Topeka, Kan. – Washburn University’s Mulvane Art Museum is opening three, new exhibits Feb. 7, in coordination with February First Friday celebrations.
Overview of the Exhibits
The Aeronautic Visual Art Program (AVAP) presents an interdisciplinary exploration of landscape. AVAP exists as an independent agency that generates original artwork and collects geographical data, situating the role of the artist as a researcher within academic institutions. The organization hosts public events, launching aerostat sculptures, or aircraft, into the thermosphere (90,000-95,000 ft.). These flying machines travel over 125 miles and are intended to capture the topography of a region. Each AVAP aircraft carries a GoPro camera and contains an enclosed capsule with a paint-covered ball and a paper panel. As the craft flies, the velocity and turbulence of the flight render an automatic drawing and the camera captures a video. This exhibition includes visual documentation and site samples collected by the AVAP team over the last year in Kansas and Missouri.
Referential. Any time we create, we are reacting to the world around us. For painters this reaction is often spoken in a language that is learned through the visual conversations they have had in the past. They learned how to whisper with a certain brush stroke or shout with a certain color. It may be conscious or subconscious, but the artists whose work we have seen before find their way into the creations of our present. The evidence may be as subtle as the way George Yater renders light with a quick dash of light-blue paint or it may be as concrete as the way Jim Hunt plows a dark trench to outline painted figures. Referential is an exhibition that acknowledges these tendencies in the Human artistic spirit. The references may or may not be intentional. Yet, the works presented here from the Mulvane’s permanent collection suggest a stylistic connection that in many ways honors earlier works of art.
Reclamation is an exhibition inspired by recent visiting ecological artists Armando Bogarin and Brandi Lee Cooper. Students in the AR407: Contemporary Art Practices class have installed the exhibit in the Mulvane Conference Room Gallery that explores the local watershed, environmental integrity, sense of place and the beauty of nature. Their strategy for this investigation began with Mulvane curators and staff who helped them select relevant works from the permanent collection, site-specific art-based research, primary source research and discussions with art professionals and scientists. In response, they created original works of art from found and discarded materials. Through these varied perspectives on the conceptual, spiritual and cultural concerns for the environment, the students urge us to consider our own connection to the natural world and all living things. Reclamation is an art-based research project and installation by Micheala Conley, Emma Johns, Shelby Reich, Sarina Smith and Catherine Tew. This is a cooperative effort led by Marguerite Perret, Professor of Art, Washburn University, with visiting artist Brandi Lee Cooper from the University of Kansas. Additional research assistance and images were contributed by Dr. Benjamin Reed, assistant professor, Washburn University biology department.
The Mulvane Art Museum is located at 17th and Jewell Streets on the campus of Washburn University. The Mulvane Art Museum is open Tuesday, 10 am to 7 pm; Wednesday through Friday, 10 am to 5 pm; Saturday, 1 to 4 pm; and closed on Sunday & Monday. The museum is free and open to the public.
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