2015 Exhibitions
Recent Acquisitions
January 15 – April 25, 2015
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum’s permanent and teaching collections include artwork in a wide variety of styles and media. This exhibition features holdings acquired in 2012-2014, including large-scale prints by Andy Warhol, a delicate egg tempera painting by Roanoke-based artist Susan Jamison, a portfolio of prints based on online source material, and a painting by Garo Antreasian given by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We are pleased to share the museum’s growing collection with the community.
IMAGE: Garo Antreasian, The Message, 2007. Acrylic on wood. Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, 2014.001. Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Fund, 2013.
Page Turner: Power and Restraint, a Feminist Perspective on Mormon Sisterhood
March 5 – April 25, 2015
Roanoke artist Page Turner collects items of deep personal meaning to painstakingly create delicate objects that honor the feminine, and the desires, experiences, and roles of women. Raised as a devout Mormon, she looks to the Church and its complex history as inspiration. Her works are informed by the traditional hand-working skills that have been passed down through the generations. In this body of work, Turner explores the divide between righteousness within the faith and women’s personal power; with deep reverence, she pays homage to the original pioneer women of the Mormon Church, as well as the contemporary sisterhood.
Turner has exhibited widely in the Roanoke area, in Washington, DC, and in Los Angeles as part of the group exhibition Oneira: I Dream the Self. She was the cover artist for Exponent II – Publishing the Experiences of Mormon Women since 1974, and has been featured in multiple issues of Studio Visit Magazine, blogs and other media.
IMAGE: Page Turner in her workshop
Lisa Bulawski: A Clearing of Measures; 2015 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence
March 5 – May 30, 2015
In this exhibition, Lisa Bulawsky explores the idea of the integral accident, a concept that relates to the unintentional marks created during the printmaking process, but also to the inevitable catastrophes of world events. Using newsprint backing paper collected from her studio practice since 2001, Bulawsky creates a massive grid of accidental events – hollow squares, ghost prints, and dynamic, eruptive marks. Nearby, voices and music emanate from a speaker in a hollow square of benches, a formation used in the American singing tradition of Sacred Harp. Editions of a hand-printed book filled with arresting news images and text explore the intersection of personal and public histories.
Lisa Bulawsky is the 2015 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence at Hollins University. She is an associate professor of art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is the director of Island Press.
IMAGE: Lisa Bulawsky, The Accident, 2014. Printing ink and inkjet on newsprint. Wall mural installation, Martin Wong Gallery at San Francisco State University.
2015 Senior Majors Exhibition
May 12-31, 2015
This exhibition features the work of members of the Hollins University class of 2015 majoring in studio art: Catherine Gural, Kyrianne Lorenz, and Rose Wyatt. The exhibition is the final requirement for art students earning their Bachelor of Arts at Hollins, and is the capstone experience of their yearlong senior project.
Women Working with Clay Symposium Exhibition
May 12– June 12, 2015
In conjunction with Hollins University’s Women Working With Clay Symposium, the Wilson Museum presents an exhibition of work by the program’s director, Donna Polseno, and presenters Linda Christianson, Cristina Córdova, and Shoko Teruyama. This symposium emphasizes the creative process from every level. At the same time, it looks at the particular aspects and points of view that may be unique to women working in clay.
Dance Lab in the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum
June 8 – July 9, 2015
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum is committed to serving the arts and fostering creativity and collaboration across the Hollins campus. In response to the shifting paradigm of art making, the museum is partnering with Hollins’ M.F.A. in dance program to host a series of graduate dance theses in our Main Gallery. As the dancers enter into dialogue with the history of museums as archival spaces, museums acknowledge the melding of live dance and visual or performance art.
Robert Kushner: Pleasure and Solace
June 16 – September 12, 2015
One of the founders of the pattern and decoration movement in painting, Robert Kushner combines organic elements with abstracted geometric forms to create works that celebrate surface. He draws from a broad spectrum of artistic and historical movements: fabric design, fashion, and couture; oriental rugs, kimono patterns, and Japanese screen painting; Renaissance masques, symbolist music, and opera. While Western artists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found inspiration in Islamic and Far Eastern cultures, Kushner rejected the concepts of “exoticism” and “primitivism” often cited in those societies in contrast with European styles. Instead, he responded to the long-standing sophistication of Eastern knowledge, innovation, and spirituality.
The paintings on display in this exhibition span nearly a decade of work: Huntington Library Cactus Garden II, 2014; Chrysanthemum and Sunflower, 2010; and Spring Scatter Summation, 2005. A painting by Kushner in the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum’s collection, also titled Sunflower, dates to the early 1990s and is on display in the Resource Room. Representations of flowers have long been of interest to the artist; his work segues effortlessly from glittery, overblown blooms on canvas to modest depictions on antique book pages. Kushner has said, “I never get tired of pursuing new ideas in the realm of ornamentation… Decoration has always had its own agenda, the sincere and unabashed offering of pleasure and solace.”
The paintings in this exhibition are on loan from DC Moore Gallery, New York.
IMAGE: Robert Kushner, Spring Scatter Summation (detail). Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery.
A Gift of the Heart: Original Children’s Book Illustrations from the Collection of Nancy Ruth Patterson
June 22 – September 12, 2015
This exhibit features sixteen original illustrations created for five children’s books written by local educator and beloved author Nancy Ruth Patterson. These charmingly detailed paintings and drawings, created by the artists Leslie Bowman, Karen A. Jerome, Patty Weise, and Thomas F. Yezerski, visually interpret Patterson’s stories. Collected by Patterson through purchase or gift, these works are a recent bequest to the Museum’s permanent collection.
Patterson began writing children’s books after she retired from teaching in the Roanoke City Schools (1966-1999). She is a faculty member of the graduate program in children’s literature at Hollins University, has spoken at more than 500 national conferences and workshops, and has written numerous articles on the craft of writing. Her books have been honored on master reading lists in ten states, and three have been adapted for stage. This exhibit is presented in conjunction with the Hollins MFA and MA programs in Children’s Literature and Children’s Book Writing and Illustration.
IMAGE: Leslie Bowman, Megan, Nannie, and Boo on Steps from The Christmas Cup. Courtesy of Nancy Ruth Patterson.
Scott Noel: Mythologies, Paintings 1995-2015
August 6 – November 14, 2015
Scott Noel is a prolific painter of cityscapes, still lifes, portraits, figures and elaborate mythological constructions. This exhibit at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University presents Noel’s large-scale classically inspired works. Noel paints exclusively from direct observation. In his contemporary retellings of Greek and Roman history and myth, he locates his Arcadia in his studio in Manayunk, a suburb of Philadelphia. His models are local artists, students, family members and friends who play out relationships codified in thousands of years of verse and pictorial history.
Scott Noel is an Associate Professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This exhibition is curated by Elise Schweitzer, Assistant Professor of Art, Hollins University, who is a former student of Scott Noel, and a contributing essayist to the accompanying catalogue.
IMAGE: Scott Noel, Octavia and Antonia Divide the Empire (detail), 2009. Oil on linen. 72 x 108″. Courtesy of the artist.
Unbound: Contemporary Prints Inspired by Books
October 1, 2015 – January 16, 2016
The histories of books and printmaking are intertwined; print processes have been used for illustrations and diagrams within books beginning in the first century AD and continue today. This exhibition, however, looks at the reverse relationship and shares the work of artists who create prints inspired by the book form and often the words within. Exhibition curator Jennifer D. Anderson writes, “Many contemporary print artists have produced innovative work that focuses on the relationship between image and text as well as our evolving relationship with the codex and printed forms.”
The artists in this exhibition deconstruct books, focus on their contents, and create new constructs of meaning. Nancy Jo Haselbacher’s haunting installation shares the notes and ephemera readers place within library books. Jason Urban has described his art as operating “in the hazy area between art and design.” Urban creates installations of gradient colored relief prints, ready to be read like the daily newspaper. Justin Quinn’s prints are based on the number of vowels or words on a single page of Melville’s Moby Dick. Similarly, Joseph Lupo works with the formal aspects of Iron Man comics and painstakingly removes figures and text producing an abstract image that hints at interaction and narrative. Lesley Dill has spent her career making evocative prints inspired by the language of Emily Dickinson’s poetry
IMAGE: Jason Urban, Streaming Fields (Newsprint Sunrise). Relief prints on newsprint. Courtesy of the artist.
Andi Steele: Amalgamation
December 3, 2015 – February 26, 2016
Artist Andi Steele uses monofilament to create site-specific installations that divide and transform spaces. Subtly lighted, the glowing monofilament creates planar forms that appear to curve and bend, distorting the visual depth. Invited into some spaces, blocked from others, the viewer is encouraged to slow down and interact with what exists and what does not. Steele writes, “Amalgamation is a blending of color and form: singular lines coming together to create a concentrated density; colors overlapping, producing subtle shifts in hue; open spaces contracting, directing movement.”
Steele earned a BFA in graphic design from the University of South Carolina in 1994. She studied papermaking and blacksmithing at Penland School of Crafts, NC, for six years before earning her MFA in sculpture at the University of Georgia in 2004. She is currently associate professor of sculpture at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She exhibits her site-specific installations and large-scale sculptures nationally.
IMAGE: Andi Steele, installation view. Monofilament. Courtesy of the artist.
2014 Exhibitions
Home Sweet Home
January 9 – March 1, 2014
Working in diverse media, the artists of Home Sweet Home present artwork addressing issues that speak to our concepts of family, domesticity, and the immediate environments where we live, work, and play. Selected exhibiting artists include: Betsy Hale Bannan, Honor Bowman, Betty Branch, Christine Carr, Genesis Chapman, Travis Head, Susan Jamison, Michael-Birch Pierce, Kristin Skees, Nan Mahone Wellborn, Susan Worsham, and Annie Waldrop. The exhibition also presents the Web-based survey project Looking at the Land- 21st Century American Views. Featuring eighty-eight contemporary image makers, the project explores the evolving tradition of landscape photography and was curated by Andy Adams, publisher of FlakPhoto, produced in collaboration with Swink and Trapp Interactive. Organized by the Wilson Museum and curated by former museum director Amy Moorefield, this exhibition explores notions of home and place.
IMAGE: Kristin Skees, Angela and Steve, 2011. Archival Ink Jet print on Hahnemuhle on handmade paper mounted on board, 60 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Ben Grasso: 2014 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence
March 20 – April 19, 2014
In his large-scale paintings, Ben Grasso explodes trees and houses into their constituent parts; the resulting images, caught in mid-transformation, float in a space charged with kinetic energy and chaos. Grasso holds an M.F.A. in painting from Hunter College, New York, and a B.F.A. from Cleveland Institute of Art. A recipient of a 2011 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and the 2010 New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship, Grasso has exhibited widely across the United States and Europe.
The Frances Niederer artist-in-residence program allows Hollins University to bring a nationally recognized artist to campus every year. While in residence, the artist creates work in a campus studio and teaches an art seminar open to all students. During their time at Hollins, the artist-in-residence plays a vital role in the campus and greater Roanoke community.
IMAGE: Ben Grasso, Caution, 2011. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.
Kris Iden: Cadence
March 20 – April 19, 2014
In a subtle language of line, color, image and arrangement, Kris Iden creates delicately nuanced work. Her prints and mixed media drawings that explore themes of identity and place are read like visual poems. Iden has exhibited throughout Virginia and internationally. A recipient of the VMFA artist fellowship, she is also a former residency fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Denkmalschmiede Höfgen, Germany. Iden earned her M.F.A. in printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University.
IMAGE: Kris Iden, Hortus Conclusus (Anatomy), 2013. Mixed materials and beeswax. Courtesy of the artist.
Landscaped! From the Collection
March 20 – April 19, 2014
Landscaped! features paintings and works on paper from the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum’s collection. Contrasting tightly rendered natural vistas with dramatically colorful abstraction, this exhibition explores the range of artistic interpretations of the natural world. Including Sondra Freckleton’s detailed lithograph Garden Landscape, Claire Van Vliet’s etching Above in Sun and Wind, and the color field study of Mark Woodie’s Springtime, the Wilson Museum is pleased to showcase many of these works for the first time.
IMAGE: Mark Woodie, Springtime (detail), 1980. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, 2005.388.
2014 Senior Majors Exhibition
May 13 – 25, 2014
This exhibition features the work of members of the Hollins University class of 2014 majoring in studio art: Elizabeth Avila, Gabrielle Awuma, Jennifer K. Broschart, Leslie Fowler, Hillary Kursh, Madeleine O. Long, Laura Pineda-Fischer, Nyssa Reagan, Rachel Ahava Rosenfeld, Palija P. Shrestha, Trudy Stevens, Rosalind Waiwaiole, and Nicole Cheyenne Whitlow. The exhibition is the final requirement for art students earning their Bachelor of Arts at Hollins, and is the capstone experience of their year-long senior project.
Susan Cofer: Draw Near
May 29 – September 13, 2014
For more than three decades, Atlanta-based artist and Hollins alumna Susan Seydel Cofer ’64 has been recognized in the Southeast for her painstakingly delicate, abstract drawings. More recently, her work has been based upon wide-open panoramic landscapes and topographies, but retains the essence of the natural world that persists throughout her oeuvre. Organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and curated by Michael Rooks, the High Museum’s Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Draw Near presents the first career survey of Cofer’s drawings. Rooks writes, “Cofer’s images evoke cycles of generation and regeneration, or biological reproduction and spiritual transmigration, and do not seem subject to the march of time toward notions of human progress… Each mark, like a heartbeat, is a reaffirmation of being in the present.” Similarly, Cofer’s sculptural portraits delight in humanity’s habits, quirks, and relationships. In The Compleat Jerry Cullum, she uses the art critic’s own words to clothe him, thereby slyly returning his own critique. An American Family as a Solar System depicts family members faithfully orbiting a central patriarch. Cofer’s works on paper and sculptural portraits are a testament to the mysteries of the universe, the nature of the divine, and the joy of daily life.
Susan Seydel Cofer received her B.A. in art history from Hollins in 1964 and went on to do postgraduate work in studio art at Georgia State University. Her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at museums such as Southeastern Museum of Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, North Carolina; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; and PS2 Paragon Studios Project Space, Belfast, Northern Ireland. In addition, her work is in several private, public, university, and museum collections nationwide.
IMAGE: Susan Cofer, Levavi Oculos, 2009. Colored pencil on paper. 10 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Michael McKelvey.
Contemporary Photographers, Traditional Practices: Vision and Method in the 21st Century
October 2 – November 22, 2014
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University enters its second decade this year with a fall exhibition celebrating photography. In collaboration with the Schmidt-Dean Gallery in Philadelphia, the museum presents an eclectic exhibition of thirteen contemporary photographers represented by the gallery, all of whom enjoy regional and national reputations. Curated by Schmidt-Dean Gallery director Christopher Schmidt, the exhibition features a wide range of both technical and conceptual approaches. Included are historical procedures such as the tintype, cyanotype and gum-bichromate process; alternative techniques such as pinhole and hand painting; and more traditional methods in both analog and digital. Throughout, these various approaches are applied to a wide range of subjects and ideas.
Exhibiting artists include Linda Adlestein, Thomas Brummett, Susan Fenton, Larry Fink, Alida Fish, Sarah Van Keuren, Stuart Klipper, Christopher Moore, William Smith, Krista Steinke, Ruth Thorne Thomsen, Ida Weygandt, and Samuel Worthington.
IMAGE: Alida Fish, Octopus and Shell. Tintype. Courtesy of the artist and Schmidt-Dean Gallery.
Photographs from the Collection
October 2 – November 22, 2014
Since its invention in the nineteenth century, photography has been alternatingly viewed as a way to faithfully represent the world and an opportunity to portray illusion. Curated from the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum’s collection, this exhibition includes photographs by Nancy Spencer, Sally Mann, Eudora Welty, and Carrie Mae Weems. Representing a spectrum of styles and perspectives, these diverse works hint at the field of observation that the camera’s lens provides.
IMAGE: Eudora Welty, Photograph of Abandoned House, ca. 1940. Silver gelatin print. Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, 2005.370. Gift of Barry Jones.
Hollins Studio Faculty Exhibition
October 2 – December 6, 2014
The Wilson Museum is pleased to host a Hollins studio faculty exhibition, sharing with the broader community the work of these talented artists and professors: Robert Sulkin, photography; Jennifer Anderson, installation; Elise Schweitzer, painting; Donna Polseno, sculpture; Richard Hensley, ceramics; and Annie Waldrop, painted constructions.
IMAGE: Elise Schweitzer, Parachute Recovery, 2014. Oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist.
Nancy Dahlstrom: Luminous Spirit
December 8, 2014 – February 21, 2015
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum is pleased to present Nancy Dahlstrom: Luminous Spirit, a major exhibition showcasing a wide variety of recent and older works by Hollins professor emerita Nancy Dahlstrom. Whether printmaking, drawing, or painting, Dahlstrom creates art that celebrates the vitality and spirit present in the natural world. An avid gardener, she finds inspiration for her detailed and intricate images in the many gardens that surround her home and studio in Fincastle, Virginia. Her extensive travels have taken her to France, Norway, Scotland, Greece, Malaysia, and along the length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In 1995, she spent time in Kyoto, Japan, drawing and photographing the city’s Zen gardens. Upon returning to her studio, she created Fuzei: A Breeze of Feeling, a series of monotypes celebrating the beauty and quiet energy of the spaces she visited.
Dahlstrom was professor of art at Hollins from 1973 – 2013, and holds a B.F.A. from SUNY at Buffalo and an M.F.A. in printmaking from Ohio University. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. The recipient of many awards, she was honored in 2011 by the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge, Roanoke, Virginia, with the Perry F. Kendig Award for Outstanding Visual Artist, for her contributions to the local arts community.
IMAGE: Nancy Dahlstrom, Golden Iris, 2014. Oil on board. Courtesy of the artist.
2013 Exhibitions
Echo Sounding:
Liz Miller, Younseal Eum, Huguette Despault May
January 10 – March 2, 2013
The exhibition explores the work of three artists who are looking at nautical elements and marine tools as well as repetitive patterning in nature to tell compelling stories. Featuring new work including two site-specific installations, Echo Sounding includes kinetic sculpture, felt assemblages and exquisitely rendered drawings and photographs all focused on our fascination with the sea and its inhabitants. Miller’s large-scale felt assemblages are comprised of repeated shapes from historic and contemporary culture; taken out of their typical context, the artist uses them to present a new storyline. Eum’s kinetic sculptures transport the viewer to the seas, using the shadows of paper-based materials to create an immersive experience. May’s detailed charcoal drawings unravel rope into organic forms, deconstructing a basic piece of nautical gear. Miller received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, and her MFA from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Eum earned her BFA and MFA from Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea, before receiving her MFA in Craft and Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. May studied at the Shuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore, Maryland, before earning her BFA and MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. May’s work is courtesy of Katharine T. Carter & Associates. All three artists have exhibited throughout North America.
IMAGE: Liz Miller, Imperious Decorum (revisited) (detail), 2011. Stiffened felt and other mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo by Matt Gubancsik. Youseal Eum, Dream Fishing (detail). Foam board, motors, balloons, paper, fans. Courtesy of the artist. Huguette Despault May, Umbilicals, 2009. Charcoal on paper. Courtesy of the artist and Katharine T. Carter & Associates.
Dan Estabrook: 2013 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence
March 14 – April 20, 2013
2013 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence Dan Estabrook is a leading expert on 19th century photographic processes. In recent years, Estabrook has added pencil and paint to his negatives and prints to create contemporary work that explores universal themes such as love, sexuality, and death. Estabrook attended Harvard University and earned his MFA from the University of Illinois. In 1994, he received an Artist’s Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts.
The Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence program allows Hollins University to bring a nationally recognized artist to campus every year. While in residence, the artist creates work in a campus studio and teaches an art seminar open to all students. During their time at Hollins University, the Artist-in-Residence is a vital part of the campus and greater Roanoke community.
IMAGE: Dan Estabrook, Message in a Bottle, 2006. Salt print with watercolor and gouache. Courtesy of the artist.
Tanja Softić: Migrant Universe
March 14 – April 20, 2013
While many Americans think of immigration in terms of recent politics, Tanja Softić focuses on human migration in a global sense. Using innovative printmaking techniques, Softić investigates national identity and feelings of exile through richly layered large-scale works. Merging appropriated visual material within her drawings and paintings, the artist addresses concepts of cultural hybridity, chaos, and memory. Softić earned her MFA in Printmaking from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, following study at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Sarajevo. She received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2009 and her work is included in collections worldwide.
Tanja Softić: Migrant Universe was organized by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston School of the Arts.
IMAGE: Tanja Softić, Second Angel, 2008. Acrylic, pigment, charcoal and chalk on handmade paper mounted on board. Courtesy of the artist.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Student-Curated Exhibition
May 7 – 19, 2013
This exhibition features work selected by student curators of Hollins University’s spring semester class “Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Principles and Practice of Curatorship within Contemporary Art,” co-taught by Amy Moorefield, Museum Director, and Kathleen Nolan, Professor of Art History. Student curators are Elizabeth Avila, Johnna Henry, Caitlin Hoerr, Abby Gillis, Madeleine Long, Abigail Egan Minor, Allison Schmitt, Stephanie Stassi, and Roz Waiwaiole. Over the course of the semester, the class will experience a variety of museum-related endeavors. Student curators present their own thematic exhibition using the museum’s collection as inspiration.
2013 Senior Majors Exhibition
May 7 – 19, 2013
This exhibition features the work of members of the Hollins University class of 2013 majoring in Studio Art: Shannon E. Bryant, Mary Kate Claytor, Madeline Clifford, Jaclyn “JD” Donnelly, Mia Traglia Dunkin, Kayla M. Gatti, Pamela Ann Guite, Brittany M. Hayes, Kelly Annemarie Hunt, Kailen M. Kinsey, Jenna L. Milton, Katelyn D. Osborne, Ginny Lynn Patrick, Tess E Petersen, and Brandi Phillips. Join us at the campus preview reception to congratulate these hardworking students. The family reception at the conclusion of the show is a celebration for parents and relatives who are on campus for commencement.
Papercuts
May 30 – September 14, 2013
Born in Australia, France, Czech Republic, Canada, and the United States, the seven artists – Jaq Belcher, Béatrice Coron, Michelle Forsyth, Reni Gower, Lenka Konopasek, Lauren Scanlon, and Daniella Woolf– bring a broad range of international perspectives to the art of paper cutting. This exhibition reveals the centuries-old tradition as an art form and as a process that transforms the medium of paper into contemporary meditations on culture, beauty, and the boundaries between nature and artifice. The results can deceive the viewer into believing that they are not seeing works formed out of the “simple” medium of paper. Papercuts was organized by Reni Gower, who is a Professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Painting and Printmaking Department. This exhibition is sponsored in part by Virginia Commonwealth University and VCUarts.
IMAGE: Lenka Konopasek, Indoor Tornado, 2009. Materials and dimensions vary. Courtesy of the artist.
Sue Johnson: American Dreamscape
October 3 – December 7, 2013
American Dreamscape features mixed media work by internationally renowned artist Sue Johnson (American, born 1957). Johnson’s work is grounded in the genres of the still life and vanitas, and explores the history of collections and collectors. Often working in collaboration with museums, libraries, and private collections to develop site-specific exhibition projects, this exhibition is the result of such collaboration between the artist and the Wilson Museum. Bringing together ways of seeing the domestic “American Dream” through objects that are transformed by Johnson from 1950s idealized domestic interiors, American Dreamscape is about contemporary abundance and excess.
Viewers will encounter a site-specific installation referencing a 1950s tin-litho dollhouse transformed to human scale as well as a banqueting table featuring the artist’s Incredible Edibles series of ceramic serving ware, highlighting our food habits, in which we rarely know the exact origin of what we eat. Featuring several new works to be shown publicly for the first time, American Dreamscape presents a fresh vision of the world created by Johnson: a vast imaginary landscape full of consumables.
Born in San Francisco, Johnson received her BFA in studio art from Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York and her MFA in painting from Columbia University, New York, New York. She has had one-person exhibitions at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, New York; Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York; and the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford, England. She has received several national grants, fellowships, and residencies including the Arts/Industry Program, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; the City of Salzburg/Salzburg Kunstlerhaus Residency Fellowship, Salzburg, Austria; and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship Award. Johnson is professor of art in the department of art and art history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Funding for Sue Johnson: American Dreamscape comes in part from the City of Roanoke through the Roanoke Arts Commission, and from Roanoke County.
Please see the exhibition video.
IMAGE: Sue Johnson, installation view of Ready-Made Dream in the exhibition American Dreamscape, 2013. Photo by Christine Carr.
2012 Exhibitions
Bayous and Ghosts:
Work by Margaret Evangeline and Hunt Slonem
January 12 – February 18, 2012
This exhibition features work by internationally recognized artists and friends Margaret Evangeline and Hunt Slonem. With ties to the American South, both artists are inspired by romantic aesthetics that originate particularly in Louisiana and play into the larger history of the United States. Their shared vision as artists and friends dovetail into their evocative and painterly work.
Margaret Evangeline is a New York based, Louisiana born painter who experiments with resistant materials. Fluctuating between creating works with aluminum punctured with bullet holes and heavily worked oil on canvas paintings, she is often inspired by beloved authors of the South coupled with an interest in psychic and social systems. She received both her BFA and MFA from University of New Orleans. Evangeline is the recipient of awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2001.Her work has been included in exhibitions at such notable museums as The Palm Beach ICA, The Hafnarborg Art Museum outside Reykjavik, Iceland, the Taipei Museum in Taiwan, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Her work is frequently written about in The New York Times, Art in America, ARTnews, The Chicago Tribune, Architectural Digest, among other publications.
Hunt Slonem is a New York and Louisiana based artist who fascination with exotica and spirituality pervades his work. Inspired by various legends of history, animals, objects d’art and Victorian gothic, often his paintings are inscribed with ghosts overlaid on existing images. He received his BFA from Tulane University in Louisiana and studied painting at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Since 1977, Slonem has had over 150 solo exhibitions. Over 75 museums internationally include his work in their collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, both in New York. His artwork as well as his homes have been featured in multiple publications including the New York Times, Art in America, Elle Magazine, New York Post and Vanity Fair to name a few. Slonem divides his time between Louisiana where he owns two plantation homes on the historic register, Albania in St. Mary’s Parish and Lakeside in Pointe Coupee; and New York City where he has lived and worked since 1973.
IMAGE: Margaret Evangeline, Ghost Twins, 2001. Oil on canvas with crystallina. Courtesy of the artist.
Treasures from the Vault
January 12 – February 18, 2012
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum has been incredibly fortunate to be the recipient of a number of new works given by generous donors to the museum’s collection 2010 and 2011. Treasures from the Vault is a continuing exhibition series; this edition features artwork created in a variety of media and styles from internationally recognized artists such as Jack Beal, Tanja Softic, Fiona Ross, Suzanne Fields, Margaret Evangeline, Hunt Slonem and many more. Director Amy Moorefield comments, “We are fortunate to have received several gifts created by important artists who have contributed greatly to the global artistic landscape. Sincerest gratitude to the donors who have given so generously to our collection.” The Wilson Museum’s collection is a rich source for students, scholars and the Roanoke Valley in a variety of ways such as museological courses, internships, and curatorial opportunities. Treasures from the Vault underscores the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum’s mission as a repository of significant works of modern and contemporary art.
IMAGE: Darragh Park, One Night the Empire State Building was Blue- 7th and 22nd, #1, 1995. Watercolor on paper. Gift of the Estate of Darragh A. Park. Collection of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, 2011.028.
2012 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence Beverly Rayner:
Museum of Mesmerism
March 8 – April 21, 2012
As curator of the Museum of Mesmerism, 2012 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence Beverly Rayner represents a museum in Bzinica Stara, Poland, which displays uncanny artifacts, many of which are centuries old. This exhibition at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum “borrows” those items. In actuality, Rayner has crafted every piece on display as well as the concept of the Museum of Mesmerism, the illusion of rare paranormal objects, and an exotic archive.
Beverly Rayner has a B.F.A. in sculpture and an M.F.A. in photography and teaches both photography and mixed media art. Rayner learned the art of resurrecting forlorn objects from her father and inherited a photographic eye from her mother. Rayner is represented by Braunstein/Quay Gallery in San Francisco and G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle. She has been in a multitude of solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is in the collections of the Oakland Museum of California; the Berkeley Art Museum, CA; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX; as well as in many other prominent public and private collections. She received the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship in 2007.
The Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence program allows Hollins University to bring a nationally recognized artist to campus every year. In residence during the spring semester, the artist teaches and works with students and faculty.
IMAGE: Beverly Rayner, An Illusionist’s Portable Conjuring Theatre: French, circa 1885, 2010. Wood, metal, fabric, lenses, photographic images. Courtesy of the artist.
Liza Ryan: Fragment
March 8 – April 21, 2012
Los Angeles based artist Liza Ryan connects emotion and movement to explore the fragmented passing of time. The artist writes, “I describe time as it is experienced, not as calculated by a clock.” Her large-scale photographs alternately depict chaos and realism, tranquility and terror, and the testing of boundaries. A cinematic site-specific work titled Rare Bloom created exclusively for this exhibition unites these themes to uncover the unusual, non-linear experiences of daily life.
Ryan studied at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, and the San Francisco Art Institute before earning her M.F.A. at the California State University at Fullerton, CA. Ryan’s work has been included in museum exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Miami Art Museum. She has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at Reed College’s Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery and the Herter Gallery at the University of Massachusetts. She was one of three American artists selected to exhibit at the Biennale of Sydney in 2006. Her work is in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH, among others. She is represented by Kayne Griffin Corcoran Gallery in Santa Monica, California.
A full-color catalogue documenting the exhibition with essays by Amy Moorefield, Museum Director and Johanna Ruth Epstein, Ph.D, Art Historian and Hollins University Assistant Professor of Art will be available in May 2012. Excerpts of the poetry of Mina Ryan, Hollins class of 1959 and mother of Liza Ryan, will also be included in this catalogue. Funding for Liza Ryan: Fragment is made possible in part by Kayne Griffin Corcoran Gallery and Wyndham Robertson.
IMAGE: Liza Ryan, Moon Mouth, 2010. Color photograph. Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran Gallery.
2012 Senior Majors Exhibition
May 8 – 20, 2012
This exhibition features the work of members of the Hollins University class of 2012 majoring in studio art: Julie Marie Andrews, Arden B. Cone, Amanda M. Dibben, Mercedes Eliassen, Melissa S. Hammond, Rebecca Nadeau, Lindsay C. Overstreet, Brittany M. Owens, Ashley S. Pannell, LaDonna Richerson, Tamra L. Sloan, Jacqui Sommerman, Alyssa Spaulding,Avrah S. Urecki, Mary Wells, and Rhonda A. Wilson. Join us at the campus preview reception to congratulate these hardworking students. The family reception at the conclusion of the show is a celebration for parents and relatives who are on campus for commencement.
Goodnight, Hush: Classic Children’s Book Illustrations
May 31 – September 15, 2012
The second part of this exhibition will focus on both the story and the original art of the classic book Goodnight Moon, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books. Over the past 60 years, Goodnight Moon has become the quintessential bedtime story, selling more than 11 million copies worldwide. Featuring illustrations created by world-renowned artist Clement Hurd and written by Hollins alumna and perennial favorite Margaret Wise Brown, the original artwork from the book is paired with artifacts from the book’s production from the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota. This exhibition concludes Hollins’ yearlong festival celebrating the life and work of Margaret Wise Brown. The festival has included a musical stage production of Goodnight Moon; a performance of The Runaway Bunny; a presentation of Goodnight Moon, a lullaby for orchestra and voice; as well as workshops, story hours, and lectures. This exhibition is included in the statewide initiative Virginians for the Arts 2012 MINDS WIDE OPEN theme of “Virginia Celebrates Children and the Arts.” This continuing celebration is the first of its kind to be offered to the mid-Atlantic region. With references to both the visual arts and literature, the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum and Hollins University will help children and parents explore how the arts on all levels shape families, generations, and communities.
Margaret Wise Brown (1910–1952) was one of the first authors to write specifically for children ages two to five, and created some of the most enduring and well-loved children’s books of all time, in addition to developing the concept of the first durable board book. Clement Hurd (1908–1988) is recognized worldwide for his work as a children’s book illustrator. He studied with Fernand Léger, a French painter who was a forerunner of the Pop Art movement. This experience translated into his classic style using flat colors and simple, elegant shapes in such books as The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon.
Funding has been generously provided in part by the City of Roanoke through the Roanoke Arts Commission, Roanoke County, and Wells Fargo.
IMAGE: Goodnight Moon © 1947 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Text copyright © renewed 1975 by Roberta Brown Rauch. Illustrations copyright © renewed 1975 by Edith T. Hurd, Clement Hurd, John Thacher Hurd, and George Hellyer, as trustees of the Edith and Clement Hurd 1982 Trust. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
Reunion 2012: Alice Hohenberg Federico ’67
May 31 – September 15, 2012
Ceramicist Alice Hohenberg Federico draws inspiration from ancient Greek vessels, traditional Japanese techniques, and modern English pottery to create sensuous sculptures. Her rounded vases feature elaborate handles, highlighting the contrast between the functionality and delicacy of her work. Lance Esplund of The Wall Street Journal writes, “Federico’s vases evoke classical antiquity; her handles bring those forms into the here and now.” In addition to these works, Federico has also created new vessels for this exhibition. These streamlined vases showcase the artist’s continued dedication to the exploration of form.
Born in 1945, Alice Federico has been making pots for over 40 years. She graduated from Hollins in 1967 with a major in American history. In 1969, she moved to Norfolk, VA to study clay at the Chrysler Museum School. She received her M.F.A. from East Carolina University in 1975. Federico went back to school in 1981 to study with Ken Ferguson at the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work has been shown in the Vallauris Biennial, the First Mino International, and the 28th Ceramic National at the Everson Museum. In 2002, she spent six weeks working at the Archie Bray Foundation. Since 2004, she has been represented by the George Billis Gallery in New York City and Los Angeles. She is married to Salvatore Federico, a geometric abstract painter. They live and work in New York City and Sullivan County, NY.
IMAGE: Alice Hohenberg Federico, Untitled, 2010. Ceramic vessel. Courtesy of the artist and George Billis Gallery, NY.
In the Event of Andy Warhol
May 31 – September 15, 2012
To commemorate their 20th anniversary, the Andy Warhol Foundation donated nearly 30,000 of Warhol’s Polaroids and black and white prints to more than 180 educational institutions across the country, including Stanair Gallery at Washington and Lee University, Olin Hall Galleries at Roanoke College, and the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University. These institutions have collaborated to present highlights from their individual collections in a three-part exhibition. In this final edition, the Wilson Museum pairs selections from the photographic legacy gift with work by Warhol’s contemporaries as well as examples by artists who inspired him.
IMAGE: Andy Warhol, Dolly Parton, 1985. Polacolor ER. Gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Courtesy of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, 2011.020.056. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Beverly Semmes: Starcraft
October 4 – December 8, 2012
Beverly Semmes is internationally recognized for her unique installations. Her exhibition will include work from her major series since the mid 1990s with a focus on Semmes’ impressive sculptural dresses that range in size from 7 feet to 30 feet long. Also on view will be the artist’s photographic, collage and video work, alongside her ceramic and glass pieces. Semmes challenges the conventional definitions of craft and “women’s work” by creating non-functional pieces out of traditional materials such as clay and fabric. Semmes received both her BA and BFA from Tufts University and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. Her work has been exhibited worldwide and is in the collections of the Musée Dole, France; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; and many others. This exhibition is organized by the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Funding has been generously provided in part by the City of Roanoke through the Roanoke Arts Commission and by Roanoke County.
IMAGE: Beverly Semmes, Olga, silk velvet, rayon velvet, taffeta, ceramic, 2007, 7 feet x 6 feet 10 inches x 7 feet. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Dusseldorf.