Austin Peay Art + Design announces 2021-22 exhibition, visiting artist schedule

(Posted Aug. 27, 2021)

The Department of Art + Design at Austin Peay State University is excited to announce its 2021-22 season of exhibitions and visiting speakers. Generously supported by the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts (CECA), the Department of Art + Design can bring nationally/internationally recognized artists and thinkers directly to Clarksville with programming that is free and open to the public.

The New Gallery, APSU’s contemporary art gallery, hosts five curated exhibitions showcasing contemporary art from regional and national artists, as well as the annual juried student exhibition each year.

“I say this every year, but I’m really excited about this year’s slate of exhibitions and speakers,” said Michael Dickins, gallery director and Visiting Artist program chair. “We’re beginning our fifth year in the new Art + Design building, and we are continuing to bring world-class artists directly to Austin Peay and the residents of Clarksville. With invaluable support from CECA, this excitement will continue as The New Gallery will host an exciting exhibition lineup of contemporary artists that will challenge, awe and inspire our students to push themselves in their individual practices. And our Visiting Artist Speaker Series will allow our students and community to directly interact with the influential artists of our time.”

The New Gallery has extended its availability to give more people a chance to see the exhibits and artists.

“Though the gallery is open and free to the public during the week, many people find it difficult to visit during this time,” Dickins said. “Every exhibition this year will be open during Clarksville’s First Thursday Art Walk to make the exhibitions more accessible to the community. For those outside of our area, each exhibition will be accompanied by a 3D virtual tour, a technology that we adapted to make our exhibitions accessible during the shutdowns of the pandemic. The virtual tours were so successful, it would be a shame to not continue that part of our programming. We hope this year will bring more people to campus to see the work in person versus virtually as they did last year.”

Exhibitions

The New Gallery exhibition season includes contemporary art and artists visiting from Richmond, Virginia; Oakland, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; Swannanoa, North Carolina; and three from New York City:

Recent Acquisitions: Selections from the past 5 years of new acquisitions of the University’s Permanent Art Collection. Aug. 18-Sept. 17, 2021. Reception: Sept. 2 from 5-7:30 p.m. with a brief gallery talk by curator/director of The New Gallery. Selected works from over 150 new pieces accepted into APSU’s art collection within the past five years. This exhibition will feature 125 pieces of donated, gifted and purchased works of art and include artists such as Ansel Adams, Deborah Gould Hall, Bonnie Schiffman, Albert Watson, Michel Thersiquel, Khari Turner, Gamaliel Rodriquez, Philippe Salaün, Karen Seapker and many more. The Department of Art + Design is the primary repository for art on the Austin Peay State University campus. The department’s mission is to provide meaningful encounters with its objects through the acquisition, preservation and interpretation of the collection to the university community of students, faculty and staff, alumni, and the region’s general public. Its vision is to provide meaningful educational experiences and encounters with the visual arts. The educational experiences will concentrate on exhibitions from the collection to shape and enrich the quality of life for the residents and visitors of Austin Peay and to become a leader in the areas of art appreciation and interdisciplinary education for the local community.
Wansoo Kim: Table Monsters. Sept. 27-Oct. 22, 2021. Reception/Gallery Talk: Oct. 7, noon-1:30 p.m., gallery talk begins at 12:15 p.m. at The New Gallery. First Thursday Art Walk: Oct. 7, 5-7:30 p.m. at The New Gallery. Artist Lecture: Oct. 7, 6 p.m. at the Art + Design Building, Room 120. New works by APSU Art + Design faculty member Wansoo Kim. Kim was born and raised in South Korea where he received his BFA in Ceramics from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. He earned an MFA in Studio Art from University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2018. Before arriving at Austin Peay, he participated in an artist-in-residence program at Belger Crane Yard Studios in Kansas City. Since moving to the United States in 2013, he has shown his works regularly in national and international exhibitions. This new series of works, Table Monsters, is an assemblage of recognizable and unidentifiable elements, intended to evoke an environment where realism and surrealism coexist. Through both distant interaction with the works and personal closer examination, the viewer’s accessibility to the space and experience is restricted. By creating this experience for the viewer, Kim proposes to question our perceptions, our beliefs, our ignorance and our awareness.
Preserve & Protect. Nov. 1-Dec. 10, 2021. Curator Talk with Erika Diamond: Nov. 1, 6 p.m., Art + Design Building, Room 120. Reception/Gallery Talk: Nov. 2, noon-1:30 p.m., gallery talk begins at 12:15 p.m. at The New Gallery. First Thursday Art Walk: Nov. 4, 5-7:30 p.m. Artist Talk: Paul Rucker, Nov. 9, 6 p.m.; First Thursday Art Walk: Dec. 2, 5:00-7:30 p.m. “Preserve & Protect” looks at the complex ways in which textiles, particularly garments, can relay the resilience of a culture – worn for protection but also as a way to project one’s identity. These textiles have the power to preserve but also rewrite cultural history, specifically American History. Artists: Anangookwe Wolf, Paul Rucker, Winnie Van der Rijn, Michael Sylvan Robinson, Stephanie Syjuco. Co-curated with assistant director of CVA Galleries at Chautauqua Institution, Erika Diamond.
Christina West: Mere Mortals. Jan. 12-Feb. 12, 2022. Artist Lecture: Feb. 1, 6 p.m., Art + Design Building, Room 120. Reception/Gallery Talk: Feb. 2, noon-1:30 p.m., gallery talk begins at 12:15 p.m. at The New Gallery. First Thursday Art Walk: Feb. 3, 5-7:30 p.m. The awkwardness and ambiguity of body language, the enigma of interiority, and the tension between a desire to connect and a discomfort in social situations, make the human figure an endlessly captivating subject for West’s sculpture, video and installations. Her work is rooted in figuration as a way to try to understand and connect with others, and is informed by contemporary art criticism and social theory about the gaze as a way to call out dynamics and politics that complicate the act of looking. Broadly speaking, addressing the gaze allows her to reflect on her relationships with others and consider what those dynamics can reveal about how we understand ourselves and others. West is a sculptor and installation artist who has extensively exhibited her work across the country in venues such as the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), The Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, New York), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo, New York), Plug Projects (Kansas City, Missouri), and Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, Georgia). Additionally, West’s work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts, and the Virginia Groot Foundation. West earned her MFA from Alfred University (Alfred, New York) in 2006 and lives in Atlanta where she is an associate professor of ceramics and three-dimensional studies in the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State University.
Listening: The Fourth String. Raheleh Filsoofi, Reza Filsoofi. Feb. 21-March 25, 2022. Artist Lecture: TBD. Reception: TBD at The New Gallery. First Thursday Art Walk: March 3, 5-7:30 p.m. Musical Performances/Nowruz celebration: March 19, time TBD. This project is a series of interactive multimedia installations. Public performances reimagine the silenced existence of the Iranian musician, Moshtagh Ali Shah, and explain his historic contributions to music. The project addresses the concept of sound, suggesting the act of listening can power community engagement, promote social change and foster a better future. The combination of art and music has the potential to facilitate thoughtful listening and expand cultural awareness. This project creates opportunities for dynamic community engagement and exchange through interactive installations and performances. Additional funding for this exhibition was provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission.
54^th Annual Juried Student Exhibition. April 4-27, 2022. First Thursday Art Walk: April 7, 5-7:30 p.m. Reception/Awards Night: April 27, 5-7 p.m. at The New Gallery; Awards Ceremony: April 27, 5:30 p.m. The Department of Art + Design at Austin Peay is proud of our students and wants to reward our outstanding student artists for their hard work and creativity. The 54th Annual Student Juried Art Exhibition is professionally juried from outside Austin Peay, emulating the practice of real-world art shows. The exhibition showcases the best artwork produced by students during the past year and allows students to participate in a professional exhibition where a qualified juror selects artwork and artistic merit awards.

Visiting Speakers

The 2020-21 CECA Visiting Artists Speaker Series features artists from Richmond, Virginia; Canyon Country, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Brooklyn, New York, and two based in Los Angeles, California.

Sept. 21, 2021: Little Friends of Printmaking is a husband-and-wife team, JW & Melissa Buchanan, that first made a name for themselves by designing and printing silkscreened concert posters, but soon branched out into further fields, designing fancy junk for whoever would pay them money. In addition to their work as illustrators and designers, they continue their fine art pursuits through exhibitions, lectures, and artists’ residencies worldwide, spreading the gospel of silkscreen to anyone inclined to listen. The Little Friends currently live in Los Angeles with two very round cats. Their awards include honors from the Art Directors’ Club, American Illustration and Communication Arts. Their work has been featured in books including New Masters of Poster Design [Rockport] and Handmade Nation [Princeton Architectural Press] and has appeared in magazines including Bloomberg BusinessWeek, WIRED and Sierra. Artist talk, 6 p.m. During their visit, they will also be conducting a printmaking workshop with our students.
Nov. 9, 2021: Paul Rucker is a multimedia visual artist, composer and musician. His practice often integrates live performance, original musical compositions and visual art installation. For nearly two decades, Rucker has used his brand of art-making as a social practice, which illuminates the legacy of enslavement in America and its relationship to the current socio-political moment. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research and basic human emotions. Rucker has received numerous grants, awards and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a MAP Fund Grantee for performance. He received a Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, for which he is the first artist in residence at the new National Museum of African American Culture. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, TED Fellow and Senior Fellow, Rauschenburg Fellow, and an iCubed Arts Research Fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the curator for Creative Collaboration for VCUarts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Rucker’s visit is in conjunction with his work that is included in the Preserve & Protect exhibition in The New Gallery. Artist Lecture, 6 p.m.
Feb. 8, 2022: Jean Shin, recognized for her monumental installations, transforms large accumulations of everyday objects into expressions of identity and community engagement. For each project, she amasses vast collections of a particular object – prescription pill bottles, sports trophies, sweaters – often sourced through donations from individuals in a participating community. These intimate objects then become the materials for her conceptually rich sculptures, videos and site-specific installations that interrogate our connection with consumption, environmental impact and the life cycle of objects. Distinguished by her meticulous, labor-intensive process, Shin’s arresting installations reflect individuals’ personal lives as well as collective issues that we face as a society. Shin’s innovative work has been widely exhibited in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, Crow Collection in Dallas and Storm King Art Center. Her works have been on view at the New Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum of Fine Art Boston, Asia Society Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Barnes Foundation, among other prestigious museums. This year Shin has a solo project at Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, New York. In recognition of excellence, she has received numerous awards, including two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Architecture/Environmental Structures (2008) and Sculpture (2003), Korea Arts Foundation of America, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Asian Cultural Council, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Art Award. Her works and interviews have been featured in many publications, including The New York Times, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Artnews, Frieze Art, Hyperallergic, and Brooklyn Rail. Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the United States, Shin attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1999 and received a BFA and MS from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She also received an honorary doctorate from the New York Academy of Art. Shin is a tenured adjunct professor of Fine Art at Pratt Institute and a recipient of Pratt’s 2017 Alumni Achievement Award. Shin is president of Joan Mitchell Foundation and serves on the Board of the National YoungArts Foundation. She lives and works in Brooklyn and Hurley, New York. Artist Lecture, 6 p.m. In addition to her lecture, she will also be conducting studio visits with interested Art + Design students.
March 24, 2022: Kenturah Davis is an artist working between Los Angeles and Accra (Ghana). Her work oscillates between various facets of portraiture and design. Using text as a point of departure, she explores the fundamental role that language has in shaping how we understand ourselves and the world around us. This manifests in a variety of forms including drawings, textiles, sculpture and performances. Davis was commissioned by LA Metro to create large-scale, site-specific work that will be permanently installed on the new Crenshaw/LAX rail line, opening in 2020. Her work has been included in institutional exhibitions in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Davis earned her BA from Occidental College and MFA Yale University School of Art. Davis was an inaugural artist fellow at NXTHVN in New Haven, Connecticut. Davis is an artist working between Los Angeles and Accra (Ghana). Her work oscillates between various facets of portraiture and design. Using text as a point of departure, she explores the fundamental role that language has in shaping how we understand ourselves and the world around us. This manifests in a variety of forms including drawings, textiles, sculpture and performances. Davis was commissioned by LA Metro to create large-scale, site-specific work that will be permanently installed on the new Crenshaw/LAX rail line, opening in 2020. Her work has been included in institutional exhibitions in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Davis earned her BA from Occidental College and MFA Yale University School of Art. Davis was an inaugural artist fellow at NXTHVN in New Haven, Connecticut. Artist Lecture at 6 p.m.
March 29, 2022: LaToya Hobbs is a native of North Little Rock, Arkansas, and lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. She received her BA in Studio Art with an emphasis in painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and an MFA in Printmaking from Purdue University. LaToya’s work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty and cultural identity while reexamining the traditional triadic artist, model, viewer, relationship. Her exhibition record includes several national and international exhibitions such as the Tulipamwe International Artists’ Exhibition at the National Art Gallery of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia (Africa), Prizm Art Fair, Miami, Florida, Salt of the Earth at the Community Folk Arts Center in Syracuse, New York, Abandoned Margins: Policing the Black Female Body, at Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, and the Promising Artists of the 21st Century Art Exhibition at the Sophia Wananmaker Galleries in San Jose, Costa Rica among others. LaToya’s work has also been featured in Transition: An International Review, a publication of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and has recently been added to the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art. Additionally, LaToya devotes her time to teaching and inspiring young artists as a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Artist Lecture at 6 p.m. During her visit, Hobbs will be working with our printmaking studio to produce a limited edition print of her work, a copy of which will be donated to the University Art Collection.
April 12, 2022: Jordan Koch is a storyboard artist and character designer in the animation industry. Growing up in Pennsylvania, he went on to attend Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2012 with a degree in hand-drawn animation. His credits include Disney Television Animation, Nickelodeon Animation Studio, Warner Bros./Renegade Animation, Penguin Random House, and Animation Magazine. Koch is a member of the Television Academy, The Animation Guild (Local 839), and ASIFA-Hollywood. Artist Lecture at 6 p.m. During his visit, Koch will also conduct a storyboarding workshop with Art + Design animation students.

The New Gallery will be open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday or by appointment. Curator-guided tours are also available upon request for small groups. Closed on weekends and holidays and follows the university’s academic calendar. For more information on the exhibitions or lectures, contact Michael Dickins, gallery director, at dickinsm@apsu.edu. To stay informed of upcoming events or scheduling changes, follow both The New Gallery and the Department of Art + Design on Facebook and Instagram.

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