2018

A Nameless Wind

John Powers

Guggenheim Fellowship recipient John Douglas Powers brings A Nameless Wind Nov. 12 through Dec. 14 to the Lightwell Gallery, located on the second floor of the Fred Jones Center, 520 Parrington Oval, on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus. An opening reception is scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13.

Both the exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.

A Nameless Wind will include kinetic sculptures and carved objects. The works in this exhibition draw inspiration from and point back toward Buddhist iconography, classical mythology, prehistoric burial mounds, and architectural structures ranging from temples to barns. They interface freely with Powers’ interests in technology, music, history, language and geometry.

Powers stated that he “would like to think visitors would spend time with the individual pieces and consider what their relationship is to forms and materials they see.” He hopes they will “consider the communicative power of movement and, depending on the background of the viewer, perhaps they leave with some new idea of what art can be or do. “

Powers studied art history at Vanderbilt University and earned his master of fine arts degree in sculpture, with distinction, at the University of Georgia. His work has been featured in The New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, The Huffington Post, Art in America, The Boston Globe and on CBS News Sunday Morning.

He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Virginia A Groot Foundation Award and a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship and the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award. His sculptural work has been exhibited nationally.

He currently has work on exhibition in the Hunter Invitational IV at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the SECAC Members Exhibition at the Abroms-Engel Institution for the Visual Arts in Birmingham, Alabama.

The Blind Rooms

Juliacks

The Lightwell Gallery at the University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts will be transformed into a series of “blind rooms” for artist Juliacks’ upcoming exhibition. An artist, filmmaker, performer-choreographer, cartoonist and playwright, Juliacks creates fictions across mediums, and in the Lightwell she will present 10 different stories of psychological blindness. The exhibition will run from Oct. 8 to Nov. 2, with a complimentary opening reception on Oct. 9 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Fred Jones Center, 520 Parrington Oval, Norman.

“The viewer will be given headsets with different pre-recorded audio narratives. Each headset has a different story that will begin when the viewer puts it on,” explains Juliacks. “This exhibition uses sound-based stories accompanied by a choreography of natural light, surround paintings, objects and performing bodies. This choreography will be independent in terms of temporal synchronicity from the audio headsets. However, the experience for the viewer will be filled with symbolic coincidences, so that each viewer will have a different experience of the narrative that they hear.”

Juliacks is collaborating with students from the schools of Visual Arts and Drama to create, install and perform this exhibition. Because this is a performance piece, the viewer must interact with the work while interpreting and reading the symbols, texts, images and spaces that make up the narrative, encouraging a focus on the gap that lies between the viewer and the artwork.

Julacks is a time-based artist whose visual storytelling is grounded within comics, performance art and cinema. She splits her time between New Jersey, where she recently received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Netherlands. Her work has been exhibited or screened nationally and internationally at numerous prominent museums and film festivals, including the MoMA PS1, MAC-Lyon, Althuis Hofland and TFI’s Interactive Playground. She also has authored numerous graphic novels, including her latest, Architecture of an Atom.

In addition to the exhibition at OU, Juliacks currently is working on developing a trans-historical, cross-cultural transmedia narrative, Tranversal Scepters, and will involve the creation of a performance piece/dinner play. It is set to be performed in New York, Los Angeles and Amsterdam.

MFA Inclusive Exhibition 2018

A sampling of the diverse and exciting work being created by the master of fine arts students in the University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts will be on display to the public starting Monday, Sept. 17, in the Lightwell Gallery of the Fred Jones Center. The Inclusive Exhibition will continue through Sept. 28.

The OU School of Visual Arts master of fine arts program offers graduate study in the areas of photography and new media, studio arts, and design, with an extensive range of disciplines that encourages creative interaction. Members of the public are invited to attend a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept.18. Both the exhibit and reception will be held in Lightwell Gallery, 520 Parrington Oval, Norman.

“The Master of Fine Arts Inclusive exhibition showcases the work of MFA graduate students currently enrolled in SoVA,” said School of Visual Art professor and graduate coordinator Pete Froslie. “The exhibition and the talks by the artists provide an important professional experience, both to students beginning their studies as well as those preparing for their thesis exhibition in the spring.”

The graduate students whose works are included in the exhibition will be available during the reception to meet with guests and talk about their individual work. All members of the OU and Norman communities are encouraged to attend the reception and exhibition. Admission to both is complimentary.

TESS Mission

OU School of Visual Arts to bring VR to the Lightwell Gallery with Tess Mission

The University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts’ first exhibition of the fall semester is an interactive installation in the Lightwell Gallery by new Art, Technology and Culture faculty member Tess Elliot.

TESS Mission exhibits the “mission control center” of her most recent research, with video, sculpture and interactive virtual reality components. The exhibit will run from Aug. 20 through Sept. 7^, with an opening reception set from 5 to 7 p.m.  Tuesday, Aug. 21.

When asked about her inspiration for the project, Elliot said, “Throughout history, diverse cultures have interpreted outer space through stories and images, developing an array of narratives framing peoples’ relationships to the unknown and to each other. Today, the objective of cosmic exploration is focused on discovery and colonization, as national and private space programs develop technologies to build space colonies, traverse astronomical distance and work to map thousands of alien planets with special focus on the ‘habitable zones’ of nearby solar systems. NASA’s newest ‘planet hunter’ is TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which launched this past April on a two-year mission to survey the sky in the search for other earths.” She goes on to say that, “like my cosmic namesake, I am in orbit around a new center and have equipped myself with four cameras looking outward through space and time.”

TESS Mission, by Elliot, focuses on the geography of Oklahoma, drawing parallels between Oklahoma’s historical narrative and the contemporary narrative of outer space as manifest destiny’s final frontiers.

This exhibition also will be an opportunity for the OU community to become better acquainted with Eliott and will demonstrate her artistic practices in new media technologies founded in research.

Elliot’s multidisciplinary, research-based practice currently is focused on new media technologies, animation and virtual reality. She received her master of fine arts degree in art and technology from The Ohio State University in 2017 and her bachelor of fine arts degree from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York in 2008. She has shown her work nationally and internationally.

SIX HUNDRED DAYS

OU School of Visual Arts Senior Capstone Exhibition

The annual University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts’ senior capstone exhibition, Six Hundred Days, featuring the work of graduating seniors from all visual arts programs offered at OU. It will open with a complimentary public reception at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 6, in the Lightwell Gallery at the Fred Jones Center.

This exhibition is presented each spring in conjunction with a capstone course required for all graduating seniors receiving a bachelor of fine arts degree from OU. Each student creates a body of work that represents their studies and the time they have spent at the OU School of Visual Arts. These students display a portion of this portfolio during the senior capstone exhibition.

The students work closely with faculty to organize and install their works. Students are responsible for every aspect of the show, which offers them valuable hands-on experience necessary for success post-graduation.

“Art, Technology & Culture students are working with a range of topics and media, including traditional and digital photography, sound and video, animation, virtual reality, gaming, video installation and social media,” said Art, Technology & Culture capstone faculty adviser Cathleen Faubert.

“The SoVA Senior Capstone Exhibition gives students an understanding of what a large, public visual art project entails,” Faubert added. “Students tend to feel pressure about the exhibition, as if this is the end, but this is really the first of many successful visual art opportunities to come.”

The School of Visual Arts, established in 1915, is the oldest and most comprehensive school of art in the state of Oklahoma. Through civic engagement, the school endeavors to meet the artistic needs of Oklahoma’s citizens and promote the growth of culture. The goal of the OU School of Visual Arts is to prepare each student for success nationally and internationally as artists, designers, scholars, teachers, and influential patrons of all the arts.

Sandwich Baggie Show

The Red Clay Faction

Members of the public and the University of Oklahoma community are invited to attend the annual Red Clay Faction student ceramics exhibition, scheduled April 2 through 28 in the Lightwell Gallery at the Fred Jones Center, 520 Parrington Oval.

The event, sponsored by the Red Clay Faction and the School of Visual Arts, will be different from previous years in one big (and small), way. All the ceramics displayed in the exhibition will fit into a sandwich bag.  Between 150 and 170 pieces will be displayed, all of which were created by OU ceramics students over the past three semesters.

“While we have numerous OU SoVA students in the show, it will also include students from across campus,” says Stuart Asprey, faculty sponsor of the Red Clay Faction. “For most of our non-majors, this will be their first art exhibition.”

He added that the show also helps build awareness of the ceramics program by “promoting ceramic artwork and exploring avenues to create a dialogue about clay.”

An opening reception is scheduled from 5:30 to 7 p.m. April 3 in the Lightwell Gallery. Prior to the reception, Danielle Weigandt, a Master of Fine Arts Student, will give a short presentation in room 205.

For more information about the Red Clay Faction or the ceramics program at OU, please contact Olivia Egan, president of the Red Clay Faction, at oliviaegan@ou.edu; Danielle Weigandt, Red Clay Faction member, at danielleweigandt@ou.edu; or Stuart Asprey, faculty sponsor, at stuart@ou.edu.

CAPAS

Morgan Page

Visiting artist Morgan Page brings her family’s heritage to life with CAPAS, exhibiting in the Lightwell Gallery from March 5 though 30. Combining Irish and Northern Mexican textiles with inherited history from her grandmothers, Page has created an exhibition that showcases her unique cultural heritage.

The opening reception is set from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, on the second floor of the Fred Jones Center, 520 Parrington Oval. The artist will give a talk at 5:30 in the gallery. Refreshments will be served, and admission is complimentary.

Page says her inspiration for CAPAS began in 2016. “I inherited several family heirlooms from my great aunt. Postcards, baptism records, photographs and many other mementos my grandmother had held onto for years were included in the collection. Receiving the items prompted my grandmother to have me help her look through old family photos. I started piecing together family history from both of my grandmothers and felt inspired to bring the two women together visually in a complementary way through graphic design and textile design collages and illustrations,” she explains.

“In 2017, I had an opportunity to further study Mexican and Irish textiles while visiting Mexico and Ireland,” she added. “I have tried to combine Irish symbols and shapes with Mexican textile lines and patterns. Irish textiles are typically organic and rounded, while Northern Mexican textiles are more hard-edged and geometric.”

Another aspect of her work is birds, which Page says play a special role because of the influences of her grandmothers. “My maternal grandmother was a birder for several decades. and my paternal grandmother raised chickens.” This love and appreciation was shared with all the grandchildren and has greatly influenced Page’s work.

A conceptual artist and graphic designer, Page primarily works in photography, installation, video, collage and textiles. Her recent research interests include immigration, migration and textiles.  She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Houston's School of Art in Houston. She has exhibited widely regionally and nationally. Her upcoming exhibitions include a two-person show at Gallery Foro R-38 in Mexico City and she will participate in numerous group shows in 2018.