I always enjoy the fall. The weather is fantastic. The temperature is perfect for grilling and a fire pit. It is perfect hiking weather. It is also the first time back in the classroom for the academic year so students are back refreshed and eager. All of that has held true again this fall but on top of that my own personal research and creative endeavors have also had a great semester.
Despite covid closing and shutting down galleries the exhibition pace of my work hasn’t slowed. My hope is that as covid slowly fades away that this pace will increase. As those who know me or who have followed my career know, exhibiting my work was not always a priority. It wasn’t until I began working at Southern Miss where tenure and promotion not only accepted exhibiting for design faculty but they have also encouraged it. This has helped me to really push my work and to experiment. This experimentation has allowed me to explore new narratives and also through collaboration has helped me to find new mediums and forums to showcase my work.
One of the narratives I have been exploring is the feeling of being on a journey and finding my way. This fall two pieces from this series titled Lost were shown in national level exhibitions. My piece Through the Eyes of a Nice Guy, was exhibited in St. Louis, Missouri at the Intersect Arts Center in their exhibition Atmospheric Perspective. My piece Perhaps Someday was exhibited in Gainesville, Florida at the Gainesville Fine Art Association (GFAA) Gallery for their show exhibition Things Unseen.
This past spring I also collaborated with two of our awesome dance faculty the School of Performing and Visual Arts. These collaborations led to two public dance performances, and this fall a segment of one of those was selected to be performed at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi for the World Dance Alliance Mini Conference which features work from across the globe. This piece, Gaza Monologues, was the brainchild of Assistant Professor of Dance Dr. Candice Salyers and features her artistic interpretation of the Gaza Monologues by the Ashtar Theatre. For this piece I animated the written monologue and created motion graphics to express the content. The difficulties here were making sure that the motion graphics didn’t over take the focus of the dancer while also being extremely long (35 minutes).
For the second collaboration I worked with Assistant Teaching Professor of Dance Lauren Soutullo in a piece titled Radium Girls. This piece would call not only for the creation of motion graphics but building an immersive experience. The dance was an artistic expression of the true story of the Radium Girls, a group of female workers who worked for the Undark Radium Paint Company painting clock dials. The radium which is highly radioactive caused many of their deaths. For this piece I created motion graphics and small bags for the audience which included an Undark advertisement and a glowstick representing “radium” which was given to each member of the audience and created an eerie glow setting the mood for the performance.
In addition to these exhibitions and performances I’ve also finished another piece for my Lost series. This piece titled All That Remains speaks of the feeling of having nothing left and the emptiness of that feeling. In addition to completing that piece I’ve also recently started my newest piece in the series and I am looking forward to posting and exhibiting it soon. Also as the fall semester wraps up be on the lookout for new student work to be posted.
