Artist and former Faculty Member Kimowan Metchewais continues to inspire other artists long after his untimely passing in 2011. Fellow artist Wendy Red Star speaks movingly about how she first encountered his work and what it means to her in this column in the New York Times: Seeing Myself in the Work of an Artist I Never Met
Newest faculty member Martin Wannam is one of the artists chosen for the XXIII Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala.
From their website:
“Fundación Paiz is very excited about the twenty-third edition of the Bienal de Arte Paiz, which will take place from July 13 to 30, 2023, with an outstanding curatorial team made up of Francine Birbragher (USA) and Juan Canela (ESP).
The curatorial team focused on creating an inclusive platform to open dialogue in the region because they noticed that spaces where ideas and thoughts are shared are important to nurture art.
In 2022, a public call was held to select national and international artists. Thanks to this, a very diverse exhibition was built. We are looking for new ways to present art so that it reaches more people!
In addition to the exhibitions, we will have different activities such as conservatories, workshops, and meetings that promote spaces for collective learning. Having your participation is the most important thing!”
You can see the full list of participating artists in the Bienal press release.
Emeritus Professor Mary Sturgeon’s new book The Gymnasium Area: Sculpture (Corinth XXIII.1) was published in December of 2022 and is now available for purchase.
Volume XXIII in the Corinth series is dedicated to the finds from the Gymnasium Area, excavated between 1965 and 1972 by James R. Wiseman and the University of Texas at Austin. Fascicle XXIII.1 presents the marble sculpture, 126 pieces dating between the 6th century B.C. and 5th century A.D. and found in or near a variety of built features, including the ornately decorated Bath-Fountain complex. Among the sculptural finds are portraits of athletes and civic officials and depictions of Dionysos, Hermes, and Aphrodite and the nymphs. Herms and statue bases also form part of the assemblage. This corpus grants us insight into the sculptural practices after the founding of the Roman colony at Corinth, and critical knowledge concerning display context, reuse, and the deposition of sculpture at a gymnasium in a large regional center of the eastern Mediterranean.
Studio Art faculty member Sabine Gruffat will be giving a talk at Duke University on November 1. “Moving and Being Moved: a Conversation with Sabine Gruffat” is at 6 pm at Duke’s Rubenstein Arts Center in the Film Theater.
October 25, 4:30-5:30 pm, Visual Arts Center, 117 Semans Lecture Hall, Davidson College
Sabine Gruffat is a digital media artist and award-winning filmmaker. Her creative work includes experimental video and animation, media-enhanced performance, participatory public art, and immersive installation.
Sabine’s films and videos have screened at festivals worldwide including the Image Forum Festival in Japan, The Ann Arbor Film Festival and Migrating Forms in New York. Her feature essay films I Have Always Been A Dreamer and Speculation Nation have screened internationally including at the Viennale, MoMA, Cinéma du Réel at the Centre Pompidou, and The Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.
She has also produced art for public spaces as well as interactive installations that have been shown at the Zolla Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, Art In General, Devotion Gallery, PS1 Contemporary Art Museum, and Hudson Franklin in New York.
She teaches film and animation at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Co-sponsored by Davidson College’s Departments of Art and English and Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement
The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites applications for Department Chair and Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor in the Department of Art & Art History, which is comprised of diverse faculty representing a range of fields, media, and methodologies. The start date will be July 1, 2023. We welcome candidates in any discipline of art history, studio art practice, or related fields with the credentials to be appointed at the rank of full professor with tenure. Candidates will be asked to articulate an innovative vision for the future of the department that values forward thinking, critical inquiry, creativity, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are seeking candidates who have an outstanding record of research and/or artistic achievement, teaching, and service, as well as experience as a dynamic, consultative leader and administrator. The chair supports departmental faculty and staff in their academic, research, and service activities, and facilitates student recruitment, budget administration, and personnel management. We seek applicants committed to diversity and inclusion in higher education, including but not limited to recruiting and retaining diverse faculty, staff, and students. Charged with building these important relationships, the chair will work with a wide range of constituencies. The term of the chair will be four years, with the possibility for a second term, after which the chair will continue to serve on the faculty as a Full Professor. We welcome applications from individuals who may have had non-traditional career paths or who have achieved excellence outside of academia.
We welcome candidates in any discipline of art history, studio art practice, or related fields with the credentials to be appointed at the rank of full professor with tenure. Candidates will be asked to articulate an innovative vision for the future of the department that values forward thinking, critical inquiry, creativity, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are seeking candidates who have an outstanding record of research and/or artistic achievement, teaching, and service, as well as experience as a dynamic, consultative leader and administrator.
Congratulations to Hồng-Ân and Lien on the opening of their group show Circular Ruins at island in NYC.
Rubber Factory begins a new chapter as island | gallery inaugural exhibition: Circular Ruinsreception on September 30 from 6 to 8 pm
Open through October 30
Fundraiser Exhibition Event
Opening Reception: Friday, September 9th at Peel.
Closing Reception: Saturday, September 24th at BASEMENT.
BASEMENT X PEEL will be on view at both BASEMENT and Peel from Friday, September 9th until Saturday, September 24th. Peel will host an opening reception and silent auction on Friday, September 9th from 6-9 pm, during the Carrboro, Chapel Hill 2nd Friday Art Walk, with refreshments in the parking lot and live music. BASEMENT will host a closing reception and silent auction on Saturday, September 24th from 6-9 pm with “A STANK/STINK Outdoor Happenings,” a performance art experience.
All work in the exhibition will be available for purchase via both traditional sale and silent auction during both receptions and during all open hours of the exhibition at both locations. All proceeds from sales will go to supporting BASEMENT and Peel programming.
BASEMENT Open Hours: 9/10 & 9/11 and 9/17 & 9/18 from 2-5 pm
BASEMENT address: 605 Caswell Rd. Chapel Hill, NC (stairs to BASEMENT on left of driveway)
Featuring work by Adriana Ameigh // Alissa Van Atta // Allison Tierney //Anna-Christina De La Iglesia // Ashlie Johnson Coggins // Ayla Gizlice David D’Agostino // Dawn Colsia // Emma Stevens // Fabrizio Bianchi // Georgia Paige Welch // Hillary Ensminger // Hồng-Ân Trương // Jean Gray Mohs // Jenn Adams // Jimmy Fountain // John Shaw // Jon Neal // Jonh Blanco // Joy Drury Cox // Jphono1 // Leah Foushee Waller // Madeleine Grace Popkin // Madison Speyer // Mark Allen Soderstrom // Mark Anthony Brown Jr. // Marsha Glickman // Matthew Tauch // Natasja Brezenski // Nathaniel Quinn // Paget Fink // Paul Deblinger // Peg Bachenheimer // Rachel Moon // River Cortes // Rusty Shackleford // Serena Fenton // Shelley Smith // Sterling Bowen // Tama Hochbaum // Toni Hartley // Tricia Russ // Gadisse Lee // Jiahn Kang // Lindsay Metivier
Turner Carroll Gallery
Lien Truong: From the Earth Rise Radiant Beings
August 26 – September 25, 2022
Opening Reception, August 26, 5-7 pm
In her first solo exhibition at Turner Carroll Gallery Lien Truong exhibits works from her series From the Earth Rise Radiant Beings. The series consists of bold explorations of color and form, and staunch repudiation of Orientalist stereotypes. Taking female figures from 18th- and 19th-century paintings she transforms them into silhouettes painted in the palest yellow hues and reappropriates the figures’ sexualized and submissive gestures into a kind of Asian futurism. Through otherworldly landscapes and anamorphic silk shapes, Truong creates narratives of love transcending generations to create messages of resistance, autonomy, and beauty.
Patricia Sweetow Gallery Los Angeles
Linda Sormin | Luis A. Sahagun | Lien Truong
September 3 – October 15, 2022
Artist Reception, September 10, 2022, 2-8 pm
PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY is excited to announce our Inaugural Exhibition in Los Angeles at 1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, 3rd Floor, with artists Lien Truong, North Carolina; Linda Sormin, New York and Luis A. Sahagun, California. The three artists in this exhibition offer practices immersed in complex visual and political American histories. They share personal, spiritual, and cultural stories of migration during war, economic collapse, and sovereign colonization. Their journeys come alive through a mélange of performative sculpture and painting, amplified by their respective interrogations of ancestral, racial, gender, and ritual erasure. The rich, profound impact of their ideas finds life in unexpected iterations of nontraditional and historical materials. The three artists offer compelling and imaginative cultural forms that examine deeply personal histories that have endured within and alongside dominant culture under extraordinary circumstances.
From his obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (author Bo Emerson):
Michael D. Harris, associate professor of art history at Emory University, a published author, a curator, and an artist collected by individuals and museums, has been described as a Renaissance man.
But there was at least one discipline he couldn’t master: He was bested by a fiendish reed instrument called the saxophone.
His abandoned alto sax sits on top of Rev. Dwight Andrews’ piano. Andrews, a fellow Emory University professor and an accomplished musician and composer, began teaching Harris saxophone when they were both students at Yale University.
Harris never got the knack, prompting his friend Adger Cowans, a “closet” horn player, to tell him, “Michael, give me that saxophone, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
What Harris did know was the academic study of African and African-American art. He also knew how to create his own art. One of the mixed-media collages that typified Harris’ work became the centerpiece of Andrews’ living room, a celebration of ancestral images that serves as a “family altar.”
Credit: Michael D. Harris
Harris’ research and writings concerning the art of the African diaspora will have a deep impact on that field, said Andrews. “He casts a long shadow over what we think about 20th and 21st-century Black art.”
Michael DeHart Harris, of Grant Park, died Monday, July 11, of a recurrence of cancer, according to his family members. He had retired two years ago from Emory but retained the title of associate professor emeritus. He was 73.
Though he was facing cancer of the esophagus, he remained resolutely in his own home, where he lived alone, up until the last week of his life. Family and friends often spent nights there to help out.
“He was a very stubborn guy,” said his daughter Dara Heard. “That is his way. When he set his mind to something, he stuck to it. He said ‘I’m going to fight this and he fought to the very end.”
Harris was a shortstop on the baseball team as an undergraduate at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, carrying on a legacy of athleticism established by his maternal grandfather and namesake, William DeHart Hubbard.
Hubbard, a student at the University of Michigan, won the long jump at the 1924 Paris Games, becoming the first Black athlete to bring home Olympic gold in an individual sport.
The grandson, however, turned his attention from baseball to the study of art and art history in college and graduate school, earning a master of fine arts and eventually a doctorate from Yale.
He taught at Morehouse College, Spelman College, Wellesley College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dillard University before arriving at Emory.
While at Emory he published “Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation,” which dealt with the construction of Black identity through racial imagery, and with the response from Black artists, whose work uses and subverts those stereotypical tropes.
“It is a really important book,” said Richard Powell, professor of art history at Duke University. Another book, “ASHÉ: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic Expressivity,” written with Paul Carter Harrison and Pellom McDaniels III, has just been released, and “Sanctuary: A Black and Blues Aesthetic in African American Art,” is at the publisher, according to daughter Shani Harris.
Powell said Harris’ legacy will be his deep and thoughtful inquiry into the intersection of art and the African American experience. But he is also impressed with Harris’ other creative output.
“The thing about Michael is he has been able to do what I’ve not been able to do,” said Powell. “There’s an interesting balance between his vocation as an art historian, but he’s also an incredible artist. He makes incredible paintings, he makes amazing photographs.”
Powell has several of Harris’ photographs and prints in his Durham house, and said “there’s not a day that goes by without me walking past something of his that brings a smile to my face.”
Said Andrews, “Michael was prolific in terms of his published work — his books — as well as his fine art. He was constantly creating art.”
Andrews added “He was always having a multidisciplinary conversation, always making connections. He inspired all of us to look for connectivity and continuity. We all found him to be a stimulating friend and colleague.”
In 1979 Harris joined the AfriCOBRA collective (it stands for African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). The group had its origin in Chicago in the 1960s, among Black artists tired of catering to a white aesthetic.
“He kind of emphasized AfriCOBRA, as being the Black Panthers of the art world,” said fellow member Kevin Cole, Atlanta painter and educator who was invited into the group by Harris. “It was about a group of men coming together and planning their own destiny.”
Credit: Susan Ross
Cole is among the individuals portrayed in Harris’ images from a 2017 show called “Art Portraits of the Artist.” Staged at September Gray Fine Art, Harris’ photographs captured “the artist’s spirit,” said Cole. “There’s one of me, and the first thing everybody said to me is: ‘That’s you!’ The joyfulness.”
Cowans, who is also a member of AfriCOBRA, said that unlike himself, Harris was not a pessimist. “Everybody is selfish, they don’t give a (expletive), but Michael always looked at the best part of people.”
Harris’ daughter Dara said the setbacks in Harris’ life from casual racism didn’t slow him down. “That was something he would get on me about,” she said. “Don’t let your fears hold you back. To keep going, keep stepping, keep moving. Because that’s what he did. He was dealt a lot of blows in his life, but it didn’t stop him.”
Plans for a service for the late Michael D. Harris were incomplete as of Wednesday, July 20.
Link to the Journal-Constitution Obituary: Michael Harris, scholar, creator, inspired with his research, artwork
