GSU Call for Papers...

Roots and More: African and African American Artistic Legacies 

The Welch School of Art and Design’s Gallery is organizing a symposium on Friday February 12, 2010 in celebration of Black History Month.  Graduate and undergraduate students from all GSU departments are invited to present papers that address any of the following areas as they pertain to the African and African American artistic experience: Journey, Representation, Autobiography, Spirituality, Identity, Critical Perspectives, Race, and Visual Culture.  By assembling a diverse set of papers without temporal or geographical guidelines, the symposium strives to highlight the variability and complexity of African and Diasporic cultural and artistic legacies. 

Paper presentation time should not exceed 20 minutes.  The symposium space will be equipped to project digital images.  Support will be available for students who wish to receive assistance in polishing their presentations prior to the symposium. 

Please email Waduda Muhammad or Dr. Kimberly Cleveland with paper topics by Friday December 18, 2009 if you are interested in participating. 

Symposium Co-Organizers: 

Waduda Muhammad, Interim Gallery Director 

artwam@langate.gsu.edu 

Kimberly Cleveland, Assistant Professor, Art History 

artklc@langate.gsu.edu

National Exhibition Call...

                              

The Zhou B. Art Center in Chicago presents: National Wet Paint Exhibition 2010

Curated by Sergio Gomez, MFA

Exhibition Dates: January 15 to February 28, 2010

Opening Reception: January 15 from 7 to 10 pm

MFA students and recent MFA recipients are invited to submit recent painting works for inclusion in the National Wet Paint Exhibition 2010 at the Zhou B. Art Center, Chicago. A catalog and an online showcase will accompany the exhibition and there is no fee to submit up to three works. Deadline for entry is December 6, 2009. Visit the National Wet Paint Exhibition 2010 website for more information and submission instructions: 

www.wetpaint2010.com

www.zbcenter.org

Zhou B. Art Center

1029 W. 35th St.

Chicago, IL 60609

Ph. 773-523-0200

Alumni Highlight...

Judy Rushin creates work that is conceptually driven by physical spaces and impermanent architecture. Her paintings and constructions describe the landscape of hidden places, exploring concepts of sanctuary, and shelter. Rushin earned her MFA in Visual Arts at GSU in 2005 and currently teaches at Florida State University. 

Recent exhibitions include group and solo shows in New York, Korea, Chicago, New Orleans, and Miami. She examines the physicality of architecturally defined spaces through drawings and paintings that often incorporate built structures. Rushin has been included twice in New American Paintings. Along with a national exhibition record, she is the recipient of numerous grants, awards and residencies.  

Statement (excerpt):

Sitting in my rabbit hutch I think about being invisible.  I like it here, sheltered by the decking of a play structure above and on all sides with deer screen and 4x4s. It’s shady but not too shady, sunny but not too sunny, snug but not claustrophobic. I have an old metal chair in here, the kind that rocks a little because it has legs in front that curve under to the floor. No one ever thinks to look for me here. 

(I spent half my life whining about how I was invisible, but I’ve come to appreciate its practicalities, even its significance. The significance of insignificance.) ...

This is how I like to think of my paintings -- not as privileged objects “hanging on the wall over there,” but as walls we use to define our space – utilitarian and enveloping while maintaining the emotional and even representational role historically associated with painting.  More specifically, I build temporary structures that act as events more than places – a fort, a box to hold a small animal, a shelter – that act as short-lived architectures that represent momentary needs not fulfilled within the structure of an established system, ephemeral and ultimately unsustainable...

MFA Thesis Screening...

2010 College Art Association Conference...

Your Community Beyond the Campus

College Art Association in Chicago

February 10-13, 2010

The College Art Association, the largest artist and arts professionals network in the country, is laying siege on downtown Chicago for its 98th annual gathering of more than 4,000 members for four days of non-stop art and lively discussion. Check out the Online Student Guide to the Conference for information on how to subsidize your trip, find low-cost travel and lodging, CAA membership, and other helpful tips for those attending their first conference. (http://conference.collegeart.org/2009/students.php)

Conference Highlights:

Sessions: Over 120 panel discussions on topics in design, visual studies, artistic practice, art history and more. To see listing, please visit http://conference.collegeart.org/2010/sessions.php

Book and Trade Fair: 120 exhibitors display new publications, artists’ materials, and digital resources, programs and services in the arts. Book signings, material demonstrations, lectures, and deep discounts make this a destination for all. http://conference.collegeart.org/2010/books.php

Career Services: Get a leg up on the job search with car=-eer events covering an array of professional topics like: Job Hunt 101, Portfolio Reviews, Grant writing for Artists, Interview strategies and more: http://conference.collegeart.org/2010/career.php

Student and Emerging Professionals Lounge: Meet your peers from all over the country in our lounge with regular programming throughout the conference. http://conference.collegeart.org/2010/career.php#studentemergingprofesionals

And much, much more...For more info, check out the website at http://conference.collegeart.org/2010/

Alumni Highlight...

Christie Blizard, a 2005 GSU alum, has since joined Texas Tech University as an Assistant Professor of Painting and Painting Coordinator. In the past year, Blizard has participated in several exhibitions and festivals including the Texas Biennial, Southwest Biennial, International Film Competition held in Cincinnati, OH in 2008 and the Berkeley Art Center’s International Film Festival.

Blizard's Artist Statement: 

Compelled with ideas of reverb, compression, and information-loops, I reconfigure my work into new forms and media. I am interested in the fusion of high and low technology, and disparate aesthetics, including pixels, early video games, Dutch painting, Non-objective Abstraction, and Navajo rug designs. In a recent project for example, I incorporated still images of drawings, paintings, installations and previous animations into a new video that I photographed while it looped on my computer. The open aperture of my camera and reeling stills of the video created hybrid images that became the foundation for a series of paintings.  One of these paintings in turn became the beginning of an animation entitled Skepticism that has turned into a large photo collage of all the stills, and I intend for this new matrix to be the beginning of a new painting. This intersection of systems and chance operations captures the spaces between images, emphasizing that each piece is part of a larger and continuous whole.  This can be compared to a transition from a major chord to a minor one, and I view this as being similar to John Cage.

For more information and recent work, check out the artist's website: www.christieblizard.com

Lecture...

Date: Monday, November 9, 2009
Time: 2:00 PM
Location: Student Center Speakers Auditorium
Cost: Free & open to the public

On Monday, Professor Michael Ruse will deliver a free lecture, open to the university community, "Celebratin Darwin," connected to a Fall lecture series sponsored by the University Honors Program and the college Center for Collaborative Scholarship in the Humanities.

Ruse is the Lucyle Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, and internationally acclaimed for his research as a philosopher of science and for the quality of his work on Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory in particular. Within the last three years, Prof. Ruse has written an acclaimed biography of Darwin (Blackwell, 2007), co-edited the Cambridge Companion volume on Darwin (2008), co-edited "Reflections on the Origin of Species" (Princeton, 2008), and written "Defining Darwin: Essays on the History and Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology" (Prometheus, 2009).

The final lecture in the Fall Darwin series will occur the following Monday (November 16) by Prof. Matthew Grober, from the GSU biology department on "The Evolution and Development of Vertebrate Sexuality."