Kevin H. Jones: solo exhibition in Tokyo

Digital Arts Professor Kevin H. Jones’ solo exhibition titled Strange Weather opened on July 30th at Art Lab Tokyo. 

Kevin H. Jones’ latest exhibition, Strange Weather, presents us with two new exciting bodies of work. This showing is an investigation consisting of collage, decollage, and digital montage. Jones incorporates charts, diagrams, and images from popular culture as tools of comprehension of the natural world. Building upon his past compositions, these structured forms and ordered systems provide a sense of clarity and control over the complexity of nature. However in this new exhibition, he challenges the perceived authority of these visual systems. Through the layering of charts and diagrams, Kevin disrupts their logical order, infusing them with ambiguity and suggesting alternative narratives. In doing so, he invites viewers to question the limitations of our understanding and to embrace the inherent mystery and beauty that lies beyond our comprehension. 

The physical and digital layering of Kevin Jones’ artwork becomes a metaphorical act, mirroring the intricacies and multiplicity of meaning found in our world. These layers embody the interplay between perception and interpretation, as they move in and out of coherence, shifting between meaning and nonsense. This fluidity echoes the dynamic nature of our existence, where meanings are not fixed but rather subject to the flux of individual experiences and cultural contexts. 

Ultimately, Kevin seeks to engage viewers in a contemplative journey. Through the amalgamation of digital processes, collage, popular culture, childhood memories, and the enigma of charts and diagrams, he strives to evoke emotion, ignite curiosity, and spark conversation. Kevin invites viewers to explore the shifting layers of meaning, to challenge the assumptions that underpin our understanding, and to embrace the beauty of ambiguity and the vastness of possibility.

#decollage #collage #ケビンhジョーンズ

2023 MFA Thesis Exhibitions

The Newcomb Art Department announces the Master of Fine Arts 2023 Thesis Exhibitions. All Tulane MFA Thesis Exhibitions take place in the Carroll Gallery in the Woldenberg Art Center. They are open to the public and free.

Ina Kaur: ਇੱਕ ਦੂਜਾ (ik Duja) “the Other one”

As a woman and an artist living in a heightened global, political, ecologically imbalanced, and socially unequal and unjust world, Ina's work attempts to continuously move beyond cultural constructs, freeing from restrictive beliefs and assigned identities. As an interdisciplinary practitioner critiquing the otherness and oppressed identities, the work empowers the self to navigate freely and fluidly, embracing the 'other' and 'one's' own new unsettled freedom as it celebrates the ever-shifting and constantly evolving notion of self, home, and belonging.

Opening reception: Friday, March 10, 5:30 – 7:30pm

Exhibition on view: March 9 – March 17

website: www.inakaur.com IG: @studio_inkspace

Felicita Felli Maynard: Acaba, y empiezas tu, como  la agua que brilla sin luz (It ends, you start, like water that shines without light)

As a first-generation Afro-Latine interdisciplinary artist, archivist and researcher, Maynard works across various forms of mediums to critique the way beings from the African diaspora past, present and future have been memorized by history. A direct analysis of how structures of colonialism, capitalism and time have directly impacted and shifted the experiences of descendants of the African diaspora.

Opening reception: Friday, March 10, 5:30 – 7:30pm

Exhibition on view: March 9 – March 17

website: www.photofelli.com IG: @photofelli

Stephanie Steele: Ocular Navigations of Internal and External Space

Stephanie E. Steele (S.E. Steele) is an educator and artist who blends printmaking and photographic techniques to create largescale works on paper. She examines the interconnection between our internal perception created through cognitive vision, and the navigation the external world experienced through optical phenomena.

Opening reception: Friday, March 24, 5:30-7:30pm

Exhibition on view: March 23 - April 7

website: https://www.sesteelefineart.com IG: @sesteelefineart

Erica Westenberger:  Twisting in honey and swallowing dust

Erica Westenberger is an interdisciplinary artist who renders illusory narratives about experiences of internal conflict. Through graphite drawing and sculptural processes, she builds motifs that explore the complexities of mental health under the framework of myth. Tension is used as a recurrent theme within formal relationships and allegorical motifs to suggest the underlying states of apprehension that are a part of nuanced internal journeys.

Opening reception: Friday, April 14, 5:30 – 7:30pm

Exhibition on view: April 13 - 21

website: www.ericawestenberger.com IG: @erica.westenberger

Lee Laa Guillory: This is her body, which has broken for you

Guillory’s practice investigates, through ritual-based photographs and performance, the transgenerational trauma to which Black femmes in rural Louisiana have been subjected. Her intimate photographs, carefully staged and lit, frequently focus on hair and hair maintenance, and depict femmes in emotional states ranging from that of quiet reflection to that of raw fury.

Opening reception:  Friday, April 14, 5:30 – 7:30pm

Exhibition on view: April 13 - 21

Objects in Focus: Clothes by Betsy Packard, MFA 1978

Join us for this month’s Objects in Focus gallery talk, which will focus on work of Betsy Packard (MFA, 1978).
 

Friday, November 4, 12 pm

Newcomb Art Museum

This talk will be led by Alex Landry, Curatorial Assistant at the Newcomb Art Museum and a 2nd-year Art History MA student.

This event is free and open to all.

Artists Respond: Post-Roe Louisiana

Artists Respond: Post-Roe Louisiana is a juried exhibition that will feature artwork in a variety of media by artists from Louisiana, in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court of the United States in June of 2022.  The exhibition will be on view in the Carroll Gallery of the Newcomb Art Department of Tulane University, and will include student work as well as artwork by established and emerging artists from throughout the state.  

The exhibition’s Panel of Jurors is comprised of:
Dr. Clare Daniel, Administrative Associate Professor, Newcomb Institute
Dr. Maurita Poole, Director, Newcomb Art Museum
Laura Richens, Curator, Carroll Gallery, Newcomb Art Department

The exhibition will be on view from Oct. 4 – 28, 2022, and will include a Panel Discussion and Exhibition Reception on Thursday, Oct. 13.  

Panel discussion: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm, Stone Auditorium, Woldenberg Art Center
Exhibition reception:  6:30 - 8:00 pm, Carroll Gallery, Woldenberg Art Center

Moderators:  
    Dr. Clare Daniel, Administrative Associate Professor, Newcomb Institute
    Kelsey Lain, Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health Intern, Newcomb Institute
Panelists:
    Dr. Karissa Haugeberg, Associate Professor of History, Tulane University
    Lakeesha Harris, Co-Executive Director, Lift Louisiana
    Amy Irvin, Executive Director, Creative Community League

The panel discussion will be in-person, and also accessible via Zoom .

Link to Zoom with the QR code above, or:  https://bit.ly/ArtistsRespondLA

Read the Artist Statements here: https://qrco.de/bdOCJ1

Please contact Laura Richens at lrichens@tulane.edu for more information. 

*Thank you to the Newcomb Institute for their generous support of this project.

RECON exhibition reunites artists in the Carroll Gallery

The 2020 BFA graduates of the Newcomb Art Department are pleased to present RECON, an exhibition of new artwork, following the cancellation of their undergraduate thesis exhibitions nearly 28 months ago.

The root word "recon" evokes gathering, reunion, and the search for knowledge, splintering into a multitude of connotations. After time apart, we tap into the empowerment of community, with collaboration as a driving force. We rekindle the playful experimentation of our undergraduate years while still approaching our practices with the greater respect and seriousness afforded with time and experience. The artwork presented offers a portrayal of a young group reuniting to create - not in competition or exclusion - but in the interest of growth, resurrection, and collective success.

RECON was able to take place due to the generosity of Tulane University, the Newcomb Art Department, the Carroll Gallery, and Laura Richens. To everyone who contributed to RECON, thank you for showing up in every way that matters.

RECON is curated by Emma Conroy and includes new artwork by Parker Greenwood, Alex Lawton, Andrew Mahaffie, and Eli Pillaert.

On view: August 11 - September 19, 2022

[Photos of exhibition by Alex Lawton]

Team Lead, 2021, by Andrew Mahaffie

 

 

Untitled no 7 by Alex Lawton

Lady Fingers, 2022 by Eli Pillaert

Ink painting by Parker Greenwood

1000 Places by Andrew Mahaffie

Blas Isasi solo exhibition at The Front

"An idea is just the shape of a flower" is a solo exhibition of new work by Blas Isasi, visiting assistant professor of sculpture at Tulane. The exhibition will be on view at The Front from August 13 through September 4, 2022. nolafront.org

Artist Statement

The Peruvian coast consists of a long and narrow strip of desert squeezed between the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and crossed by a series of oasis-like river valleys. Given its long history of human occupation, ancient ruins have been one of this arid landscape´s most emblematic features. Abandoned temples and settlements that were gradually reclaimed by the desert sands were then turned into venerated shrines and cemeteries by subsequent kingdoms and their societies. After the Spanish conquest of Peru, this continued under new forms as those practices became more syncretic (e.g. witchcraft), together with the then nascent and still ongoing looting of tombs and temples. The latest development in this long history is the commodification of the past under a neoliberal regime that renders ancient artifacts and archeological sites as tourist attractions: inert, sterilized and “disenfranchised” relics of the past. Peru´s coastal desert is a scarred landscape, one whose scars work as mnemonic devices and indexical marks. Past and present populations have systematically engaged in a complex, dynamic and often conflictive process of negotiating memory through an editing process that sometimes involves the erasing of these marks, others their unearthing, resignifying and reinvention altogether resulting in a living palimpsest.

Following in the footsteps of numerous past Peruvian artists like Emilio Rodríguez Larraín, Juan Javier Salazar, and most notoriously Jorge Eduardo Eielson in making the desert a subject of their work, in "An idea is just the shape of a flower" I try to bring into play different key aspects, fragments, materials and symbols characteristic to this unique cultural landscape. By deploying various strategies, I intend to animate some of its most representative elements such as sand, clay, bones, etc. so as to put them in dialogue with each other in ways that seem counterintuitive, suggesting not only new connections and meanings but also other possible worlds. The accompanying presence of seamless metal structures in my installations hint to cartesian reason on the one hand, while evoking 20th century Modernist design on the other, the quintessential aesthetics that symbolizes the unfulfilled promise of progress in the context of the Global South. The resulting tension from the juxtaposition of these seemingly opposing sets of elements is meant to, in the words of Raymond Williams, convey a “structure of feeling”: the feeling of things before we are able think them; the feeling of a different world before we can imagine it. In short, mine is a humble attempt to reenchant the world and sow the seeds of hope in a bleak and perilous age.

Last but not least, this exhibition is meant as a heartfelt and critical homage to the arid and stunningly beautiful land I grew up on.

Kevin H. Jones solo exhibition in Tokyo, Japan

"Absurd Thinking" a solo exhibition of new work by digital arts professor Kevin H. Jones, was on view June and July at Art Lab Akiba in Tokyo, Japan.

Kevin H. Jones' new body of work presents the viewer with a constellation of images from popular culture, and digital processes, to iconic childhood memories. In his latest exhibition, Absurd Thinking, Jones creates visually and physically layered digital prints that conceptually oscillate between meaning and nonsense. Building upon his past inquiry into our attempts to understand the natural world, the construct of charts and diagrams also traverses this new work. What is different is that Jones reveals his process by using calibration graphics related to the process of printing and by showing computer operating system floating menus.

The result of these choreographed juxtapositions seen in his digital prints and videos feels like one is flipping through channels on a TV or moving past the static of a radio dial as images coalesce and momentarily make sense.

For example in the work, Mixed Metaphor, a portrait of Frankenstein sits in a computer's operating system’s popup window surrounded by color and grayscale gradients. The portrait has been pierced with holes revealing the star chart layered underneath. A pixelated bird is perched to the left of Frankenstein. Amongst the organization of seemingly abstract ideas, one may wonder about the relationship of the bird with the monster.

Ways of Looking – an invitation to thoughtful observation

The Carroll Gallery presents

Ways of Looking – an invitation to thoughtful observation 

The viewer is invited into the gallery space to experience art in a very conscious way. 

In the back galleries are two videos, with very different ways of communicating: Peach Body Summer by Ellen Bull presents a mysterious, open-ended narrative; The Thin Veil by Jane Cassidy provides an immersive sensory experience.   

 

The front gallery features a variety of selections from the Newcomb and Tulane Art Collections, with one area specifically featuring detailed work that benefits from closer viewing with a magnifying glass.  Another section of the gallery features works from those collections that have a story behind the artist that relates specifically to the Newcomb Art Department, and that context adds another layer of meaning to the work.  A third section of the gallery has three very different everyday objects on view for the visitor to observe carefully through the act of drawing.  Additionally, some resources on “slow looking” will be available to encourage visitors to thoughtfully engage with not only the artworks in galleries and museums, but also the visible world. 

 

Exhibition dates: November 8-24, 2022
Opening reception:  Sunday, November 7, 3 - 5 pm

For more information, contact Laura Richens (lrichens@tulane.edu).

 

[still from The Thin Veil by Jane Cassidy]

Undergraduate Juried Exhibition virtual walkthrough with the juror, Jennifer M. Williams

Please join us on January 21, 2021 at 6:00pm on Zoom for a virtual walkthrough of the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition with this year's juror, Jennifer M. Williams. Juried Exhibition award winners will be announced at that time.

Jennifer M. Williams is the Communications Coordinator and Wordsmith at the arts service organization, Alternate ROOTS.  She is passionate about collaborating with artists, and recently served as the Public Programs Manager at the New Orleans Museum of Art.  Before taking on her role at NOMA, Williams served as the Deputy Director for the Public Experience for Prospect.4.  For six years, Williams served as the Director and Curator of the George and Leah McKenna Museum of African American Art.
As a visual art curator organizing exhibitions and performances, Ms. Williams is committed to contributing to the cultural and artistic landscape in the city and across the region.  As a part of a vibrant art community, she supports and serves on a variety of committees and boards including Junebug Productions and the New Orleans Photo Alliance.  She has participated in and led a variety of experiences around the world, including the Lagos Biennial Curatorial Intensive and the Urban Bush Women Leadership Institute in Brooklyn, NY.  She received her B.A. in History with a concentration in Art History from Georgia State University.

 Zoom Meeting ID: 960 7118 3947
Passcode: 923242

Art for Activism at the Carroll Gallery

The Newcomb Art Department's Carroll Gallery is pleased to announce its premier exhibition for Fall 2020. Art for Activism is an exhibition of over 40 works organized by Art for Activism, a group of Tulane artists made up of current students as well as alumni, in support of Black Lives Matter.
Artists included in the exhibition predominantly practice in New Orleans and responded to a Call for Artists, recognizing "the power that art has to inspire discussion, revision, and a shifting of opinions and culture in a way that words often can’t."

The work in the exhibition will be sold via silent auction with proceeds going to Mobilizing Millennials, a local organization dedicated to “recovering the fabric of true American democracy and promoting social equity and economic mobility.”  Artists have been asked to submit recent work that addresses themes of systemic and individual racism and the Black Lives Matter movement, with a goal of encouraging hope and a shifting of opinions and culture towards something better.

People can come see the work in the Carroll Gallery throughout the duration of the exhibition, August 10 - September 30, but the designated auction window will be Thursday, August 20th from 7:00 - 8:00 pm and will take place online. Art for Activism will be posting all work on their Instagram feed @art.foractivism in the weeks leading up to the auction.

Exhibition organizers:  Emery Gluck, Brandon Surtain, and Carlyn Morris
Opening date:  Monday, August 10, 2020
Gallery hours:  M – F, 9 am – 4 pm 
Silent Auction (online):  August 20th, 7:00 - 8:00 pm
Closing date: Thursday, September 3, 2020
Instagram: @art.foractivism @mobilizingmillennials

There will be no receptions in the gallery until further notice.  Viewers will be expected to wear face coverings and maintain social distance in the gallery. The Carroll Gallery is located in the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane's uptown campus. (map )
 

"Art and Activism: Rights of Nature" course produces virtual exhibit at Antenna

duct tape over cracks in the sidewalk ARTISTS:
Yacob Arroyo
Sidney Astl
Chloe Coleman
Emily Fornof
Alex Lawton
Andrew Mahaffie
Anya Mukundan
Katy Perrault
Tyler Simien
William Sockness
Tess Stroh
C. Tweedie
Amelia Wiygul
 
Duct tape over cracks in the sidewalk is a group exhibition featuring work created by the thirteen students that were a part of the course Art and Activism: Rights of Nature at Tulane University. This course explored art making as a tool for change. We set out to expand our knowledge of both environmental problems and possible solutions through meeting with experts across disciplinary fields and cultivating our own civically engaged artistic practices. A specific topic of our initial focus was the devastating effects that the fossil fuel industry continues to have on our communities here in Louisiana. Our primary service endeavor was an intent to support and participate in the next iteration of Fossil Free Festival (initially scheduled for April 2020 in New Orleans). At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, all of our lives, and therefore work, shifted significantly; both Fossil Free Festival and our physical exhibition at Antenna had to be canceled. We did everything we could to troubleshoot projects virtually and/or make new work responding to our circumstances in quarantine. This online exhibition is the salvaged product of our unexpectedly thwarted efforts to create physical art and participatory experiences. Duct tape over cracks in the sidewalk is an expression of both our ambitions and humility, our sadness and our continued effort.

– AnnieLaurie Erickson, Associate Professor, Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University

MFA Thesis exhibitions 2020

The Newcomb Art Deparment at Tulane University is pleased to present our 2020 MFA Thesis Exhibitions at the Carroll Gallery in the Woldenberg Art Center.

The exhibitions include works in  sculpture, painting, photography, and glass by MFA candidates Blas Isasi, Jarrod Jackson, Juliana Kasumu, Sara Abbas, and Mark Morris. 

Please join us on Friday, February 14th for a gallery reception from 5:30 - 7:30 pm and a walkthrough with artist Blas Isasi at 6:00 pm in the Carroll Gallery.

Call for Entries: Undergraduate Juried Art Exhibition 2019

from Laura Richens, Curator of the Carroll Gallery 

CALL FOR ENTRIES: UNDERGRADUATE JURIED EXHIBITION 2019

• Works are due on Monday October 28, 9am - 3pm in the Carroll Gallery
• Juror:  Dr. Benjamin Benus, Professor of Art History, Loyola University, New Orleans
• Works in all media encouraged
• Maximum 5 works per student
• Cash prizes awarded
• Works do not need to be framed to be juried, but if accepted, must be made suitable for presentation  
• Open to any Tulane undergradaute working towards a degree
• ONLINE ENTRY FORM:  Located on “exhibitions” page of the Carroll Gallery website, direct link here: https://forms.gle/WHPyqhk8DwkmggvL9 

Exhibition dates:  November 6-22, 2019
Reception: Thursday, November 7, 5:30-7:30 pm

Questions? email lrichens@tulane.edu

Looters: Itinerant Images of West African Architecture

The Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design is pleased to announce the fall 2019 exhibition Looters: Itinerant Images of West African Architecture. This exhibition used light projection and sculpture to reveal hidden images of West African architecture in the background of European prints, drawings, and photographs from the 18th through early 20th centuries. Alongside projected images, sculptures and prints by contemporary artists respond to the hidden archive. Looters is particularly relevant for audiences in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, with its latent legacies of West African architecture. Looters is organized by art historian Adrian Anagnost and artists Manol Gueorguiev and Abdi Farah.

Looters focuses on architectural images from three West African sites with historical ties to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: the city-state of Ouidah, the city of Abomey in the Dahomey kingdom (in present-day Benin), and Benin City (in present-day Nigeria). Much of these sites’ historical architecture is destroyed, and in many cases, only images recorded by European visitors remain. Looters seeks to recover a hidden and perhaps unreliable archive of this architecture, found in the backgrounds of prints and photographs in which Europeans staged their versions of colonial encounters. This 2019 presentation of Looters in New Orleans also commemorates the 300th anniversary of what is thought to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans directly from West Africa to New Orleans in 1719, likely including one or more ships from Ouidah (present-day Benin). 

Looters will hold an exhibition reception from 4:00 to 6:00 PM on Friday, November 15th, and visitors are encouraged to visit the Ashé Cultural Arts Center’s Exploring the Diaspora: The Benin Republic, later that same evening. 

Looters will also feature a children’s art activity inspired by Dahomey carved wood designs on Saturday, November 16th, from 10:30 AM to 1:00 PM. 

Looters is funded in part by the Platforms Fund, a collaborative re-granting effort of Antenna and Ashé Cultural Arts Center with support by the Andy Warhol Foundation, and hosted by The Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design. Special thanks to Francine Stock of the Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University.

The Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, 1725 Baronne Street (map)