2010 Exhibition Archives

TAWNI SHULER: Ecotone 

February 5 – March 12, 2010

Artist Talk February 25,  6:00 p.m.

We are pleased to present the works of new visiting artist faculty member, Tawni Shuler, in this exhibition that exposes her works of the past few years along with works completed while at UVU. A graduate with a Master of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University, and a native of Wyoming, Shuler brings a concern for connection with earth-place in her works. Having been raised with the rigors and unique experiences of farm life in Wyoming, Shuler combines her sense of aesthetic responsiveness with the life and death, dirt and skin experiences of her upbringing.  She chooses to call this exhibit Ecotone and offers this definition: Ecotone: the place where forest meets meadow, desert touches river.  It’s the frontier where communities of humankind and wild animals touch each other.  It’s that shaky space between who we are and who we appear to be, the gap between reality and mystery, the certain and the imagined.     - Joanne Smith from What Wildness is This.  Shuler's work ranges in size from small to enormous and will occupy two of the galleries in the museum. Her work carries a curious luminosity. While virtually non-objective, she nonetheless acknowledges Caravagio and Turner as sources of inspiration. Visit her website here.

Image: Tawni Shuler, Tumbleweeds and Drifts, Acrylic, pastel, on canvas, 60"x35" 2007.

KELLY LARSEN after vermont

February 5 – March 12, 2010

Artist Talk February 25,  6:00 p.m.

In the summer of 2009, Larsen received a part fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. He spent thirty days in a large studio participating with other Studio Center fellows in figure explorations, and, as he says, “an explosion of conversation with other residents that included artists and writers of all genre.” The award of such a prestigious fellowship is a landmark in an artist's career. 

The “paintings” of Larsen are long in development as layer after layer of paint juxtaposes thick pouring of paint along with the most ephemeral glazes, transparencies, and translucent passages. In others, he integrates contour drawings or partially modeled figures, as he deems necessary to achieve the desired state of being of the work. 

Art of OUR CENTURY  

June 11 - July 23, 2010

Art of OUR CENTURY promotes art unique to our time, to our people, of our identity.

Art of OUR CENTURY engages the aesthetic dialogue of today, and reflects contemporary visual imagery, ideas and experience. Artists from Utah, Idaho, Colorado and California are featured. They include, Nicole Arrington, Nathan Barnes, Brian Christensen, Van Chu, Lee R. Cowan, Davey Hawkins, Levi Jackson, Laurie Lisonbee, Jessica Polzin McCoy, Nicholas Mendoza, Chris Purdie, Jesse Royston, Viviana Santamarina, Omar Sarabia, Tawni Shuler, Deborah K. Snider, Tom Stephens, and Kathleen Thompson.

The show was juried by Deb Banerjee, Curator of Exhibitions and Programs at The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University.

AoOC

HONORABLE MENTION AWARDS

Levi Jackson, Invasive Light Study III, 2010 Documented Installation

Art Through the Cultural Revolution  

Along with "From the Masses to the Masses: Art of the Yan'an Cave Artists Group" a film documentary  

September 14 - December 17, 2010 

The exhibit includes the work of several artists known as the Cave Artists Group (Yaodong Huapai) who worked under the direction of Beijing based artist Jin Zhilin.  Jin, a student of Xu Beihong and later a contemporary of Constantine Maximov at the Beijing Academy of Fine Arts, was sent to Yan’an in the midst of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) where he recruited local artists such as Feng Shanyun, Chen Sanqiao, Song Ruxin, and others to study art at the Yan’an Masses Art Studio that he directed.

Yan’an was the Chinese Communists’ revolutionary capital in Shaanxi Province in northwestern China for thirteen years (1936-1949).  Although a remote and poor rural area, Yan’an has a strong folk art tradition.  However, Yan’an is unique because of its rich revolutionary traditions.  Following the Maoist dictum of “learning from the masses,” Jin Zhilin required his students to go to the countryside and study local folk art with peasant artists.  Jin’s students incorporated Shaanxi folk art influences, such as paper cutting, into their woodblock prints. The art in the collection reflects these elements of local folk art and the historical significance of the region.  Art was created using various mediums: woodcuts, watercolors (gouache) and oil.  Woodcuts and watercolors were more common because oil painting in the countryside at the time was less practical.

The collection includes Jin’s early work from the 1950s, which was heavily influenced by Soviet Social Realism, work produced during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) that towards the end was illustrative of the Revolutionary Romanticism engulfing the arts in China, and works from the post-Cultural Revolution period (late 1970s-early 1980s), reflecting more traditional themes and aspects of local culture that Jin encouraged his students to study. Geographic landmarks such as the Yan’an pagoda, traditional Shaanxi cave residences, the headdress worn by local Shaanxi men, and influences of local folk art are common characteristics of the works of the Cave Artist Group that emerged under Jin Zhilin’s influence.

The collection is original and was acquired in numerous trips to China between 1999-2008. The art of the exhibit was not originally created to be sold, as there was no commercial value to art at that time.  Instead, art was utilized for social and political purposes. In the case of the woodblocks, making only a few copies before shaving the block for a new woodcut was common. In most cases the artists were not even sure what happened to their work once it was turned over to local authorities to be reviewed and exhibited in support of domestic and even international policy initiatives.  As a result, nearly all of the pieces are the only known copies to exist.

Period photographs and two documentary films were a part of this exhibition.






 

2010 Exhibition Archives