An installation that blurs the lines between art and technology, a series of paintings that promote cultural awareness, and photography that explores racism are just a few of the pieces that currently greet visitors at a first-of-its-kind exhibition at ̽̽’s Fleming Museum of Art. Although the Fleming has exhibited work by individual faculty members over the years, the museum had never hosted a comprehensive exhibition of current working and teaching studio art faculty—until the premiere of PRAXIS: Recent Work by Studio Art Faculty at ̽̽ on September 12, 2023.
Sonja Lunde, director of the Fleming, says that when she and her team began planning for future exhibitions last fall, the idea of featuring the studio art faculty was a no-brainer. “We’re really lucky at ̽̽ to have an art museum on our campus,” she says. “It’s just ripe for this opportunity and we couldn’t be more excited to do it.”
Kristan Hanson, curator of collections and exhibitions, notes that a lot of faculty members regularly use the museum in their teaching. “So, this exhibit allowed us to bring things full circle by bringing the artists and their work into the museum, too,” she says, adding that it also provides an opportunity for faculty to come together, share, and discuss their work.
The PRAXIS exhibition features a wide variety of pieces, including ceramics, drawings and paintings, installations, photography, sculpture, and prints. It also offers socially engaged performances and videos documenting those performances.
“We have such talented artists on our faculty in the School of the Arts,” Lunde says. She adds that it is such an important experience for teaching artists to be able to exhibit their work at their school’s museum space—and for students to see their professors’ work, too.
Lunde notes that the way the show visually brings together such a diverse group of artists is one of its most intriguing aspects. She hopes that students and other visitors who come into the gallery space will draw their own connections either through the aesthetic treatment of different artistic materials or through the underlying themes expressed in the work.
“I just love the energy and dynamism of the exhibition,” Hanson says. “I think it breathes new life into the museum space itself and really speaks to all of the thinking and making and doing and exciting ideas that are coming out of coursework at ̽̽.”
The museum is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday. PRAXIS runs through December 8th.
“T PRAXIS exhibition is something we’re really proud of,” Lunde says, “and I hope it sparks a lot of interest and enthusiasm. It’s a really wonderful show.”
PRAXIS Exhibition Highlights
Lecturer Misoo Bang says that the idea for the paintings she submitted for PRAXIS started from her series Giant Asian Girl. “This series is a manifestation of every Asian woman living in the western world who has been hurt emotionally after seeing images of dehumanizing, fetishized versions of themselves or has felt oppressed by the stereotypes of cultural passivity,” she says. Her PRAXIS paintings celebrate the spiritual rebirth of these women. “Each portrait features the serene beauty of a woman surrounded by her own unique, meaningful imagery and empowering symbolism.” She hopes her work opens a conversation for students and viewers to question different perspectives on living in the United States as a minority.
Hoyt Barringer teaches courses in hand building, wheel throwing, and advanced ceramics. For PRAXIS, he created a wheel-thrown vessel made in the traditional Korean method known as ‘paddle and anvil.’ He decorated and glazed it with some materials local to Vermont, giving the work a sense of place. “T ritual of exercising a technical skill, allowing emotional undercurrents to inform the vitality of the overall form and the meditation of unabashedly embellishing the form directly with slip and glaze, and transforming the work with fire—this is the haptic experience I cannot live without,” he says. He adds that working from a place grounded with good craftsmanship informed with emotional honesty and truth is a good skill for students to have moving forward in life.
Lecturer Jen Berger uses performance, visual arts, painting, and printmaking to engage in social issues ranging from reproductive rights to racial justice and economic equality. Her PRAXIS piece, The Opposite of Hate is Mending, is composed of wooden quilt squares and is the physical object from a multimedia performance that happened in April 2021. Berger created it for the community to come together and begin to contemplate what we need to mend and move forward. “This was a transitional moment during a difficult historical time,” she says. She hopes viewers can continue to re-experience bits and pieces of that time through the quilt squares and think about what is happening in our world today.
Jennifer Karson, who teaches art and technology in the studio art program, uses scientific processes and technologies as creative catalysts in her art practice. At the center of her PRAXIS piece, which explores the tension between the natural world and technological advancement, is a collection of 5,000 damaged oak and maple leaves, on display as prints, that she collected during the 2021 and 2022 spongy moth outbreaks in Colchester, Vermont. Engravings made with a metal CNC router contrast the organic patterns of the leaves with marks made by machines. “It's meaningful to share this work with the ̽̽ community because it generates nuanced conversation about two pressing issues, climate change and artificial intelligence,” Karson says.
Professor Jane Kent teaches printmaking, including silkscreen. While on sabbatical in 2022, she created a suite of six silkscreens, titled Second-Hand Sunshine, through the Lower East Side Printshop’s Invitational Publishing Residency Program that she later submitted to PRAXIS. “As an abstract artist,” Kent says, “I often start with the image of an object to ground my interests in form and then I find new configurations through a series of drawn alterations.” She produced these six editions in four months using digital processes in combination with drawing on a larger, more ambitious scale. Kent says she uses the collection at the Fleming every semester in her teaching.
In Defense of Mitchell’s Image / Mitchell’s Drawing by Christopher Kojzar, an assistant professor, is a photograph that depicts an exchange between the artist and the U.S. Capitol Police. “This photo suggests that, especially in today’s environment, there are characteristics of being an observer of the streets that stir an authoritative response,” he says. Kojzar’s other work in PRAXIS is called Lunch, an image collage of scenes from Morocco and Hawaii using colored pencil on paper. “Drawing is an action,” Kojzar says. “It is a labor like many other art forms. I hope students understand that there are technical, physical, and expressive components to the medium.”
Assistant Professor Ace Lehner is an interdisciplinary artist, art historian, and visual-studies scholar specializing in critical engagement with identity and representation. Their installation and social performance piece, Barbershop: The Art of Queer Failure, is featured in the PRAXIS exhibit. The project was borne out of Lehner’s “dismay that there has been growing anti- LGBTQIA+ vitriol and legislation in Vermont, the US, and globally, and the need for more intergenerational, LGBTQIA+ spaces of celebration." They also created a piece called K.i.s.s.i.n.g,, a photo installation that, at 10 feet tall, extends to the gallery floor.
Jaimes Mayhew, who teaches drawing and digital art, makes participatory, interdisciplinary artwork that addresses identity and how it is expressed through land use, speculation, and ecology. For PRAXIS, Mayhew created two digital collages featuring imaginary utopian places. Planet Rooted was produced in collaboration with Rooted Collective, a Baltimore-based group of Black, 2SLGBTQAI+ poets, academics, and artists. For Elder Pride Island, he collaborated with a group of 2SLGBTQAI+ elders. “I make this work for many reasons,” Mayhew says, “but most importantly to illustrate that 2SLGBTQAI+ people are not homogenous and have specific needs and desires.”
Meg McDevitt, senior lecturer of drawing and sculpture, created a series of drawings for PRAXIS that she has been working on for the last year. The drawings, made of black hot glue on Stonehenge paper, are displayed on a series of long, shallow shelves. “I enjoy processes in making that are indexically spontaneous in response to materials, gesture, and the development of forms and imagery,” McDevitt says. “Materials and processes allow students to express concepts, contexts, and content.”
Heimo Wallner, who teaches Risography and Animation for Artists, contributed a series of Risograph prints (digital screen printing) to PRAXIS based on drawings made with red and blue book-editing pencils. “I had to come up with little rules and concepts on the fly,” he says. “So many of them are structural and, in a way, faux math. As such, many of them are much more related to my momentarily dormant sculpture practice, which is more formal and less content driven.” He hopes these drawings can be an example to his students to give up complete control and give themselves over to immediate decision making.
Five other studio art faculty contributed works to PRAXIS: Steve Budington, Pamela Fraser, Mildred Beltré Martinez, Bill McDowell, and Micah Wood.