Art professors show their stuff
An art store, a hardware store and a lumber yard are just like toy stores for one of the professors featured in the art faculty exhibition.
“Finding these things is fun for me,” Eileen Doktorski said.
Doktorski is one of the faculty members with work on display at the art faculty exhibition. She said what is so inviting about a lumber yard and a hardware store is that they offer more than just traditional opportunities. Doktorski has been with Utah State Univeristy’s art department for three years and this was her first large faculty art show.
The USU Department of Art Faculty Exhibition 2005 is being held in the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. It began Jan. 10 and will go until Feb. 19. There was a reception for the exhibition held Thursday Jan. 20 at 5:30 p.m. The lectures that are available with this exhibit began Jan. 12 and will be continuing until Feb. 16. each Wednesday at 5 p.m.
Featured in the exhibition are faculty from the art department including: Jane Catlin, Robert De Groff, Eileen Doktorski, Dennise Gackstetter, Alan Hashimoto, Marion Hyde, JinMan Jo, Laura Johnson, Marilyn Krannich, Craig Law, J. Daniel Murphy, Sheila Nadimi-Roger, Ted Neal, John Neely, Sara Northerner, Chris Terry, Robert Winward and Koichi Yamamoto.
These faculty members are not only professors, but also artists. John Neely, who is also the head of the Art Department, said that students seldom get to see their professors in a professional capacity.
“We are first and foremost artists,” Neely said. “It is a good opportunity to see us in a different light.”
Winward, who works in graphic design, said he traveled to the Greek Islands over Christmas break to take the photographs for this exhibition.
“It’s important to show students we practice what we preach,” Winward said. “If I want my students to live a creative lifestyle, I should be living one myself.”
Many of the artists said the exhibition also gives students a chance to understand and get to know their professors better.
“Students can learn more about me in five minutes by looking at one of my paintings than they could in two years of attending my courses,” Chris Terry, who works with the drawing and painting emphasis, said.
“It gives the students more insight into different art processes and allows them to learn about the different professors’ focus. In addition, it gives the professors a chance to learn about one another and get to know them a little bit better,” Jane Catlin, who works in art education, said
“It’s great to have a dialogue with your colleagues about what you do and not just what you teach,” Doktorski said.
The professors in the art department worked and studied as artists before coming to teach at USU. In Alan Hoshimoto’s bios in the museum gallery, he said in 1988 he took a year off from his work to teach at his Alma mater, USU. That year has turned into 16.
“As a graphic design and commercial artist, a museum exhibition is an unusual format because my work was intended for different purposes,” Hoshimoto said, in talking about his work in relation to the exhibition. “My work still looks commercial but what can I say, I love to entertain.”
“My work is directed towards the audience,” Koichi Yamamoto, who works in the printmaking emphasis, said.
The presenters reasons for becoming artists were different but included inspiring teachers, awards at competitions, recognizable talent and dreams.
“I did dream about becoming a visual artist,” Yamamoto said. “Simply, I took action, then organized to reach for my dream.”
Yamamoto said he has been preparing for this exhibit for 20 years because his work is an on going project. The works he chose to display were some of his most recent works because he felt it would be good to show something new.
“Every mark that is made is a record of decisions and that sometimes he makes good decisions and sometimes he makes bad decisions. But we all try to make good decisions,” Yamamoto said.
Another decision made was Winward by choosing to go into the graphic design field.
“I always wanted to be an artist but didn’t want to sell shoes when I graduated. There is always a market for good graphic designers,” Winward said.
Winward said he liked the fact that he could work with illustration, photography and three-dimensional work. For the show, Winward said, he created a “live exhibition” with each his 47 photographs rotating every eight seconds on an LCD monitor. These photographs are part of a larger series that Winward said is helping the audience to “have a stronger sense of place.”
Christopher Terry said being able to take a life drawing class appealed to his “sense of irony” after he went to college. In addition to that he had won some awards at a scholastic competition in school.
“It seduced me into thinking I could be an artist,” Terry said.
He said he also had gotten positive responses from peers and teachers to the paintings he had done in high school. He said the paintings are built up with thin layers of paint while using different objects for reference materials. These materials, he said, include objects in his studio as well as photographs and three-dimensional computer modeling.
Another professor inspired by his teachers, was JinMan Jo. In the art department, Jo works with the sculpture emphasis.
“My teacher told me that he thought that was where my talent was and encouraged me to change my major. I decided to take more classes in sculpture and the more I worked with it, the more I liked it,” Jo said.
His work on display in the exhibition includes “Self Consciousness II” and “Self Consciousness III”. Jo said the pieces in the exhibition represent work that has been done over the past three years.
“I am excited for people to see my work,” Jo said. “It gives me a chance to communicate the motivation of my art.”
The art work can be viewed at the exhibition until Feb. 19. It is at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. The museum is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesdays from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information about exhibitions, lectures, galleries and other events at the museum, call (435) 797-0163, e-mail artmusuem@hass.usu.edu or visit http://www.hass.usu.edu/~museum/index.html. The museum has free admission and is open to the public.
-sarahjh@cc.usu.edu
John neely puts the lid back on his piece “Teapot” after showing the inside to a guest at the Faculty Art Show. (Photo by Michael Sharp)
Guests at the Faculty art show opening reception Thursday evening lean in for a more intimate view of Sara J. Northerner´s “From the Compulsive Series” (left) and “From the Nurture Series” (right) on display. (Photo by Michael Sharp)