PRESS RELEASE
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS
COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS AND COMMUNICATION
September 7, 2011
CONTACT: Barclay McConnell, (501) 450-5793; barclaym@uca.edu
FALL SEASON, 15TH ANNIVERSARY SET FOR BAUM GALLERY
By Rachel McAdams
College of Fine Arts and Communication Media Office
CONWAY — The Baum Gallery of Fine Art at the University of Central Arkansas will open its fall season of exhibitions Sept. 15 as it begins its 15th anniversary celebration.
The exhibitions will be open through Oct. 27. The opening reception will be Thursday, Sept. 15 from 4-6 p.m. with the Artists’ Reception and 15th Anniversary Celebration Friday, Oct. 7, from 4:30-7:30 p.m.
“Our lineup of exhibitions this fall is exciting and diverse, with artwork to appeal to every taste, from cutting-edge contemporary to the more traditional,” said Barclay McConnell, director of the Baum Gallery. “We are celebrating 15 years of bringing extraordinary art to the community.”
The exhibitions include Connections: The Fifteenth Year; More Than a Mold: Contemporary Slip Cast Ceramics; and cloud control: the devastation of an anchor.
Connections: The Fifteenth Year is a large exhibition featuring artwork representative of all studio courses taught at UCA, including ceramics, 3-D contemporary media, drawing, graphics, painting, photography, printmaking/illustration, sculpture and illustration. The work of 27 selected UCA art faculty and professional Arkansas artists will be on display. The overall concept of the exhibit plays on the intersection between the collegiate and professional realms of art making.
More Than a Mold: Contemporary Slip Cast Ceramics is a juried group show of slip cast ceramic sculpture featuring eight artists from all over the United States. It coincides with UCA ceramics’ new slip casting course and aims to demonstrate the range of artistic expression that this process provides. Highlighted within this exhibition is visiting artist Joe Page. Page received his BA from Knox College in 2003 before going on to earn his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2008. He says his primary concern is “immersing the viewer in a place of both comfort and uncertainty.”
cloud control: the devastation of an anchor is a multi-media installation by Carrie A. Dyer, UCA Department of Art faculty member. Dyer received her BFA from East Tennessee State University before going on to earn an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. She has worked in the graphic design field for nine years as a freelance designer as well as a graphic designer for Plus Mark, a subsidiary of American Greetings. For the last 14 years, Dyer has worked as a studio artist and has exhibited in national as well as local exhibitions.
Dyer explained that her work is “a tool through which [she] communicates indescribable emotions too painful to put into words.”
“I expect the viewers to have their own interpretations of the work just as there are many different interpretations of visual language,” she said.
UCA’s Annual Alumni Exhibition will feature work by photographer Keith Melton. For the past year, Melton has been using an iPhone drawing application to create mini-portraits with a drawing-by-subtraction technique, which he explains as being similar to scratching a lottery ticket.
“Of course, the odd thing about these portraits may be that it rarely if ever is actually a portrait of the real person,” Melton said. “I guess that is a statement about society, the perception of computer accuracy, the vastness of images that somehow have your name tied to them.”
The alumni exhibit will be on view in the Fireplace Room adjoining the Baum Gallery from Oct. 7-27.
All gallery exhibits and events are free and open to the public and are made possible by the UCA Arts Fee. The Baum Gallery is an educational art museum for UCA students, faculty, staff and the broader central Arkansas community. The director and Faculty Exhibitions Committee select national and international touring exhibitions, sponsor juried student shows and cooperate across disciplines to curate original exhibits. The gallery exhibitions and events facilitate learning about and through the arts, inviting interaction and encouraging dialogue about visual art, its creators, studio processes, history, criticism, curation and cultural contexts. The Baum Gallery is a member of the American Association of Museums, the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries and the Arkansas Museums Association.
Hours for the Baum Gallery are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Thursdays from 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
For more information, contact McConnell at (501) 450-5793 or e-mail barclaym@uca.edu.
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