Art and Art History Department Highlights
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Lecturer Megan Goldman-Petri in collaboration with two students, Benjamin Mahony and Josephine Semaan (Bioengineering), has begun work on a new digital humanities project on the portrait of the Roman emperor. The project relates to themes addressed in Prof. Goldman-Petri’s Culture and Ideas I course, Ancient Faces, in which both Ben and Josephine took part. The emperor’s likeness was the most powerful visual symbol of the empire. Examining how knowledge of the emperor’s likeness was disseminated and the reasons why the imperial portrait was replicated sheds important light on the construction and extension of the emperor’s authority across the empire. During the first half of the quarter the team analyzed and updated legacy data in multiple languages to create a comprehensive database of portraits of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus. In the remaining weeks, we will use GIS techniques to generate maps of the spatial distribution of the portraits. Ben and Josephine will also begin to explore their own research questions. In addition to providing the students with independent research projects, this will also help Prof. Goldman-Petri develop digital pedagogy.
Faculty Highlights
Lecturer Amir Attia received an AYAL professional activity grant to support his project “Examining creating vintage and retro effects on metal photo prints”. Amir has been working on this project as a continuation of his exploration of a variety of materials and digital printing techniques. Amir has been teaching a Web Usability class for the Department of Computer Engineering through the Spring quarter. The class covers the principles of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), User Experience (UX), fundamental theories in cognition, information processing, perception, and representation. The class aligns with the design thinking concepts. Amir is connecting the projects for the students enrolled in both his Website Graphic Design-ARTS 177 and Web Usability-COEN 163 classes. This enables the students to examine the layers of the design journey from defining strategies to creating an interface design.
Senior lecturer Renee Billingslea installed her nationally known exhibit The Fabric of Race: Racial Violence and Lynching in America, at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Billingslea has created a visual environment that informs viewers about the four thousand plus lynchings that occurred throughout the United States between 1882-1968. The installation included hundreds of distressed men’s shirts each having a hand-embroidered identity tag about each victim. A shelf holds an assortment of rusty canning jars filled with images of body parts, teeth, and ashes that represent souvenirs collected by white people who attended lynchings primarily of black men, women, and children. The exhibit was on display from May 2017- through Nov 2017.
In culmination of a three-month long artist-in-residence program at the Tech Shop in San Jose, Lecturer Ryan Carrington had an exhibition titled "Blue Collar Leisure" in August 2017. The exhibition's opening reception was part of San Jose's "South First Fridays" art walk event, and invited the public into see his work, as well as the numerous computer numeric controlled machines that helped him create this body of work.
This summer he will be exhibiting more work in this series in a two-person show titled "Home Makers: Reactions to Definement" at the Embark Gallery in San Francisco. Embark Gallery is part of the Fort Mason Center, and the work will be on display from June 16th to July 14th, with an opening reception on June 16th.
Lecturer Heather Clydesdale received a Dean’s Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences to present a paper titled "Power through Narrative" at the Association of Asian Studies conference in New Delhi this summer. She was invited to join scholars from Columbia and New York Universities as part of a panel on China’s Hexi Corridor, a thoroughfare of what today is called the Silk Roads. Afterwards, she will travel with American and Chinese scholars to Buddhist sites, an experience that will enrich her teaching on Indian Buddhist art for her C&I sequence, China on the Silk Roads. In November of 2017 at an international symposium on the art and archaeology of the Silk Roads held in Portland, Oregon, Heather also presented a paper on artistic innovation seen in third century tombs on China’s frontier.
Associate Professor Blake de Maria (Art and Art History) recently returned from New Orleans, where she attended the 64th annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA). She gave a scholarly presentation titled "Follow the Money: Reconstructing the Gem Trade in Early Modern Venice." She also was elected to a three year term on the 18 member executive board of the RSA. The RSA has over 4,000 members making it the largest professional organization in the world devoted to early modern studies.
Professor Kelly Detwieler had a solo exhibition at John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, California during December 2016. Wooden Narratives consisted of 18 small scale wooden narratives created for this exhibition. Several of these pieces were purchased for private collections in California.
Several of Kelly's early pieces were included in the permanent Collection at the Manetti Schrem Museum of Art in Davis, California. These pieces, part of Robert Arneson's Estate, were included in an exhibition titled "New Acquisitions" in May and June of 2017. Photo: "He looked at me and I looked at him", acrylic on wood 14x16x3
Associate Professor Donald Fritz participated in the 32th annual 30 sculptors exhibition held at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, California. The exhibition was part of the “California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art”. This exhibition was first conceived in 1986, as a collaboration between the late Robert Arneson and John Natsoulas, and continues the ceramic traditions made famous by instructors and students of the University of California, Davis, Art Department. Over fifty schools, professional artists and professors from across the country participate. Student ceramic sculptors from Santa Clara University have exhibited in this conference for the past fourteen years. The three day event includes ceramic artist demonstrations and lectures as well as additional exhibitions of contemporary professional ceramic artists who are celebrated as the premier contemporary artists working with ceramics today. Photo: Pinocchio, Raku fired ceramic
Lecturer Julie Hughes created a large-scale art installation for her exhibition at the Triton Museum. Nocturne is composed of tens of thousands of hand-painted and hand-cut acrylic paint ‘pours,’ lit dramatically to create an immersive experience for the viewer. The work is on view Aug. 18-Oct. 29. In June 2018, Nocturne will be exhibited as part of the WAVE: Light + Water + Sound Festival in Breckenridge, CO. Photo: Nocturne, 2017.
Senior Lecturer Pancho Jiménez exhibited his art work in two solo shows this past academic year, one at the Olive Hyde Gallery in Fremont, California and the other at Sierra College in Rocklin, California. His work was also exhibited in two shows at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA: “Fahrenheit 2018” and “We the People: Serving Notice." In addition, Pancho was selected a 2018 Silicon Valley Artist Laureate by SV Creates. The award “recognize[s] exceptional achievement in the arts and contributions to the cultural life of Silicon Valley”. SV Creates is a non-profit serving Santa Clara County artists across multiple disciplines. Its mission is to "accelerate Silicon Valley’s creative culture by building the creative sector’s capacity, raising the value and visibility of the creative sector and increasing access to arts and creativity”. Since 1991, SV Creates has honored more than 150 artists across a wide range of artistic disciplines, and invested over $400,000 in their work.
Associate Professor Takeshi Moro is a fellow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco during 2016-17. He created a participatory artwork with collaborators from the YBCA fellows program. This work was on display at YBCA and at the Berkeley Art Museum (UC Berkeley). Takeshi Moro was interviewed by Art Practical for his work on tmoro projects.
In February, at the 106th annual meeting of the College Art Association (CAA), Andrea Pappas gave the closing address for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) bootcamp. The bootcamp, sponsored by CAA's Education Committee and hosted by the University of Southern California, featured talks by some of the leading figures in the field as well as "nuts and bolts" workshops. Pappas discussed the challenges and opportunities of SoTL in Art History as well as the insights gleaned from the day's activities. She noted "I am especially pleased to be here as the Art History SoTL movement started at CAA three years ago, and we now have a peer-reviewed journal, and official support from CAA." Andrea is also featured in a blog post related to an upcoming Scholarship of Teaching and Learning "bootcamp" at the College Art Association Meeting in February.
Associate Professor Ryan Reynolds had a solo exhibition on exploring rush hour traffic as art. His painting "Freeway and Suburbia" exhibition took place in March 2018 at b. sakata garo in Sacramento.
Lecturer Max Sims was interviewed by FOX 13 News on November 22 about augmented and virtual reality shopping from your cell phone.
Max was also a juror for the 2018 SIGGRAPH conference’s VR Village and VR Arcade. The committee saw 180 pieces of VR/AR/XR submissions. The conference will take place in Vancouver on August 12-16, 2018.
Upcoming Events in the Edward M. Dowd Art and Art History Building Gallery
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May 16-June 15 |
Studio Art Senior Show |
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May 29- June 8 |
Student Juried Show |
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