The Washington University School of Art Faculty Show, on view Sept. 30-Dec. 5 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, will showcase nearly 50 pieces by 38 artists, both current faculty and emeriti.
Works range from videos and installations to prints, drawings, paintings, sculptures, graphic design and fashion design, with an emphasis on large-scale and interdisciplinary projects.
“The goal was simply to display the strongest, boldest work possible,” said curator Philip Slein, director of the Des Lee Gallery and the Philip Slein Gallery.
For example, Slein points to an untitled installation by Ron Leax, the Halsey Cooley Ives Professor of Art, which Slein likened to some “amazing laboratory/machine/gizmo made of tubes, wires, beakers and tinfoil. 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 multimedia 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.
Also featured is 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 seen 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.
Additional 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.
Additional paintings are by Jamie Adams, Laura Aeling, K. Kuharic, Belinda Lee, Eva Lundsager, Robert McCann, John Sarra and Jesse Thomas.
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.