PRESS RELEASE
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS
COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS AND COMMUNICATION
Contact: Dr. Deborah Kuster, dkuster@uca.edu; (501) 450-5785
January 27, 2016
FIBER ARTISTS TO BE IN RESIDENCE FOR BAUM EXHIBITION
CONWAY — As part of the ongoing exhibit at the Baum Gallery of Fine Art, Ann Coddington and Jo Stealey, fiber artists, will be in residence at the University of Central Arkansas on Thursday.
Coddington utilizes a variety of fiber techniques including twining and netting in her sculptural forms. She has exhibited her work at venues including Craft Alliance Gallery in St. Louis, the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, the Beverly Arts Center in Chicago, and the Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati. Over the past two years, she taught workshops at the Penland School of Crafts, the National Basketry Organization conference, the Los Angeles Basketry Guild, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and at the University of Northern Texas. Coddington received an individual artist project grant from the Illinois Arts Council in 2012. She also received an individual grant in 2000, and a finalist grant in 2004 and 2008. Coddington is an Associate Professor at Eastern Illinois University’s Art Department teaching in Foundations and Graduate Studies. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Sculpture Department in 1993, and her BFA from the Colorado State University Fibers Department in 1986.
Stealey is Professor of Art and Chair of the department at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has also been the Middlebush Chair for Arts & Humanities for the Fine Arts (2010-15). She is known in the US for her work that ranges from sculptural objects, artists books, installations and mixed media. A few of her more than 300 exhibitions are Murmullos Silvestres (2015), Switzer Distinguished Artist Pensacola (2014), Fiber International at Snyderman Gallery (2012 & 2014), SOFA (2010-12), Albrecht-Kemper Museum (2012), the Sioux City Art Center (June 2011), Escuela de Arte (2008), and a traveling exhibition in Taiwan (2001). Collections include The Smithsonian, Springfield Art Museum, University of Missouri, Central Methodist University, and Penscacola State College. Her work is featured in the International Surface Design Journal, Sculpture Magazine, Quarterly Review, among others. She teaches workshops on papermaking, basketry and design regularly in places such as Arrowmont, Penland and the National Basketry Organization. Currently she is co-curating the exhibition, Rooted, Revived, Reinvented: Basketry in America, which will travel throughout the US 2017-2019. Her current portfolio can be viewed at: www.jostealey.com.
Coddington and Stealey’s work is part of “Finding Shelter: An Exhibition of Contemporary Fiber Art” curated by UCA’s Dr. Deborah Kuster, art education professor and contemporary fiber artist.
For the residency, they will give a gallery talk from 5-6 p.m. Thursday in the Baum Gallery, to be followed by a public lecture form 6-7 p.m. in McCastlain Hall room 143. A workshop related to the exhibition for K-12 educators, led by Kuster, will follow in the same room from 7-8 p.m.
For more information, contact Kuster at dkuster@uca.edu or (501) 450-5785.
The Artist in Residence program is funded by UCA’s arts fee and is administered by the College of Fine Arts and Communication. For more information about the program, call the Office of the Dean, College of Fine Arts and Communication, at (501) 450-3293 or e-mail jdmiller@uca.edu.
The UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication includes the Departments of Art, Communication, Mass Communication and Theatre, Music and Writing. The college’s primary mission is the preparation of the next generation of artists, educators and communicators. For more information about CFAC, visit www.uca.edu/cfac or call (501) 450-3293.
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