Aaron Collier: Revival

Newcomb Art Department Professor Aaron Collier opened a two-person exhibition entitled "Revival" on October 24 at Octavia Art Gallery in Houston, TX. The exhibition runs through November 30.

“The “Everything You Need to Know” website that intends to prepare visitors to Palatine Hill in Rome offers the following caution: “Without a guide or guidebook, it can be difficult to make sense of the ruins of the Palatine… you don’t want to be one of those tourists who wanders aimlessly around the hill, with no idea of what they’re looking at.”

In September of 2017, Collier found himself to be just exactly that, a tourist without the benefit of a guide. It was the challenge of making sense of Palatine’s excavations and ruins, with their innumerable fragments, pieces, and remains, the profound inability to explain away or see through every layer, the overwhelming sense of bewilderment and mystery, that inspired the series Of Rocks and Ruins.

With these works, Collier implements several modes of image making towards squaring with the central questions that drive his research: “What to do with a small and incomplete knowledge of a vast, complex, and multivalent world? How are images, which are inherently shards or snippets of information, able to convey this inability to know in full?”.

Artwork: Fact and Spirit, 2018, Flashe on canvas, 38 x 38.”

Remembering Kendall Shaw (1924-2019)

In honor of Veterans Day, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art highlighted the work of World War II veteran and Tulane alumnus, Kendall Shaw.

Shaw was born in New Orleans in 1924. He served in the U. S. Navy as a radioman on an SPB Dauntless dive-bomber searching for German submarines off the mid-Atlantic coast during the second world war. The experience he gained during his service to country at a time of war informed his work for the rest of his life.

Shaw studied painting in New Orleans with George Rickey, Ida Kohlmeyer and Mark Rothko. In New York he studied with Ralston Crawford, Stuart Davis and O. Louis Guglielmi. He held faculty teaching positions at Columbia University Architecture School, Hunter College, Lehman College, The Brooklyn Museum School and Parsons School of Design. Shaw was one of the founding members of a group of artists that came to be called the Pattern and Decoration Movement in the 1970s for their use of repeating geometric patterns inspired by craft traditions from both Western and non-Western cultures.

Born in the final years of the Greatest Generation, Shaw devoted his life to art after his formative experience of military service during WWII. Kendall Shaw died peacefully in his home in Brooklyn, New York on October 18, 2019. He leaves a legacy of innovation and excellence in American Art, and remains one of the most important artists to the mission, history and trajectory of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

WWII Veteran Kendall Shaw, Sunship, for John Coltrane, 1982, Acrylic and mirrors on canvas, Gift of the artist, Ogden Musuem of Southern Art

New Course Spring 2020: Art and Science of Delta Clay

This 3 credit studio art course examines the nature of the clay New Orleans is built on, from the perspective of geologic sedimentation, an urban living environment and as a material for ceramic art. We will dig clay from four sites in the city, process it in the studio and use it as the material for original ceramic artworks. Working individually and in small groups students will develop new pieces that explore issues of identity, change and risk in the New Orleans region.

Guest speakers from the Earth Science dept. will present current research on the processes of sedimentation and land building, as well as the challenges of sea level rise, subsidence and climate change on this unique delta. As a studio arts course it will cover the chemical makeup and application of clays and emphasize creative thinking and the development of skills and original works. No prerequisite is required.

Professor Jeremy Jernegan: jjernaga@tulane.edu