2019-2020 Exhibitions

September 27 - November 22

Leech Gallery:

Genetic Reflections

Genetic Reflections photo credit Michael King A public science art installation created by artist Angela Johnson in collaboration with UW-Madison Genetics Professor Ahna Skop. Learn more about the installation at UW-Madison here.

 

Our mission in creating this installation was to inspire visitors to explore the impact of genomic sequencing, evolution, and model organism research on our lives. We want you to see yourself in each of these panels and to reflect on your similarities and differences.

 

 

 

Hoffmaster Gallery:

Lauren Semivan, Sight's Periphery

Lauren Semivan, Untitled (portrait), silver gelatin print, 2019Artist statement: The camera exists as a tool for investigation of the limits of our vision and comprehension, or, as László Moholy-Nagy has said, to offer us “eyes outside our bodies.”  Artists, like physicists, are compelled to study forces running counter to the visible. Through the process of photography, I continuously question the world and my own experiences. I engage a large-format view camera as a tool for both precision and abstraction. These images are the result of an investigation into the invisible: an identification and interrogation of potential signals.

 

My ongoing body of work has evolved through intense contemplative study and manipulation of a hand-built, sculptural environment. Within this constructed space, photographs transcend consensus reality, blurring boundaries between real and fictitious worlds. Compositions evolve, are photographed, and then devolve into the next image. Materials and objects photographed are discarded, secondary to the photograph itself. Images are printed in silver gelatin, in dialog with an established continuum.

 

In the process of making photographs, I am waiting for that invisible thing, which is at once unseen and everywhere. I consider photography to be both a tool for escape, and an instrument for self-knowledge: a door into the dark.

 

Śākyamuni Stong Sku (or 1000 Bodies)Two years after graduating from DePauw University in 1953, Bruce Walker became a case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. As a CIA officer, Walker participated in the Tibetan resistance project (code name ST CIRCUS) in its earliest stages, only six years after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet and captured the capital city of Lhasa.

 

He assisted with training the Tibetan militia for eight years (1960-1968), and supported the program from two fronts: Sikkim, India, and Eagle County, Colorado. During Walker’s time in India, he assembled a collection of twenty-six religious objects. Many of the objects are purely for ritual and monastic use, whereas others are meant for an individual’s personal devotion. To this day, the spiritual connection between these objects and their Tibetan Buddhist roots remains clear.

 

In 2002, Walker donated his 66-piece collection of Tibetan thangkas, works on paper, and religious objects to DePauw University. Peeler Art Center Director and Curator Craig Hadley and DePauw alumnae Ashlyn Cox ’18 and Amelia Warren ’17 curated the exhibition, on loan from the University. 

January 17 - March 13

Leech Gallery:

Helen Hyde and the Japanese Print Tradition

Helen Hyde, The Unwilling Dancers, 1912This exhibition features prints by Helen Hyde, the first western female artist to study the rigorous printmaking techniques of Japan; two of her acolytes, Bertha Lum and Lilian May Miller; and traditional Japanese prints by Ukiyo-e and Shin hanga artists like Hiroshige. Curated by Christa Story, Collections Manager and Exhibitions Coordinator at the Wright Museum of Art, the exquisite prints on view are drawn from both the Lawrence University and Beloit College art collections.

 

 

 

Hoffmaster and Kohler Galleries:

Maeve Jackson

Maeve Jackson, HER : Hotel PupikMilwaukee-based artist and filmmaker Maeve Jackson will present new photography, sculpture, and video work, including a two-channel projection piece. Based in part on a recent residency at Hotel Pupik in Austria, Maeve’s exhibition will explore nomadic and temporary ways of inhabiting a landscape from specifically feminine and rural perspectives. She has shown her work around the Upper Midwest and at film festivals in the US and Europe.

 

Artist statement: As an emerging artist, my process begins as an observer that works in the mediums of photography and video. My work is a meditation on the self-critical internal voices of young women in the 21st century. In my short film, “the beautiful”, a young woman removes the fabric her head, provoking questions of identity and culture. “The Tertiary of a Women”, is a poetic video performance showing a woman leveling glasses of milk from an above perspective. Each decision symbolizing how she makes choices in her own life to keep it all balanced. As the audience, we watch from a different perspective and begin to criticize her decisions while she herself is a critic of her own decisions.

 

Currently, I am developing a new body of work for a solo exhibition at Lawrence University that stems from work I created while at a recent residency in Austria. The work is based around the nomadic sensibility of women inhabiting landscape. The idea of temporary settling is highlighted in the de-constructible screens for the two channel projection of “Hotel Pupik”. A sculpture that consists of a television and wheel barrel hints to the transportation of objects and the idea that the medium of video can be experienced anywhere. Paired with a photograph series of women tending to the landscape are displayed in frames that mimic slides and a box that are used for portable honeybee hives emphasizing the ability to pack up and go.

April 2 - May 10

Leech and Hoffmaster Galleries:

Crossing the Vertical Border: On the Central American Migrant Trail

Óscar Martínez, The BeastAssistant Professor of Spanish Thelma Jiménez-Anglada organized this powerful exhibition in 2016 for the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago. It pairs documentary photographs taken by Edu Ponces and Toni Arnau with text from Óscar Martínez’s book The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail.

 

 

 

 

Kohler Gallery:

Sharon Kerry-Harlan

Sharon Kerry-Harlan, Urban ChatterArtist Sharon Kerry-Harlan lives in Milwaukee, WI and Hollywood, FL. She has exhibited internationally, at the Renwick Gallery, the American Craft Museum, the Harn Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, among others. Her work in textiles and mixed media pairs the human figure, especially the face, with energetic patterns and colors drawn from African printed fabrics.

 

Artist Statement: I use the human figure to make statements about the quick turnarounds that confront us both in life's mundane and unexpected circumstances. I am particularly intrigued by the human face - what it reveals to the world and what it disguises from the world.

May 29 - June 28 

2020 Senior Art Show

An exhibition of selected works by Lawrence University’s senior studio art majors.

July 10 - August 23

Leech and Hoffmaster Galleries:

Wriston Summer Exhibition Series: TBA

The Wriston Summer Exhibition Series is an annual summer exhibition in the Wriston Art Galleries intended to engage the Fox Valley community in a conversation about artworks and artists of the Midwest.