Bulletin News

01/24/2011 

The Dowd Gallery at SUNY Cortland will hold two "Gallery Talks" for the "2011 Art and Art History Faculty Biennial,” an exhibition that runs through Friday, Feb. 18.

The show includes pieces by 10 Art and Art History Department faculty members including Martine Barnaby, Jeremiah Donovan, Lori Ellis, Charles Heasley, Chad Hovey, Kevin Mayer, Jenn McNamara, Paul Parks, Vaughn Randall and Bryan Thomas.

The faculty exhibitors will discuss their artistic vision during two separate talks, the first at 5 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 7, and the second at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 17.

The biennial exhibition, as well as three planned special events, are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday and by appointment with interim Gallery Director Bryan Thomas at (607) 753-4216. Group tours  also are available. The gallery is closed on weekends. For more information about the gallery, visit the website www.cortland.edu/dowd-gallery.

This piece is from the “Gently Bruised” series by artist Martine Barnaby.

“Gently Bruised,” the title of the series of recent work by Martine Barnaby, investigates societal narratives of the repulsive and the seductive, the peaceful and the violent, the fragile and the strong — the coinciding existence of physical and emotional reactions that are visceral.

“Is this ‘bruise’ grotesque or beautiful, necessary or unnecessary?” queries Barnaby, an assistant professor who teaches Graphic Design II and Art and the Internet. “Bruises are caused by trauma, and can be threatening or non-threatening, apparent or hidden, or only seemingly hidden as they inevitably seep to the surface.” Her translucent “skin-like” images printed on paper vellum — originally made of fine-grained calfskin — construct a complex internal gauge that compels an immediate confrontation with one’s individual views of the acceptable and the unacceptable.

A fall 2009 trip to Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks with students and faculty from the Art and Art History Department inspired the ceramic pieces displayed by Professor Jeremiah Donovan, who teaches introductory through advanced courses as well as an annual study abroad class called China Summer Study: History, Culture, and the Arts.

“The work in this exhibition is in response to the memories, processes and inspirations of the work I constructed that weekend,” Donovan said. “The twig vessels are woven and textured from earthenware and porcelain clay. They are layered with terra sigillata and low temperature glazes and fired in a reduction kiln.”

A recent sabbatical in Kyoto, Japan, influenced the works of Lori Ellis, an associate professor and chair of Art and Art History Department. She teaches Painting I, II, III, IV and BFA Thesis – Painting.

“Back in New York, the celebration of seasonality has stayed with me and has helped me return to my interest in landscape painting,” Ellis said. “The qualities of austere beauty and poetic melancholy that are cultivated in Kyoto’s dry gardens are natural features of the Central New York winter landscape. The cornrows and accidental crop structures remind me of the raked dry gardens of Buddhist temples.”

Sculptor Vaughn Randall exhibited this work from his “Façade” series.