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SPRING 2008
Anonymous Donor Funds Major Changes!
Thanks to a very generous donation in Fall 2007, the department was able to enhance the curriculum and facilities in all kinds of exciting ways:
1) The addition of a 12-station Mac lab in AC 332 that was in full use by the Beginning Digital Arts and Introduction to Filmmaking classes this spring, as well as many other studio and art history students.
2) The addition of a second art historian in a Faculty Teaching Fellowship position for someone who's just starting out in the field. This position will be part-time teaching (one art history course each semester, plus one core course focused on art) and part-time research. The major donation will last for five years, so we're envisioning this as a series of one-year positions. For the coming year we’ve hired Maline Werness and we’re eager for the new ideas and expertise that she’ll bring to the department. She’s working on her dissertation in Mayan art for the University of Texas at Austin and will be teaching “The Art of Mexico” in the fall.
3) The addition of a part-time gallery director, Emmie King, who's got lots of experience (she's worked for galleries in New York City and Memphis) and is excited about the exhibition opportunities here.
4) The addition of two new offices in the space that used to be the old PC lab. One of the offices will be for the new art historian and the other for the gallery director and adjunct instructors, including Amanda Sparks who’s been teaching Digital Arts courses for us since last summer.
5) The addition of a studio space for Sandra off the printmaking studio and a new installation, video, and exhibition space off the Lewis Art Gallery, both made possible by reconfiguring the large space of the gallery. We'll still have almost as much wall space in the main gallery but it'll be less overpowering and more flexible, so we're really pleased about how that worked out.
6) The addition of a major new press for the printmaking studio.
As you can see, there’ve been some major changes in the department this year – a lot of upheaval, but all of it wonderful!
News from Brent Fogt
My first year at Millsaps was both productive and gratifying. The Millsaps students and faculty went out of their way to make me feel immediately welcome. The academic year got off to a great start in August with my inclusion in the 2007 Midwest edition of New American Paintings. I was one of 40 artists chosen from an applicant pool of over 1200 to be featured in this “exhibition in print.” It was a great honor. In January, I was accepted into the Drawing Center’s Viewing program, a curated online registry of artists for whom drawing is a significant medium. As part of this program, I will travel to New York this summer to meet with one of the Drawing Center’s curators to discuss my work. Also in January, Sandra and I had the pleasure of working with Emmie King, our new gallery director, to put together a wonderful faculty show and program of artist talks. Still catching my breath from the faculty show, in early February I packed my car with 70 bean plants, my drawings and a series of small crocheted sculptures and drove 10 hours to Bloomington, Indiana, where I did an installation called “Transplant” at Indiana University’s Fuller Projects space.
In May, I will be teaching a drawing class in Merida, Mexico. I used to go to Mexico fairly often when I worked in Washington, DC, so it will be a wonderful opportunity for me to introduce my students to Mexico’s spectacular visual culture. When I return from Mexico, I plan on spending most of the summer in the studio preparing for two solo shows next year: one titled “ Silent Topographies” in March at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston and another called “Accrual Method” in June at the Emory University Art Gallery in Atlanta. When school starts in August, I will also create an installation of plants and crocheted sculptures for the Lewis Gallery’s new installation space.
News from Sandra Murchison
I was a panelist at CAA for a discussion having to do with digital versus traditional printmaking, in which I presented the results from a national online survey that I helped construct. This coming September, I will present an updated and altered version of this information at the Southeastern College Art Conference in New Orleans. This past March, I had the luxury of spending a week at the University of Lafayette as a Visiting Artist. During my visit, I printed an edition of a large scale shaped etching with the assistance of ULL students. In addition to the Millsaps College faculty show, I exhibited my work through national juried exhibitions at the New Jersey Print Council, The Rye Arts Center in New York, the SGC print conference at Virginia Commonwealth University, at Bowling Green State University and at ArtWorks Art Gallery in Wisconsin. As manager of the Southern Graphics Council archives, I will spend a week at Ole Miss this August cataloging the SGC permanent collection. This fall, I will exhibit work in a juried traveling exhibition at the Mid-America Print Council Conference in North Dakota, at the University of Colorado and here at Millsaps College. In the meantime, I have once again taken on the role as coordinator for what will be an exchange portfolio of prints by 18 incredible contemporary printmakers. This portfolio and traveling exhibition, entitled White Elephant, will be exhibited at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Millsaps College, and other venues.
News from Elise Smith
I was honored and humbled to be named the first recipient of the newly endowed Sanderson Chair of Arts and Sciences. This is a five-year renewable position with various exciting and gratifying perqs, so I’m very grateful to the college – and of course to the Sanderson family! This was a good year for me professionally, as one article was published, one is forthcoming this summer, and a third is currently under consideration. “‘The aged pollard's shade’: Gainsborough's Landscape with Woodcutter and Milkmaid” appeared in Eighteenth Century Studies 41.1 (Fall 2007): 17-39, “Centering the home-garden: The Arbor, Wall, and Gate in Moral Tales for Children” will be coming out in Children’s Literature 36 (2008): 24-48, and “Commanding a View: The Taylor Sisters and the Construction of Domestic Space” is under consideration at the Journal of British Studies. In addition, my entry on “Marie Hull” will be published in Mississippi Encyclopedia, ed. Charles Reagan Wilson and Ted Ownby (forthcoming with the University Press of Mississippi, 2008), and a short article on “Evelyn De Morgan in the United States” will appear in the June issue of the Pre-Raphaelite Society of the United States Newsletter. My major project continues to be the book manuscript that I’m co-authoring with my friend Judy Page at the University of Florida: Women and the Domesticated Landscape from Romantic to Mid-Victorian England. I was also invited to be a member of the Acquisitions and Collections Committee at the Mississippi Museum of Art, which promises to be a particularly interesting and valuable connection with the museum.
Art Club and Kappa Pi Officers for 2008-2009
Kappa Pi -
President: Beth Fossen
Vice-President: Mary Wilson
And congratulations to the new initiates, Katie Carmon and Sam Gay!
Art Club -
President (fall semester): Kimberly Moore
Vice President: Mark Herndon
Secretary: Beth Fossen
Treasurer: Toni Manley
Awards Day, April 2008
Congratulations to the following hard-working art students who’ve excelled over their years at Millsaps:
Best of Senior Art Exhibition Award - Jonathan Webb
Outstanding Junior Studio Art Award - Clay Hardwick
Excellence in Art History Award - Holly Harmon
Art History Paper Award - Beth Fossen
William D. Rowell Memorial Award in Art - Katie Carmon
Bellamann Award in the Visual Arts - Petra Vackova
Millsaps Endowed Art Scholarship
We’re pleased to announce that Beth Fossen is the recipient of this departmental scholarship for 2008—09!
Two Students Giving Papers at Fall 2008 Southeastern College Art Conference in New Orleans
The department is very proud of Erin Jordan (class of 2011) and Beth Fossen (class of 2010) who had their paper proposals accepted for an undergraduate art history session at SECAC in late September. Beth’s 20-minute presentation will be entitled “The Writing’s off the Wall: Dichotomies and Thematic Tension in the Works of Jeff Wall” and Erin will be speaking about “Diane Arbus: Finding the Individual Despite the False Bonds of Family.” This was a very competitive process and it’s remarkable that Millsaps is the only college in the Southeast to have two of its students selected.
Best Wishes to Our Graduating Seniors!
Our seven senior Studio Art majors – Michelle Allen, Katie Carmon, Kalea Hardwick, Alyce Howe, Mathew Puckett, Petra Vackova, and Jonathan Webb - mounted two excellent exhibitions this spring, and their gallery presentations were impressive in both content and style! Alyce will be working at the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum in
Baton Rouge next year, and the others are taking a year off before pursuing a variety of graduate or professional goals.
The senior presentations by our three Art History majors – Holly Harmon, Michelle Palmer, and Petra Vackova – were also exceptionally fine. Holly was accepted into the graduate programs in art history at the University of Washington and Syracuse University, and will be attending Syracuse in the fall with a teaching fellowship. She was also accepted into the prestigious and competitive 6-week Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies at Smith College in Massachusetts, limited to 15 upperclass undergraduates or recent grads, and she received an impressive scholarship to attend.
Michelle was accepted into the master’s program in contemporary art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Fine Arts in New York as well as the master’s program in preservation studies in the School of Architecture at Tulane, and decided on Tulane. Petra was accepted into the George Washington University M.F.A. program and the M.A. in Art History program at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She was given a deferral at George Washington so will be going to Leiden for their one-year master’s and then returning to the States for the M.F.A.
Phi Beta Kappa
Three of our nine art majors were elected into Phi Beta Kappa this year – a very impressive number! We’re very proud of the sustained record of highest academic achievement by Katie Carmon, Holly Harmon (who also completed an Honors project in the fall), and Petra Vackova.
FALL
2007
MEET
OUR NEW FACULTY MEMBER!
Brent Fogt, our new tenure-track assistant professor, moved to Jackson
in August from Ann Arbor, where he received his MFA at the University
of Michigan in May of this year with specializations in Drawing,
Sculpture, and Installation. His BFA in Studio Art is from the University
of Texas at Austin, 1997, and before that he earned a BA in Political
Science from Austin College and an MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown
University. Welcome to Millsaps, Brent!
WE'LL
MISS MICHELLE...
Michelle
Acuff, who was here for two years teaching a wide range of courses,
accepted a tenure-track position at Whitman College in Walla Walla,
Washington, and moved there in August. Best of luck to Michelle
and River in their new life!
SANDRA'S
BACK FROM SABBATICAL!
We missed Sandra during her sabbatical last year, though Dale Inglett
(M.F.A., University of Georgia, and now teaching at Alfred University)
did a great job filling in for her. Sandra had a phenomenally successful
year of art-making and exhibitions. Here's how she describes it:
"One of the most amazing gifts in an academic's life must be
the sabbatical. Sure enough, the time flew by as I completely filled
it with more artwork, exhibitions and responsibilities than any
one person should pack into a 'sabbatical'. I curated and designed
a printmaking exchange portfolio, entitled Red Herring, which is
still traveling around the country on exhibition. In addition to
the organizational effort that I put into this project, I editioned
a print of my own for this portfolio of 20 printmakers, editioned
an etching for the portfolio covers, and handmade all 25 portfolios.
So far this year, it was exhibited at the largest print conference
(Southern Graphics Council) and the largest college art conference
(College Art Association). More specifically, Red Herring was exhibited
at the Kansas City SGC conference, at the Center for Book Arts in
New York City, at the Southwest School of Arts & Crafts in San
Antonio and at Millsaps College. The Center for Book Arts, a premier
center for book arts internationally, accepted the portfolio into
its permanent collection. This fall, it will be exhibited at LSU
and the University of Wisconsin at Parkside. I also had two solo
exhibitions of my sabbatical work at Rockhurst University in KC,
Missouri (during the SGC print conference) and at the Cottonlandia
Museum of Art in Greenwood, Mississippi. Additionally, I served
as one of the Kansas City SGC conference coordinators, as I designed
and organized the conference wide print exchange entitled Cartography.
In May of this year, I became the new manager of the Southern Graphics
Council archives, which is housed at The University of Mississippi
at the Mary Buie Art Museum. I have enjoyed participating in numerous
juried and invitational exhibitions this year, including shows at
the NJ Print Council, the Mid-America Print Conference, and the
Leedy - Cross Art Gallery in KC. Best of all, I created a lot of
new work in my studio at Millsaps, while working in the print shop
at LSU in Baton Rouge, LA, and while working at the Center for Contemporary
Printmaking in Norwalk, CT. Suffice it to say, I have already begun
the countdown to my next sabbatical - seven years from now.
FALL
2006 - SPRING 2007
MISSISSIPPI
COLLEGIATE ART COMPETITION
Congratulations
to Michelle Allen, Katie Carmon, Petra Vackova, and Jonathan Webb
for having work accepted into the 2007 Mississippi Collegiate Art
Competition!
KAPPA
PI
The new officers for 2006-2007 are Lorene Dodd, President; Holly
Harmon, Vice President; Candace Jones, Secretary-Treasurer. The
following students were inducted into this art honorary in April:
Holly Harmon, Alyce Howe, Lacey Cook, Lorene Dodd, Rachel Mixson,
Jonathan Webb, Courtney Costello, Travis Tutor, and Clay Hardwick.
Congratulations!
ART CLUB
The new officers for 2006-2007 are Lacey Cook, President; Jana
Brady, Vice-President; and Michelle Allen, Secretary-Treasurer.
AWARDS
DAY
Congratulations to the following students, who were given certificates
and book prizes at the college Awards Day in the spring:
Excellence in Art History Award – Ruthie Rogers
William D. Rowell Memorial Award in Art – Candace Jones
Art History Paper Award - Elise Diffie and Holly Harmon
Outstanding Junior Studio Art Award – Petra Vackova
STUDIO
CLASS WORKS ON MIDTOWN PROJECT!
Michelle's
sculpture class worked on a Mid-town project in the spring, funded
by the Faith and Work Initiative. They converted 25 4' fiberglass
tubs that they found discarded on a lot near Mill Street west of
campus into mobile tomato gardens. They spray painted the tubs green,
filled them with soil, attached wheels and ropes to pull them around,
and planted tomatoes. They then distributed them to children through
the Mid-town Community Development Center. As Michelle explained,
"Conceptually it's about transformation (something discarded),
recycling, and GROWING fresh food and IDEAS. We have designed some
nice signage that embodies this (we are calling it Mid-town Mobile
'Maters) and our message, as well as growing instructions and recipes.
It's all pretty fun!"
FALL
2005 - SPRING 2006
MEET
OUR NEW FACULTY MEMBER!
Michelle Acuff joined the art faculty at Millsaps College in August
2005. Originally from Chicago, Michelle received her B.A. in Fine
Art from Augustana College and her M.A. and M.F.A. from the University
of Iowa. At Millsaps Michelle is teaching Sculpture, Video Art,
Drawing and Painting. She says she's very excited to be working
at Millsaps, experiencing the culture of the South and adapting
to the new geography and climate. Within the small community of
the art department Michelle especially loves having students over
and over again in her classes, watching as they develop and deepen
their knowledge of art. As part of her sculpture class on 'The Transformed
Object', Michelle has adapted a classroom specifically for student-created
installation works. This summer, she'll pilot a drawing course with
students in the Yucatan province of Mexico, in addition to showing
and lecturing about her work around the country.
Katrina
Relief Auction
The
Art Club organized an art auction in the Lewis Art Gallery in December
2005, with all proceeds going to the American Red Cross Katrina
Relief Fund.
Awards
Day (April 2006)
Congratulations to the following award-winning students!
Excellence
in Art History - Vimala Gutti
William D. Rowell Memorial Award in Art - Bridget O'Brien
Outstanding
Junior Student Art Award - Candace Jones
Best of Senior Art Exhibition - Emily Hildebrand
Art History Paper
Award - Holly Harmon
Henry and Katherine Bellamann Award - Emily
Hildebrand
Kappa Pi
Michelle Allen, Emily Hildebrand, Katelyn Littlejohn, Jenny Blount,
and Petra Vackova were inducted in the fall into Kappa Pi, the art
honorary, and Candace Jones, Calista Sasser, and Allison Ertz will
be inducted in the spring. This year's officers of Kappa Pi are
Jason Jarin (president), Petra Vackova (vice president), and Emily
Bruser (secretary/treasurer).
Howorth Art Lecture
Jenny Angus gave the Howorth Art Lecture on January 23, 2006. She
received her B.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design
and her M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago, and is now an
Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the
School of Environment, Textiles and Design. Her work has been exhibited
at the Textile Museum of Canada, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center,
the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Visual Arts Ontario Gallery,
and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, among other sites. For
more information about her work, see www.JenniferAngus.com.
The Art Department's Gone Digital!
The college subscribed to a huge database of digital images called
ARTstor in January 2005, and starting last fall all art history
classes have been taught with digital images rather than slides.
This is a major change for us since it provides us with better-quality
images that are zoomable, so we can look at details much more easily.
Students now study on-line or print out study images from ARTstor,
and all student presentations are done with digital images that
can be collected and arranged from any computer on campus.
FALL 2004
A competition was held this fall among students in
the junior/senior studio seminar to select three works
to hang in the Millsaps Weems House. Faculty from all
three divisions of the college voted on their favorite
pieces, and the winners (each receiving $150!) were Deborah
Noel, Nicole Walter, and Walter Young.
The recipient of the 2004-2005 Millsaps Endowed Scholarship
in Studio Art, worth $1500 for the year, is Sam King.
The endowment for this scholarship was given by Lucy Millsaps,
Professor Emeritus in the department, in honor of her
parents, and it is intended for an outstanding junior
or senior studio major with a minimum G.P.A. of 3.5. Sam
is also a Ford Fellow with Sandra Murchison this year.
Carly Dessauer successfully defended her honors thesis
in art history this fall. It is entitled "Seen: Issues
of Viewing in Manet's Olympia and Picasso's Demoiselles
d'Avignon." She also presented a paper on Picasso's
Demoiselles d'Avignon at the ACS Women's Studies Conference
at Furman University last spring, along with Kate Bruce
and Erin Gourlay. Carly is also an accomplished cross-country
runner. At the South/Southeast Regional Cross-Country
Championship in Atlanta in November she placed 12th overall
(a school record) and got a spot on the All-Regional team.
She is the only Millsaps cross-country athlete ever to
earn All-Regional honors.
Katie Brown, Vimala Gutti, Bridget O'Brien, and Aggie
Sikora were inducted in the fall into Kappa Pi, the art
honorary. This year's officers of Kappa Pi are Nora Oliver
(president), Jordan Francis (vice president), Edward McLaurin
(secretary), and Nicole Walter (treasurer).
Elise Smith is back from her 2003-2004 sabbatical, during
which she wrote three articles (on Evelyn De Morgan and
the pictorial tradition of the Wandering Jew, on Eleanor
Fortescue Brickdale's illustrations of Cupid, and on the
pollarded oak in Gainsborough's Landscape with Woodcutter
and Milkmaid). She also began work on a book project with
a former Millsaps professor, Judy Page. Their working title
is Women and the Domesticated Landscape of England, 1750-1850.
Elise was awarded the Mississippi Humanities Council 2004-2005
Humanities Teacher Award for Millsaps, and presented a lecture
for this occasion on "Knots, Boils, and Cankers: The
Pollarded Oak in English Art."
Art Instructor Collin Asmus moved during the summer of
2004 to Massachusetts and is now teaching at Bridgewater
State University. He is replaced by Visiting Assistant
Professor Kelly Mueller.
Meet Our New Visiting Faculty Member, 2004-2005:
Hi!
I'm Kelly Mueller, from Chicago. I feel
very fortunate to have the opportunity to work here at
Millsaps College for the next year as Visiting Assistant
Professor in the Art Department. This next semester I'll
be teaching Painting I and Sculpture I. I am also teaching
Installation Art as a special topics course. I have been
playing with this art form in my own work and love it
for its inclusive nature; I think it offers artists of
any background the ability to flex their conceptual muscle
without technical limitations. My own work (primarily
painting, some installation) addresses issues of etiquette
and social convention; currently my work incorporates
colorful fields of social dance images projected and painted
onto a panel. I am a recent graduate of Northern Illinois
University's MFA program, and am exhibiting this summer
in Bloomington Art Center's "Emerging Illinois Artists",
and at NIU's MFA Exhibition at Gallery 213 ("Best
of Show" awarded by juror John Frazer). I will also
be featured in the August (Midwestern Artists) issue 37
of "New American Paintings". |
