recycled yarn and fabric with surface alterations, she tries to humanize them. Michael Stanley, assistant professor of art, will be showing a series of hollow formed steel constructions. Each deals with the idea of perception and interpretation, focusing specifically on the awareness and understanding one gains when viewing an object from multiple vantage points.
Ceramic artist Ky Johnston, associate professor of art, provides alterations of the surface of round pots by cutting and stretching the clay, as well as painting imagery with glazes to emphasize the forms. Cetin Oguz, associate professor of art, will be displaying a 5’x7’ abstract expressionist-style painting in addition to his various smaller landscape paintings. Oguz fuses organic forms with bold color applications while maintaining a feel for spontaneity.
William Lester, instructor, showcases paintings of the surrounding landscape of Dockery, which are fluid, rich interpretations through oil. They show the large sky and vegetation which is common to the Delta. Nathaniel Hein, assistant professor of art, collaborates with Jennifer Gonzales to graphically critique the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program in a body of work.
In the fields of videography and photography, Ronald Douglas, assistant professor of art, will premier an experimental non-fiction video that examines funding priorities in the United States, entitled “Funding Formula.”
Professor of art Robert Kim Rushing provides photographs of his father and mother since he bought his first camera. In his current work, he attempts to document, in earnest, their behavior and decline into Alzheimer’s disease, preserving in images the father and mother he used to know. The series focuses on his father who died this past summer. Mollie Rushing, instructor in art, also addresses Alzheimer’s through quilting, following a tradition which uses that medium to make social, political or personal commentary.
Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Friday 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. There are no weekend or holiday hours. For further information, call the Art Department at 662-846-4720.
