Washington University School of Art Faculty Show

The Washington University School of Art Faculty Show will open in the university’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum with a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30.

The all-media exhibition will showcase close to 50 pieces — ranging from video and installation to prints, drawings, painting, sculpture, graphic design and fashion design — by 38 artists, both current faculty and emeriti.

The exhibit remains on view through Dec. 5. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and noon to 4:30 p.m. weekends. (The museum is closed Mondays.) The exhibit is free and open to the public. The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is located in Steinberg Hall, near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. For more information, call (314) 935-4523.

The Faculty Show is curated by Philip Slein, director of the School of Art’s Des Lee Gallery, 1627 Washington Ave. Slein also has worked with many of the artists at his own Philip Slein Gallery, 1520 Washington Ave.

“The goal was simply to display the strongest, boldest work possible,” Slein explained. To that end, he encouraged submission of ambitious, large-scale and interdisciplinary projects. The response, Slein said, was “overwhelming.”

Ron Leax, the Halsey Cooley Ives Professor of Art, contributed a large, untitled installation that Slein describes as “an amazing laboratory/machine/gizmo made of tubes, wires, beakers and tin foil. It looks like it could be launched into space.”

Joan Hall, the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art, is represented by Navigating Blue, an almost 10-foot-tall, one-of-a-kind multi-media print.

Pat Schuchard, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration, offers a pair of 19th century-style landscapes, the mammoth oil Mining Town, and the only somewhat more diminutive (despite its title) encaustic Small Mining Town.

Other highlights include one of the ugliest objects in America, an oil by Michael Byron, professor of painting and associate dean of faculty; Architectural Cellulite, a bulbous wall installation by lecturer Jill Downen, whose work recently was featured in the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis’ inaugural Great Rivers Biennial; and an immense ceramic and stone installation by Ron Fondaw, professor of art and head of the ceramics major area.

Also included are paintings by Jamie Adams, Laura Aeling, K. Kuharic, Belinda Lee, Eva Lundsager, Robert McCann, John Sarra and Jesse Thomas. Sculptures, installations and mixed-media constructions are by Omya Alston, Gene Hoefel, Arny Nadler, Albert Pfarr, Eric Troffkin, Denise Ward-Brown and Cheryl Wassenaar, along with a collaborative piece by Jana Harper and Ken Botnick.

Gina Alvarez, Heather Cororan, Tom Huck, Bill Kohn, Peter Marcus, Frank Oros, Tom Reed and Regan Wheat all contributed works on paper. Video and animations are by Lisa Bulawsky (with Dan Kelley) and D.B. Dowd, with photographs by Russ Rosener and Stan Strembicki, and fashion design by Robin Verhage-Abrams and Jeigh Singleton.

School of Art

Founded in 1879, Washington University’s School of Art is the oldest university-affiliated art school in the nation and the only art school to have fathered a major metropolitan art museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum. Over the years, the School of Art has been home to some of the giants of 20th century art, including such figures as Max Beckmann and Philip Guston.

Both the School of Art and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum are participants in Washington University’s Sam Fox Arts Center, an umbrella organization linking five visual arts and design areas through shared facilities and cooperative programming. The Fox Arts Center recently began construction of two new buildings designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. When completed in 2006, the new buildings will be integrated with three renovated arts facilities to form a comprehensive, five-building arts complex at the eastern end of Washington University’s Hilltop Campus.