Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Three local arts organizations will team up to host Contemporary Night Out, an evening of short, informative programs focusing on the world of contemporary art. The free event, which takes place from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 2, will begin at Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, then proceed to the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in Grand Center before ending next door at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Each stop will feature food and drinks as well as a short interactive presentation.

As a medium, drawing lends itself to the theoretical and experimental. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Notations: Contemporary Drawing as Idea and Process, an exhibition of more than 60 Minimalist, Conceptual and Post-Minimalist works by 39 artists, dating from the late 1950s to today. Drawn primarily from the renowned collection of Sally and Wynn Kramarsky, the exhibition focuses on practices that emerged during the postwar period — a time of great innovation in drawing — yet which continue to influence contemporary practitioners.

Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has named Peter MacKeith its Honorary Consul for Missouri, in St. Louis. MacKeith, associate dean and associate professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has long worked to deepen cultural and educational relations between Finland and the United States, particularly in the fields of architecture, education and design. Finnish Ambassador Ritva Jolkkonen inaugurated McKeith during a visit to campus June 21 and 22.

Architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have built dozens of outdoor benches for Patrick Henry Academy in downtown St. Louis. Constructed of cedar, oak and walnut, the benches are simply designed yet boast a telling detail: Legs attach to seat via “wedged through tenons,” a complicated form of joinery long associated with fine furniture-making. The benches are one facet of an award-winning, two-semester studio designed to help the historic elementary reinvent itself as a green school.

Architect Jason Mrdeza has won Washington University in St. Louis’ 2012 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition. Sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the biennial competition is open to young architects from around the world and carries a $50,000 first place award to support study and research abroad — making it one of the largest competition prizes in the United States. Mrdeza’s winning design was chosen from among 120 entrants representing more than 20 nations.

Poor Jerome. A talented young artist, he escapes high school with earnest dreams and Picasso posters only to founder on the rocks of a small East Coast art school. So begins Art School Confidential, the withering comedy by writer Dan Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff. On Friday, June 8, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present a free outdoor screening of Art School Confidential as part of its summer Friday Nights at the Kemper series.

Tingting Wu, the Record’s Outstanding Graduate in architecture from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has a strong interest in blending natural wilderness with man-made wilderness. A native of Shanghai, China, she creates architecture at the intersection of art and landscape.

More than a dozen architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts tested a series of experimental handmade kites along the windy slopes of Art Hill in Forest Park April 26. The kites were designed and built as part of an undergraduate studio on architectural representation led by Sung Ho Kim, associate professor of architecture.

It was a night of glitz and glamour, as an audience of more than 200 gathered in Plaza Frontenac April 29, for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ 83rd annual Fashion Design Show. Titled Leaving a Legacy, the show was coordinated by Jennifer Ingram, the W. H. Smith Visiting Assistant Professor of Fashion, and featured dozens of students wearing scores of outfits by the Fashion Design Program’s nine seniors and ten juniors.

Mara MacMahon, who graduates May 18 with a bachelor’s of arts in biology in Arts & Sciences and of fine arts in communication design, continues a tradition that dates back to the Renaissance of seeking lifelike portrayals of the human body. But she goes way beyond the Renaissance masters, and is the Record’s Outstanding Graduate in Art from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.