Department of Art Presents Exciting Schedule for April

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – April brings an exciting month of events for the department of art in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences as many student exhibitions are shown in venues on and off campus, in addition to distinguished guest artists who will present workshops, exhibitions and lectures at the University of Arkansas.

The Fine Arts Center Gallery will be full throughout the month of April with thesis exhibitions from four master of fine arts candidates representing four different concentrations. Each student’s work will be on display in the gallery between Monday and Friday, and each exhibition will conclude with a reception from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. that Friday evening.

Toile, a painting exhibition by Dilenia Garcia, began on Monday, April 1, and will run until Friday, April 5. Her art explores material culture in combination with the application of paint as a generative and transformative process.

Ceramics student Nichole Howard will present an exhibition entitled Cycle from Monday, April 8, until Friday, April 12. This exhibit will mark the culmination of a year long project in which the artist explored the process of growing her own food and medicinal herbs. Using material culture as a physical and conceptual platform, Howard inverts the meaning of objects through material and offers a radically different view of their form and substance, using her research to learn more about Americans’ relationship to food.

The printmaking work of Samantha Dixon will be on display between Monday, April 15, and Friday, April 19. Her exhibit, Tethered, alludes to the innate fear of forgetting where an individual’s family originates, both physically and historically. After discovering that her family was almost annihilated by the Holocaust, Dixon began this visual documentation of the impact on the families of survivors. Her work is highly influenced by her research on her grandmother’s experiences as a Mauthausen concentration camp survivor and the impact it had on her own life.

Kat Wilson will present her photography exhibition, Portrayal, from Monday, April 22, until Friday, April 26. Her work examines the lives of individuals as observed through the eyes and lens of the artist. In each portrait, Wilson presents her subjects as an assimilation of their own environment and objects which occupy that environment.

The sUgAR student pop-up gallery will make its home in the basement space in the East Square Plaza, formerly the Bank of America building, on the Fayetteville square this month to host multiple exhibits by University of Arkansas art students. Gallery visiting hours are from 1:30 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays and from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. In addition to the exhibitions, the gallery will host an opening reception at 5 p.m. Thursday, April 4, and a closing reception at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 26.

 An honors thesis exhibition entitled Crafted Identities by bachelor of fine arts students Emily Chase, Melissa Love and Jeanne Vockroth, opens Thursday, April 4, in the sUgAR gallery.

The gallery will also host sculptural installments by Cambry Pierce Duperier Newton, Todd Pentico, Justin Tobin, Eric Jackson, Jeanne Vockroth, Ven Yates, Samantha Hussey and Sarah Colpitts, students of associate professor Bethany Springer, throughout the month of April. The group exhibition will feature new, site-specific works created by each student in their own designated space. Projects will range from three-dimensional works integrating sound and light to video installations.

Selected works from the painting students of assistant professor Stephanie Pierce will also be on display in additional galleries of the East Square Plaza building throughout the month.

April events at the sUgAR gallery will culminate with an exhibition of work that includes painting, video installation, ceramic sculpture and photography completed during the spring semester by master of fine arts candidates Lindsy Barquist, Wilson Borja, Bryanna Jaramillo, Jonathan McDaniel, Cambry Pierce Duperier Newton, Todd Pentico, Laura Polaski and Justin Tobin.

Bachelor of fine arts student Celi Birke will present her honors thesis exhibition, Tibet in Exile: A photography exhibition of Tibet’s Refugee Nation during the first week of April in Studio 3, located at 3 W. Mountain Street on the Fayetteville square. The exhibit will open with a reception during First Thursday on April 4 and will be on display until Sunday, April 7. A portion of the profits from each print sold at the event will be donated back to the locations that were photographed.

The collaborative sculpture work of guest artists Reilly and Kelly Dickens-Hoffman are on display in the Anne Kittrell Gallery in the Arkansas Union. The exhibition opened Wednesday, April 3, and will conclude with a reception at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 16. The artists will be on campus on Wednesday, April 17, to give a workshop and OxyAcetylene demonstration to a sculpture class, and they will also present a public lecture on Thursday, April 18, at 6:30 p.m. in Fine Arts Center room 213.

Senior painting and drawing students will present a series of one-night exhibitions under the direction of painting professor, Stephanie Pierce. All events will be held at LaLaLand Art Gallery, 641 Martin Luther King Blvd. in Fayetteville. Figuratively Speaking by Mia Buonaiuto and Ray Parker, is scheduled for Friday, April 19, with a reception from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. and music by Candy Lee beginning at 7:30 p.m. We Sages: Repeat and dense by Natalie Brown and Ben Flowers may be seen from 8 p.m. until 9 p.m. Thursday, April 25.