
Professor David Bieloh has been invited to present his paper, “Moving Nowhere Fast: The Embrace of Appropriation” at the upcoming 4th International Conference on Design Principles and Practices to be held in Chicago, IL in February, 2010.

Professor David Bieloh has been invited to present his paper, “Moving Nowhere Fast: The Embrace of Appropriation” at the upcoming 4th International Conference on Design Principles and Practices to be held in Chicago, IL in February, 2010.
We are pleased to announce our top three winners in the “Tape on the Wall” project. The winning designs were selected by our judge Carey Roberson, a professor of Digital Photography at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. Carey had a great time viewing all of the work, and commented on the difficulty in selecting his favorite three. Ultimately, he based his decisions on how well each student utilized the assigned space, overall creativity and ingenuity, and willingness to push the medium in unique and unexpected ways.
The top three winners are:
First Place: Sarah Henley
Second Place: Hannah Pfeiffer
Third Place: TIE between Jillian Sharp and Kit Curlin

First Place Sarah Henley

Second Place Hannah Pfeiffer

Third Place Kit Curlin

Third Place Jillian Sharp
Congratulations to everyone for a great installation!
David and Summer
Students from both Visual Fundamentals classes recently participated in a temporary collaborative installation in the second floor hallway of the Moses-Provine building. Each student was assigned 6.5 feet of wall space, and given a roll or two of black masking tape. The results were incredible.

students working on the "Tape on the Wall" installation
Ouachita Baptist University will host Fabrizio Conti, an Italian scholar speaking on “Early Christian Art & Iconography in Rome.” Sept. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Hickingbotham Hall’s Young Auditorium on Ouachita’s campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.
In addition to the lecture, Conti will present a faculty colloquium Oct. 5 at 12 noon on “Learned traditions against superstitious rituals in early Renaissance Italy.” This lecture will be repeated for the public Oct. 7 at 5 p.m. in the Garrison Center’s Ross Room on Henderson’s campus. He will also lecture to students during Western Letters and Chaucer classes at OBU.
“He brings a firsthand perspective on the Roman catacombs and early Christian art that we Americans don’t usually have access to,” said Mary Beth Long, assistant professor of English at Ouachita.
Conti is a doctoral candidate in medieval studies at Central European University in Budapest, has studied at the Nordic Centre for Medieval Studies and has spent time working in the Vatican Archives. He earned a Master of Humanities degree in medieval history at the Università degli Studi di Roma.
Conti has presented at conferences in Italy, England and Greece, and has made many publications, both in English and Italian.
“He’s a medievalist historian,” Long noted, commenting on Conti’s benefits to the Ouachita community, “so his take on early Christian art and culture will be interestingly different from what we might get on the same topic in a class at OBU.”
For more information, please contact Mary Beth Long at 870-245-5336 or longm@obu.edu.
Perspectives in Painting: Dolores Justus, Carey Roberson, Steven Wise is a curated exhibit focusing on 3 painters from Arkansas. The work of these painters exemplifies prominent trends within the discourse of painting over the last several decades. The exhibit will be on view August 24 – September 18, 2009. Follow these links to find out more about the artists: Dolores Justus, Carey Roberson, Steven Wise .
OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, August 27 6:00 – 7:30 PM

Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 8 AM – 5 PM
870/245-5000
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June 5- August 2, 2009
Townsend Wolfe Gallery
Admission is Free
An extensive representation of Jun Kaneko’s work, this exhibition features ceramic sculpture, drawings and paintings created by the artist over the past two decades. Born in Nagoya Japan, Kaneko became involved in the west coast’s Clay Revolution that discarded the functional and ornamental traditions of ceramic arts in favor of an unconventional, expressive sculptural medium. Kaneko studied with many of the artists who formed the Contemporary Ceramics Movement and is internationally recognized for interlacing the dynamics of color, form, volume and space in his work. Kaneko refers to his various sculptures as chunks, heads and dangos, which can stand as high as 13 feet. His creations reflect contemporary abstraction and typically embody vibrant colors while focusing on line and geometric shapes.
When:
Event is ongoing: Until Sunday, August 2, 2009

Kaneko at work

Kaneko with a couple of his gigantic, hand built, ceramic heads

September by Ben Whitehouse, 56"X69", oil on canvas
…[The] next stop on the 2009 tour is at the Arkansas Studies Institute at 401 President Clinton Avenue in downtown Little Rock. The exhibition will arrive at the Arkansas Studies Institute on Friday, July 10, and will remain on display until Saturday, August 15.
An opening reception will be held from 5-8 p.m. on Friday, July 10, during 2nd Friday Art Night.
Admission is free and hours of operation are Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. The exhibition will be located in the main gallery.
Now in its 22nd year, Small Works on Paper is presented annually by the Arkansas Arts Council. It showcases up to 40 small-sized visual works (no larger than 24×24 inches) by Arkansas artists in a year-long traveling show throughout the state.
More than 300 entries were submitted for this year’s exhibition, which was juried by Edwin Pinkston, professor emeritus at the Louisiana Tech University School of Art.
For more information on Small Works on Paper, visit
www.arkansasarts.org, e-mail cheri@arkansasheritage.org, or call Cheri Leffew at (501) 324-9767.
{read more at http://www.arktimes.com and the Arkansas Democrat Gazette}
I just returned last week from Bethel University in St. Paul, MN where I attended the 2009 biennial CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) conference. The conference was a 3-day event with speakers from a variety of walks including, among others, Miroslav Volf, Makoto Fujimura, and Daniel Siedell. Beyond the general sessions, the conference offered attendees a variety of tracks focusing on scholarship, spiritual formation, art education, gallery and museum practices, and a final track, rather popular, offering a reflection on culture, art and art practices that took as its model Walter Brueggeman’s critical model for understanding the Psalms. Additionally each morning began with corporate worship, led by a very enjoyable Brian Moss of Seattle, Washington (http://prayerbookproject.blogs.com/prayerbook/). All this was interspersed with great people to converse with and get to know at meals and coffee breaks. Especially enjoyable was the Late Late Show, which invited artists to share from their portfolios in an informal setting. We had 3 evenings of these sessions which went on until about midnight. I would do it all again.
Daniel Siedell shared the following in a brief lecture one morning at the conference. I found these comments on his blog, http://dansiedell.typepad.com/blog/, and thought I should share them with you.
I just returned from a thoroughly enjoyable experience at the CIVA conference hosted by Bethel University. Among my responsibilities was to offer some remarks on the theme of the conference, which was Culture? What follows are the remarks I read.
Most Christian commentary on culture reminds me of the scene in Moliére’sTartuffe when Monsieur Jourdain discovers, much to his delight, that he has been speaking prose all his life and didn’t even know it. Yes, we North American Christians have indeed been making culture all along. But is it great culture? What follows are three very short vignettes that may serve as icons for us to contemplate as we reflect on art and culture at this conference.
It was Aleksandr Tvardovsky’s habit to lounge about his apartment in his bathrobe while he read from some of the piles of manuscripts that littered his living quarters. As editor of the liberal magazine Novy Mir in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, Tvardovsky was well known as a poet as well as a staunch defender of his literary magazine’s independence. One morning he came upon a manuscript. After reading the first few lines he stopped, put it down, took a shower, shaved, put on his best clothes, and drove to his office, where he finished reading it. What was the manuscript? It was, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote it in secret in the late 1950s.Tvardovsky was so moved by it that he convinced Khrushchev to publish it and it appeared in Novy Mir in serial form in 1962. Due in part to Tvardovsky’s support, Solzhenitsyn a few years later will win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It is easy to see how Solzhenitsyn is the hero of the story. He risked his life, not only by committing his words to paper but sending them out into public. But we must not forget the editor. Tvardovsky recognized the greatness of the manuscript and, at significant personal risk, fought with the State and its censors for its publication. He lived surrounded by culture, by manuscripts written by intelligent and creative writers. Yet it took him just a few minutes to realize that in Solzhenitsyn he was reading something great. We need Solzhenitsyns who will have the courage not merely to write for the dresser drawer, as the Russians called it, but for the public. But we also need Tvardovskys who can recognize great artistic and cultural achievements amidst the clutter of cultured mediocrity that saturates our lives. Are we capable even of recognizing great art, great culture?