2009–2010 Eric Dean Gallery Exhibition Calendar
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris: Sorrows of Swans
Krista Hoefle: The girl who stopped being human!
August 31–October 14, 2009
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center Opening reception for both artists, Monday, August 31, 8–9:30 p.m.
The paintings of Eleanor Spiess-Ferris are surreal narratives layered with visual metaphors depicting her perceptions of the human condition and her concerns with the nature of human existence and the continuance of our earth as we know it. “My ‘swans’ encompass human myth and human reality.”
Krista Hoefle’s installations create viewer-interactive environments of space and forms using “hybridized” methods of combining computer technology with traditional media of sculpture, printmaking, photography, video and design. Themes addressed are (cyber)feminism and the genres of science fiction and horror (the abject, mind-body dichotomy, life extension ethics, and cyborg identity).
Lamidi O. Fakeye: Africa’s Master Carver (1928-2009)
October 26–December 11, 2009
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center Opening reception, Monday, October 26, 5–7 p.m.
Internationally recognized as one of Africa’s greatest artists of modern times, Lamidi Fakeye’s success is due largely to his keen ability to transcend competing identities. Indeed, his career on four continents is the epitome of cultural hybridity. A practicing Muslim, Lamidi is a fifth-generation Yoruba religious carver best known for his sculptures of Christian and Yoruba religious themes and cultural subjects. His body of work encompasses six decades and addresses these multiple identities. At 81 year of age, he is still active and carves daily.
Note: Lamidi Olonade Fakeye passed away December 25, 2009. May Allah's mercy be upon you.
Richard Koenig: Photographic Prevarications
January 18–Feb 19, 2010
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center Opening reception, Monday, January 18, 8–9:30 p.m.
In the exhibit Photographic Prevarications, simple subject matter is presented in such a way as to underscore photography’s ability to tell untruths. Richard Koenig usually works with pictures that are re-photographed in some fashion or another. This duplicative tactic is used as a way of exploring the inherent tension that exists within photography—the capacity to both depict and deceive, concurrently. As a result, the viewer is placed at a point where depiction and deception meet, and is left teetering between the two.
Jeff Eisenberg: Drawings and Paintings
March 1–April 9, 2010
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center Opening reception, Monday, March 1, 8–9:30 p.m.
Jeff Eisenberg’s drawings and paintings explore issues of abstraction and form, space-shaping and architecture, engineered realities and utopian fantasies, territorializing and the built environment. Eisenberg is interested in how we code and design our spaces, both public and private, and how different agendas and ideologies related to these spaces can commingle to create new and unexpected systems.
The 2010 Senior Art Majors Exhibition
April 19–May 16, 2010
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center Opening reception, Monday, April 19, 8–9:30 p.m.
The 2010 Senior Art Majors Exhibition will include works in various media by Miguel Aguilar, Juan Diaz, Korey Pazour, David Rosborough, Michael Scott, and Dan Sutton.
2008–2009 Eric Dean Gallery Exhibition Calendar
Doug Calisch, Lost and Found
September 1, 2008 – October 10, 2008
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: Monday, September 1, from 8:00-9:30PM
“By working with found materials, complete with their associations and histories, I attempt to create an opportunity for each of us to reflect on our own.” –Doug Calisch
The work of Doug Calisch explores the concept of an object possessing a dual identity and function. Common among these painters, carvers and potters was a playful but willful inventiveness and I most strongly responded to their resourcefulness. As artists who often salvaged and reused materials, they seemed to create “something out of nothing,” infusing the found objects with new meaning. Materials that had outlasted their original usefulness were finding new life in the hands of these artists. Similarly, my creative process involves collecting, modifying, and assembling found materials. While preserving their identity, I create new ways of looking at and thinking about these common objects. In a different context, the history and identity of these objects are transformed, creating new layers of meaning and metaphor. While the sculptural issues of space, mass, and volume remain as important as in my previous work, these current works include a stronger appreciation for surface and color. These pieces draw on a variety of visual sources including architecture, tools, games, scientific observation, the human figure, and our natural environment. By reclaiming old materials “The Wee Ones” and the Appalachian folk artists brought new meaning to their lives.
Kristen Wilkins, Time is Eternity
October 27, 2008 – December 12, 2008
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: Monday, October 27, from 8:00-9:30PM
“Through my work, I strive to tell stories that inspire viewers to reflect on their own daily routines and surroundings.” -Kristen Wilkins
The photography of Kristen Wilkins investigates the relationships between family, culture, objects and memory. Wilkins directly asks the viewer to consider, “If an object (from our daily lives) were to disappear undocumented, could the memory still be recalled? Would another person’s possessions serve as surrogates for retrieving lost memories?” Wilkins uses traditional photographic processes and digital imaging to explore the concepts of nostalgia and absence associated with our unrecorded possessions. Objects, light, shadow, and empty space act as references to absence of people and past memories. The presence of recognizable objects carry personal or cultural significance and stimulates memories in each viewer. The objects within Wilkin’s work exist as a legacy of our families and a reminder of our pasts.
Brad Bernard: Blues Routes
January 19, 2009 – February 20, 2009
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: Monday, January 19, from 8:00-9:30PM
The musical performance of Mississippi blues and the ritual worship of gospel culture exists as a source of inspiration for the work of Brad Bernard. The paintings of Bernard span across religious and secular contexts. Bernard distinguishes between the specific perspectives of his paintings through the type of medium that he uses to create a work. In his religious imagery, Bernard depicts scenes from the ritual practice of a Pentacostal or Missionary Baptist Service. Bernard employs a mixed-media approach by combining drawings and collages to create a three-dimensional quality to the work for his works with a religious context. With his secular paintings, Bernard creates images with digitally altered photographs, maps and or wallpaper. The collage effect of the secular paintings implies the “quilt-work of location and identity.” Bernard states that the collage effect creates a visual documentary, which blends the subject and their topographical place of birth with images, events and symbols relevant to their community.
Samuel Bak: The Art of the Question
March 2, 2009 – April 10, 2009
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: Monday, March 2, from 8:00-9:30PM
The work of Samuel Bak takes on an autobiographical tone. Born in the midst of World War II, Bak and his family where sent to a ghetto in Bak’s hometown of Vilna, Poland after the German occupation. Eventually, the ghetto was transformed into a labor camp. Only Bak and his mother survived to see the end of the war. The painting of Samuel Bak expresses his experience of destruction and dehumanization during the Second World War. His paintings serve as a constant visual reminder to the horrors of our past. The Pucker Gallery in Boston, MA brings the collection of Bak’s paintings to Wabash College.
2009 Senior Art Majors Exhibition
April 20, 2009 – May 17, 2009
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: Monday, April 20, from 8:00-9:30PM
The Senior Art Majors Exhibition will include painting by Jacob Huston, Steven Mosier, Joel Patterson and Mark Turpin; ceramics by Nick Roudebush; and photography by Dan Sutton.
The Wanamaker Collection: Images of Native Americans
April 21, 2009-May 19, 2009
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph H. Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center
Images of Native Americans is a traveling exhibition of the Wanamaker Collection of Native American Photographs from the Mathers Museum of World Cultures at Indiana University. The Wanamaker Collection consists of over 8,000 photographs taken between 1908 and 1921. In 1908, Rodman Wanamaker, who was the son of a wealthy storeowner, supported a series of photographic expeditions to record the Native American population. Joseph K. Dixon led the journey and photographed Native American Indians with the intent of recording the “vanishing race” of Native Americans before they completely disappeared. The photographs by Dixon range from portraits of tribal leaders to images of everyday life. Through his experience, Dixon realized that the Native American population was not vanishing. Instead, Dixon found Native Americans to be evolving alongside their changing circumstances. After witnessing the treatment of Native Americans and the poor condition of the reservations, Dixon became an advocate for the rights of Native Americans. The photographs of the Wanamaker Collection serve as documents recording the experience and understanding of Dixion.
2005–2006 Eric Dean Gallery Exhibition Calendar
1. PRINT BIENNIAL 1: An Exhibition of Traditional and Digital Printmaking and Photography
Eric Dean Gallery and Permanent Collection Gallery, Randolph Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center, September 5 through October 8, 2005
Opening Reception Monday, September 5, 8-9:30PM
This exhibition is a national print invitational organized by the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, which showcases contemporary currents in print media. The works selected for this touring exhibition include a range of traditional approaches to printmaking and photography, as well as, works that reflect artists’ incorporation of digital media into their print practices. The exhibit consists of 61 works by 33 artists who examine the changing directions of the contemporary print.
2. MAURA SCHAFFER: RECENT WORK
Eric Dean GGallery, Randolph Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center, October 24 through December 9, 2005
Opening Reception Monday, October 24, 8-9:30PM
Artist Maura Schaffer’s work uses the familiar imagery of domestic life to convey aspects of what it means to be human. The stylized sculptural forms of chairs, tables, windows and doors are created to suggest human activities like dancing, fighting or lovemaking. The anthropomorphic qualities of the work bring our own human patterns to mind – eating, moving, resting and communicating. She says of her work, “I explore how different media, materials, and textures can be integrated to create sculptures that connect with the human condition.” Schaffer, a member of the Purdue University Art Department, has created works that are both objects and installation based. The artist will be on campus for activities surrounding the exhibition opening.
Virtual Gallery
3. 19th CENTURY PRINTS FROM THE INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART
Permanent Collection Gallery, Randolph Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center, January 23 through March 1, 2006
Opening Reception Monday, January 23, 8-9:30PM
This exhibition features a collection of nineteenth-century prints from the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Department of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Focused on the theme of Romanticism, the show highlights art by the movement’s best-know European and American representatives, including Francisco Goya, Eugene Delacroix, William Blake, Joseph William Turner, John Constable, Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. The subjects represented reflect the range of Romantic interests from landscape and history to dreams and the imagination.
4. GREGORY HUEBNER: RECENT PAINTINGS
Eric Dean Gallery, Randolph Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center, February 17 through April 7, 2006
Opening Reception Friday, February 17, 4:15-6PM
This exhibition will present the most recent abstract paintings by Gregory Huebner, Professor of Art and Chair of the Wabash Art Department.
5. WABASH SENIOR ART MAJORS EXHIBITION
Eric Dean Gallery and Permanent Collection Gallery, Randolph Deer Art Wing, Fine Arts Center, April 17 through May 14, 2006
Opening Reception Monday, April 17, 8-9:30PM
This year’s annual exhibit for senior art majors will present paintings by Adam Miller, ceramics by David Murphy, and sculpture by Billy Whited and Tim Parker.
Virtual Gallery
