BFA, Washington University. MFA, Yale University. Solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe; works included in major private, corporate, and museum collections; awards and fellowships include the Federal Design Achievement Award, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council, and CAPS; public commissions include the MTA and St. Louis Bi-State Development. SLC, 1980–
Undergraduate Courses 2019-2020
Visual and Studio Arts
Drawing From Nature
Open , Seminar—Fall
The world we inhabit and learn to navigate with awe, delight, and wonder is filled with things whose existence we had no hand in making. How do you see your own individuality and importance when facing the vast and incomprehensible backdrop of nature? To escape the turmoil of earthly confinement, nature has come to represent both the desire for freedom and our need for order. Before written language, drawing was a way to understand our connection to the world around us, a way to record a sense of place, to mark where one was, here, in relationship to something else there. This course will focus on themes and concepts of landscape, on seeing and understanding nature through observation, documentation, journeying, mapping, and locating one’s perceived place in a world that is partly real and partly invented.
Faculty
Related Disciplines
Color
Open , Seminar—Fall
Color is primordial. It is life itself, and a world without color would appear dead and barren to us. Nothing affects our entire being more dramatically than color. The children of light, colors reveal and add meaning—giving richness and fullness to all that surrounds us. A vehicle for expressing emotions and concepts as well as information, color soothes us and excites us. Our response to color is both biological and cultural. It changes how we live, how we dream, and what we desire. Using a variety of methods, this course will focus on an exploration of color, its agents, and their effects. Not a painting course, this class will explore relationships among theory, perception, use, and the physiology of color. Clearly defined problems and exercises will concentrate on understanding and controlling the principles and strategies common to the visual vocabulary of color, as well as its personal, psychological, symbolic, expressive, and emotional consequences.
Faculty
Related Disciplines
Lost and Found: Collage and the Recycled Image
Open , Seminar—Spring
This course will consider the use, reuse, and, therefore, possible reinterpretation of existing images and discarded materials in the production of new works of art. The creative potential of viewing the familiar in a new context will be the focus of our exploration. Issues such as recognition, replication, prime objects, invention within variation, appropriation, history, and memory (both personal and cultural) will be examined. Each student will be expected to nurture and sustain a unique and individual point of view. The course will revolve around daily exercises, clearly-defined problems, and assignments both inside and outside the studio that are designed to sharpen awareness and reinforce the kind of disciplined work habits necessary to every creative endeavor.
Faculty
Related Disciplines
Look at You: The Portrait
Open , Seminar—Spring
The portrait has served a myriad of functions over time. The likeness or impression of a single face can inform or define identity, build ties to past history, perpetuate concepts and ideals of beauty and gender, ensure immortality, and/or establish social status, to mention only a few. For the artist, portraiture creates a bridge between the psychological and the scientific by revealing the operation of the mind of both the viewed and the viewer. The focus of this course will be on the structure beneath bone and muscle, both formally and symbolically; the creative potential of the portrait—and portraiture in general—explored through observation; and memory. Daily exercises using a variety of methods, means, and materials, both inside and outside the studio, to build and reinforce disciplined, sustained work habits will be key in growing the technical and observational skills necessary to represent what, for each individual, a portrait might be.
Faculty
Related Disciplines
Previous Courses
Color
Open , Seminar—Fall
Color is primordial. It is life itself, and a world without color would appear dead and barren to us. Nothing affects our entire being more dramatically than color. The children of light, colors reveal and add meaning—giving richness and fullness to all that surrounds us. A vehicle for expressing emotions and concepts, as well as information, color soothes us and excites us. Our response to color is both biological and cultural. It changes how we live, how we dream, and what we desire. Using a variety of methods and materials, this course will focus on an exploration of color, its agents, and their effects. Not a painting course, this class will explore relationships between the theory, perception, use, and physiology of color. Clearly-defined problems and exercises will concentrate on understanding and controlling the principles and strategies common to the visual vocabulary of color, as well as its personal, psychological, symbolic, expressive, and emotional consequences.
Faculty
Related Disciplines
Body and Soul: Drawing From Life
Open , Seminar—Year
For a visual artist, the human form provides a subject unlike no other. Descriptively, emotively, biologically, and culturally, the figure is a mirror, the representation of who we are as well as who we wish to be. For the artist, a true understanding of the human form—its unique formal, symbolic, narrative, psychological, and historical role—comes through prolonged and detailed exploration. The potential of the human form as an artistic resource will be the focus of this yearlong course. Daily exercises, both in and outside the studio, that stress the development of personal vision and disciplined work habits will be key to growing each student’s observational and technical skills. Over the course of the year—using both observation and memory, as well as a variety of materials and methods and an analysis of the relationships between gesture and form, rhythm and movement, and structure and biology—will lay the foundation necessary for individual expression.
Faculty
Related Disciplines
First-Year Studies in Visual Art: Process and Making
Open , FYS—Year
I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand. —Chinese proverb
Ideas in any creative endeavor rarely arrive full blown and/or crystal clear. Similar to the task of repeatedly pushing a large boulder up and then down and then back up a steep hill, creativity, understanding, and clarity come through engagement and from the challenge and the act of doing. The more one engages in the activity, the more one inquires and gains experience. The more experience one gains, the greater the number of possible paths uncovered. With disciplined work habits, the potential of each path and a clear understanding of the right choice to follow will be revealed. How or where one elects to begin the task and from which point of departure (e.g., observation, memory, history) is not important. A starting point is just that: the first step in a journey, a place to begin, a way to garner momentum. Working with a variety of materials, methods, subject matter, techniques, and sources, this course will focus on the process of developing and growing ideas visually and on gaining intention, clarity, and understanding through making images each and every day, from the first day of the semester through the last. The two sections of this course will interact regularly, sharing both faculty and classmates, in an effort to encourage experimentation, innovation, and uniqueness of vision.