Eric Repice believes that to understand the world, you have to understand the manmade objects in it. That philosophy helps explain what some might see as a strange combination of areas of study: art and anthropology.
When Repice receives his master of fine arts degree from the Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts today, he won’t be leaving the University. He plans to spend the next two years finishing his dissertation to earn a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences.
Through his varied studies — which include a master’s degree in economics from George Washington University — he sees connections to a broader world.
“To understand, we can’t just focus on one thing,” says the Winona, Minn., native.
The Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow in American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences, a University Fellow in Cultural Anthropology and a Jens Fellow in the Graduate School of Art, Repice came to the University in 2000 to study anthropology and American culture under John R. Bowen, Ph.D., the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences, and Wayne D. Fields, Ph.D., the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English in Arts & Sciences and director of American Culture Studies.
A self-taught painter, Repice always had an interest in art.
“I chose anthropology because I didn’t feel the need to go to art school. I was active on my own,” he says. “I needed to learn more about the world to understand what to make art about.”
But three years into his doctoral program, Repice approached Joan Hall, the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art, about an independent-study art project.
|
Sam Fox School of Design &Visual Arts, Graduate School of Art |
“He needed to make art,” Hall says, “and was ready to study it.”
Repice’s crossover between anthropology and art and his study of the mark people leave behind intrigued Hall.
“It was fascinating,” she says. “He’s a very creative thinker. Eric is a perfect example of an interdisciplinary student in the College of Art.”
In 2004, Repice became a student in the master of fine arts program, through which he earned the School of Art’s Bell Cramer Award in Printmaking.
The combination of the two disciplines — the theory of anthropology and the practice of art — blend well for Repice.
“Anthropologists get out and do things,” he says. “I wanted to be involved in art production.”
That desire, coupled with Repice’s interest in Latino culture — he teaches an interdisciplinary course called “Latino Experiences in the United States” — and Latino art, particularly the public art form of murals, led to the St. Louis Mural Art Project.
He helped organize and paint a 150-foot mural celebrating world music at Casa Loma Ballroom at 3354 Iowa Ave. Working with local artist Sarah Paulsen and a dozen Mexican-American children from the community, the project took several months to complete.
“It was a way of seeing art outside its normal confines: art in the open, not contained in a museum or art school or art history book,” Repice says.
Other projects Repice has worked on include creating a one-mile walking trail of more than 2,300 stenciled and printed footprints through an urban neighborhood in Columbia, Mo.; an Earth Day project involving replacing litter in Forest Park with boxes containing origami lithographs depicting the environment; and helping coordinate an interdisciplinary graduate student art show that brought together the works of more than 50 University students.
In his own work, Repice focuses on what he calls “plein-air printmaking,” which he describes as “getting outside the studio and experiencing the world, its textures, objects, impressions.” For example, through embossments and charcoal rubbings, he incorporates the impressions and marks of ordinary objects, such as street grates, into the paper pieces and prints he makes.
“It’s seeing the world not just as objects, but what they can be used to generate,” he says.
Such thinking impresses Hall.
“He takes something we use every day and elevates it to an art icon,” Hall says.
“I’m excited to see what he does in the future.”
In the more immediate future, Repice will take on yet another role: father. In August, Repice and his wife of five years, Michelle, a doctoral student in the Department of History in Arts & Sciences, are expecting a baby girl.
After finishing his dissertation, Repice hopes to continue to combine his interests through a studio practice and teaching.
“It might seem like I wear two different hats, but they are the same hat,” Repice says. “I wear it in different places.”