The exhibition runs from March 9th - April 29th. Closing Reception on Saturday, April 29th from 1-4pm.

Beyond the Mythic & Mundane
Three-Person Exhibition with: Alexis Beucler, Emily Magnuson, & Elizabeth Powell

The works in this exhibition bounce between representation and abstraction of natural forms. The mythic, something othered and idealized, collides with the mundane, something earthly and the everyday. For all three artists, the flow state is integral. It’s a state where the mundane melts away and through the repetition of form, mark making, and the challenging of bodily and mental limits, the mythic is found.

For Elizabeth, the mythic and mundane is blurred between abstracted bodies, caged by skeletal nets of ribbons or lingerie, and an insistent demand to fill space and be seen. Her work focuses on societal decorum of feminine beauty, and the conflation of expression and repression that is installed within the female body. In her work, the tension between the biological and the psycho-social unravels.

For Emily, the mundane is elevated to the mythic through vivid silk paintings of poisonous plants found in the gardens that surround our homes; or through working with clay, engaging with the earth, and firing ceramics brutally hot in otherworldly pools of glaze. Tying the mediums together is an insistence on filling space, the power of a flow state, and the need for material experimentation.

For Alexis, her work focuses on the Queering of Space through a full spectrum of color, patterned landscape, and depiction of intimate joy between figures. Characters repeat, landscapes intertwine, time ebbs and flows. Like memories drifting together in a dream, time isn’t linear but rather fragmented, sometimes circular, and intrinsically subverts traditional narrative tradition. Alexis’s work contriubutes to reclaiming the term queer in order to challenge societal normativity (or the mundane) as a form of resistance.

We invite you to go beyond the mundane and seek the mythic. To look at everyday aspects of your life, find hidden, tender moments, and discover the extraordinary.

I am exhibiting two paintings (above images) in the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum all-media competitive exhibition, "Area Show: 48" in Mason City, IA.

The competition for the Area Show is open to all artists above high school age residing within 100 miles of Mason City, encompassing North Central Iowa and Southern Minnesota. All works are to be original, by the entering artist, completed since January 2020, and not previously entered into the MacNider Area Show.

The Area Show will open on Friday, July 22. An awards program and artists’ reception will be held on Saturday, July 30 beginning at 11 a.m. Awards will be announced and presented at 11:30 a.m. This lively reception celebrating the exhibition will provide a chance for the public to meet and converse with the artists. The reception is free and open to all those who wish to attend.

The artist with the entry chosen Best in Show will be granted a solo exhibition at the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum opening in 2023. Three artists will receive $250 Excellence Awards. Two Merit Awards, each at $100, and a $50 Most Daring Award will also be given.

Globe Gazette Article: Clear Lake Arts Center hosts LGBTQ+ collective show

Artists were encouraged to submit work either about their life & struggles as members of the LGBTQ+ community or artwork that doesn’t inherently pertain to their affiliation in the community. This gives all members of LGBTQ+ community a chance to showcase their work just like we host other themed exhibitions throughout the year for a variety of mediums and groups of artists.

The Clear Lake Arts Center has a well-defined set of core beliefs, and hosting shows of this nature cause our actions to meet our values. Hosting the LGBTQ+ Collaborative Show allows us to embrace aspects of our diverse community we don’t always get to showcase, include artists who might otherwise not fit exhibition criteria, and show that we genuinely want to make the effort for all in the community to have the opportunity to share their love for the arts.

Shows with any type of theme can change one’s interpretation of the work. An artwork of a person can be seen differently when it’s framed in an exhibition of self-portraits vs an exhibition about clothing styles from the past. Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe work might be interpreted differently in a exhibition about Marilyn than an exhibition on LGBTQ+ artists. Looking at work from these different perspectives encourages people to think critically and see the world from another person’s filter. A photographer might focus on composition while a painter might look at the texture of brush strokes, and a financially secure person may see different things in a work than someone struggling to make ends meet. Starting out with the information of the artist’s background can inform the artwork in different ways.

Please stop in to see the amazing work from your peers, neighbors, and even friends represented in the show. Happy Pride Month!

Iowa Crafts: 45

News Article: "Best In Show" named for River City Sculptures on Parade

Image with Serena Stevens and Gallery Director, Tim Van Ginkel.

Good Bones Online Exhibition
JUROR STATEMENT
Good Bones

I titled this exhibit after the poem Good Bones, by Maggie Smith. This short but generous poem by Smith offers truth about the reality of the world alongside hopeful advice to her children. At the core of it, Smith insists, that her children have the power to make this difficult and complex world a beautiful and better world.

The work made this past year has been created in the most difficult of circumstances. The year 2020 was an incredibly heartbreaking year, no matter your location, age, or privilege. What I find most enduring through this difficult year is the will of artists to persist in their work and in their efforts to communicate, make and think through material and movement.

For the majority of artists selected in this exhibit - there is a level of transgression in the work. Sometimes this transgression is visible and clear and sometimes it is coy and subtle. The very specific manipulation of materials in sculpture and collages in the show speaks to a level of democracy, feminism and anti-establishment critique. Within the paintings selected there is a level to which reality is challenged and subverted. This opposition to ‘reality’ appears in the varied levels of representation of the body. Additionally, the painting’s perspective puts us as viewers in comedic and challenging vantage point. This location and space in the paintings is sometimes tropical, often askew, very personal and at times liminal.

It is never easy to select and place so much strong work from all over the world, but it is an honor. The work in this exhibit, Good Bones is alive in a way that feels necessary and timely. The artist’s work in this show simply makes this world more beautiful.

Thank you,
Catherine Haggarty

Osmotic Radiance: the annual PS1 art auction

Osmotic Radiance is behind glass: translucent and protective, sheer and shiny, separating and yet transmitting rays into an adjacent void. This semi-permeable, semi-metaphorical membrane diffuses artists’ work into a public world -- a molecular migration or radiant flux of art towards spirit. Diffusion on the hypotonic, active transport, and well, why not, equilibrium. It flows both ways, but always towards the light.

Osmotic Radiance: the annual PS1 art auction

Studio Visit Magazine Volume 47

Congruence Virtual Exhibition
JUROR STATEMENT
Congruence

To be congruent means to be in harmony, agreement, and compatibility.

The artists I selected from this recent call for I Like Your Work Podcast Summer Juried Exhibition had a high degree of personal congruence that stood out. I found that many of them had harmony in their portfolios and how they presented their work for the call to art.

Being an artist is a lifetime process. It means constant evolution and honing of one’s skillsets for the mediums and methods of artmaking. The 500+ applicants gave me the challenge to call out who was meeting that challenge now as a creative.

I got to review portfolios from around the United States and abroad, see wonderful ideas and processes in action and appreciate the incredible amount of diversity that is available in how someone decides how to make art and what their artwork is really about. I saw many refreshing ideas including weaving with street posters and working with color and color combinations that were stunning.

Many of the artists had ideas that were energizing and thought-provoking and some of them literally took me away as I wondered if they were exploring imagery from memory, imagination, or their backyard or hometown.

It was a pleasure to get to know all of you through what you shared and I congratulate the accepted works and urge those who had works that were not selected to stay the course and keep making art!

-Bridgette Mayer

MFA 2020 Graduating Artist Catalogue

Size Matters, encourage artists to experiment with scale. The artwork represents recognizable objects that have undergone a disorientating shift in size.

Interview Video Link

Join us for 'Palette Talk,' an intimate conversation with artists from the Size Matters Exhibition - every Tuesday - Streaming LIVE on Facebook at 4:00 PM.

Size Matters, encourage artists to experiment with scale. The artwork represents recognizable objects that have undergone a disorientating shift in size.

Hosted by: Metoya Scott, Public Relations Manager

Article: Wonder Walls: Murals Transform Downtown Iowa City

With the stroke of a paintbrush, artists are changing the look and feel of downtown Iowa City.

In a dazzling display of creativity, about a dozen murals have been installed downtown over the past two years—many by artists affiliated with the University of Iowa as students, alumni, or staff. Thomas Agran, the Iowa City Downtown District's public art director and an adjunct assistant professor at the UI School of Art and Art History, is leading that effort through the Iowa City Mural Project.

Agran's ambitious project has taken dark, dumpster-laden alleyways and replaced them with eye-catching artwork that depicts a range of subjects—from the tallest mural, 45 feet of fanciful flowers and charming creatures located outside of U.S. Bank; to a 100-foot-wide Western-themed homage to the founder of MidWestOne Bank with his steed; to a retro robot that feels like it's rolling out of an alley near Fieldhouse Iowa City.

These colorful public murals are inviting people to learn, live, and grow in this creative community.

Exhibition Catalog

Representation Matters: I See Me

Media representation of all religions, genders, races, sexualities, and body types is essential. Without full representation, the narratives of some individuals are missed. We all enjoy the feeling of being connected or relatable to something or someone. It is important to know that we are not alone, and we are able to place ourselves in the skin of the lead role of that action movie or Syfy novel. We enjoy seeing reflections of ourselves in media, whether its social media, television, magazines or even video games. Artists are encouraged to submit work inspired by how their own identities, or identities in general, are depicted in the media. Broad interpretations of the theme of identities in the media are encouraged.

Body Building: The Art of the Human Figure

Explore the complexities and curiosities of the human figure as the Indianapolis Art Center celebrates the opening of the Body Building: The Art of the Human Figure exhibition on February 21 from 6-9pm.

Focusing on new and innovative artwork made about or featuring the human form, this national juried exhibition will feature over 50 artists across numerous states and mediums. While the human body has been the basis of artwork for centuries, with a juried exhibition highlighting a collection of striking experimentation, the result is a sampler of skilled artistic work that is as exceptionally diverse as our bodies themselves.

BLACK & WHITE
February 7 – 29, 2020 | Juror: Donn Angel Pérez
The Northville Art House is a non-profit organization that operates as a governmental department of the City of Northville, MI. The mission is to cultivate the arts through creative experiences, exhibitions, and education in the community. The Northville Art House presents the juried all-media exhibition BLACK & WHITE to showcase the power and range of monochromatic colors through works that comprise of only blacks, grays, and whites

Our annual art auction, featuring the work of over 75 artists, donated in support of PS1’s 2020 programming.

Come plinth block, come lath, come plexi, copper, and silk,
oh Titebond, oh offcuts, oh rebar and soot,
alight and mold, crumble and flake, adhere and bind, transform!

Do we build with materials or do they build us? What fate is summoned by fresh substances in our new-old surroundings, as we create new surfaces and make peace with the matter that will outlast us all? Cast your art into the mix and divine with us, through science, magic, or chance!

Project Arts presents new exhibit by Alexis Beucler
Project Art announces a new temporary exhibit “Razzle Dazzle Landscapes II” at UI Hospitals & Clinics by artist Alexis Beucler.

Alexis Beucler is an artist living and working in Iowa City. She exhibits work both regionally and nationally and is a recipient of the Janice Hartwell award. Now at the University of Iowa, Alexis is pursuing a masters of fine arts in painting and drawing with a secondary focus in printmaking. Alexis teaches art at the UI, where she specializes in courses on drawing and ecology.

“My work often intersects contemporary, classical, and cultural narrations through painting, artist books, and sculptural forms. Through these mediums, I investigate a landscape-figure relationship and weave together regional folklore and personal mythology,” she says.

The exhibit is on view through Monday, April 1, located in Gallery III (Elevator F, Level 8).

Project Art curates and installs 16 temporary exhibitions annually, primarily focusing on local and regional artists. For more information, visit uihc.org/project-art.

Article: UI student, faculty artists leaving their mark on 10 Iowa communities

The Office of Outreach and Engagement at the University of Iowa partners with Iowa communities on dozens of projects each year. One of the most popular requests: public art. In fact, the office often receives more requests for public art than resources can provide.

Thanks in part to a new residency program to train students in the intricacies of creating public art, boarded-up windows, concrete walls, and fertilizer bins will become canvases for large-scale public art projects in 10 Iowa communities this summer. One city also will welcome a large-scale, solar-powered sculpture to its downtown plaza.

“Public art has been positioned as a driver of economic reinvestment,” says Vero Rose Smith, associate curator at the UI Stanley Museum of Art and one of two faculty members working on the inaugural Grant Wood Public Art Residency. “It’s hard to document; it’s obliquely provable. But it does at the very least demonstrate a renewed sense of value and investment on an emotional level in the fabric of a place.”

Maura Pilcher, director of the Iowa’s Grant Wood Art Colony, says communities realize the importance of public art as place-making tools.

“Our students enter communities with fresh eyes, recognizing assets while appreciating local history and culture,” Pilcher says. “Each process and product is as unique as the people and places that shape it.”

Article by Emily Nelson

The UI Greenhouse sits on top of Biology Building East, giving students a place to develop research, observe plants, and express their passions for plant life. Sitting at the top of Biology Building East, the University of Iowa Greenhouse has provided students and community members a space to study and follow their interest in plants.

Ray Tallent, who has been the Greenhouse manager for approximately 10 years, along with assistant and UI senior Majd Moubarak, tend to the plants in the Greenhouse and maintain the space’s temperature. There also are a substantial number of volunteers who help around the facility with watering and pest treatment. “We grow the plants for education, of course, but generally, we are able to offer field trips and different experiences in the Greenhouse,” Tallent said.

There are currently seven rooms, some of which have themes with the plants. Four rooms hold both student and volunteer plants, and the remaining three are for teaching and public enjoyment. The Greenhouse has more than 200 plants and can be toured throughout the year.

The Greenhouse supports the research of many UI students on a plant biology track or interested in learning more. Moubarak uses the Greenhouse for her research and uses the hands-on experience she has received through working for the Greenhouse. “I get to water the plants all day long and observe the changes in their growth,” Moubarak said.

Many of the plants have come from various countries over the years, some having spent more than 50 years with the university. Although the Greenhouse location has changed many times, the plants have wound up in the central location atop Biology Building East. Seed exchanges, purchases, and other avenues through sellers and other institutions have been used to obtain plants, Tallent said.

The enjoyment, the aesthetics, and more all filter in the overall mission of the Greenhouse. It serves to educate, provide public enjoyment, and give a method of research for the students at the UI. The Greenhouse holds many favorites for both Tallent and Moubarak. However, there are many plants relating to food — coffee beans, lemons, avocados, bananas — that have a special place in Moubarak’s heart. “We have been known to sample,” she said.

The Greenhouse allows students to take plants they desire with permission from staff. Many students use the Greenhouse for their research or personal enjoyment. The UI Gardeners clubhouses many plants in the Greenhouse. “I don’t do this for them,” Tallent said. “This is their own gig. They grow hydroponic plants, with no soil involved.” A very prominent plant the UI Gardeners club uses in the Greenhouse is kale.

A graduate student teaching Elements of Art for non-majors, Alexis Beucler, uses the Greenhouse every week to inspire her students in their work.

“I take my students to the Greenhouse numerous times a week to inspire them,” Beucler said. “It’s an investigation — these ‘organic’ places are more interesting to discover shape, color, and texture for their art. I hope that through the Greenhouse they develop a greater appreciation for natural spaces.” Beucler has her students use the Greenhouse in partnership with natural museums to develop art based on what they see. She will display her students’ artwork from the Greenhouse in Art Building West this upcoming week.

“Not many people know we’re up here, but we definitely are open to visitors and new faces,” Tallent said.

Alexandra Skores, News Reporter
December 2, 2018

Full Interview Link

OtherPeoplesPixels: You’ve said in your artist statement that you “investigate a landscape-figure relationship.” How does the history of landscape painting inform your work?

Alexis Beucler: I’m drawn to the presence and absence of human figures within the history of landscape paintings. I am enamored by David Hockney’s patterned forests, Edvard Munch’s beaches, John Dilg’s quiet trees, Mark Messermith’s bright, urgent, anxious landscapes. These spaces make me wonder, when can a campfire speak as loudly as a group gathering? When can a mark of paint emphasize collective feelings? How can animals and plants be placeholders for figures?

OPP: What other visuals influence your work?

AB: Over the past year I’ve been reflecting on my time in the Floridian landscape—a landscape I’ve taken for granted for the past two decades—the native plants, swamps, waterways, festivals, island gatherings, quiet explorations.

Seeking to expand the lands in my painted world and in search of specificity of a space, I’ve started traveling to landscapes such as the New Mexico with sprinkled green plants dotting the desert land, blooming midwestern prairies, and I’m hoping to travel to Hawaii soon.

OPP: Do you think of the figures in your landscapes as in sync with their environments or oblivious to them?

AB: The landscape and environments subconsciously affect their motivations and actions. Likewise, the landscape absorbs the energy from actions the figures present, so the figure-landscape relationship is more symbiotic than anything.

In nighttime environments, there’s an increasing sense of urgency: people gather around fires, parties go too far. During the day, I think about the aftermath or residue of what occurred in the darkness, and wonder, do the figures exploring the day world know what happened the previous night? Are they floating down the river on an inner tube of bliss? How long have the mysterious heads at the bottom of the swamp been there, and does anyone other than the landscape remember them? As I explore this painted world, questions such as these are my guide.

This semester, Fall 2018, I have been taking my Elements of Art students to the University of Iowa's greenhouse in the Biology Building East. It's been a great experience discovering different plants, watching them transform, and watching my students get excited about nature.

PS1 was born on Dec. 1, 2002 in the space above the Deadwood. We’re celebrating our SWEET 16 birthday by connecting with as many people as we can who have been involved with PS1 over the past 16 years, as performers, exhibiting artists, organizers, schemers, volunteers, and beyond.

Razzle Dazzle Landscapes
MA Solo Show
@VAB E260 Gallery, Iowa City, IA
November 5 - 10th, 2018.

Exhibiting gouache paintings and lithographs.

Fall 2018: Learning the art of stone lithography with Tom Christison!

Fall 2018: I taught a mural painting workshop as a community engagement project in a medieval organization I’m a part of last weekend-- it was a ton of fun. Thank you to everyone involved!

The exhibition for this past semester's advanced bookbinding course "From the Hip: Making Models of Medieval Girdle Books" is up in the UICB K. K. Merker Gallery for the next few weeks. Be sure to check out the fantastic work that this class put forth in their efforts to learn and recreate these unique book structures!

Spring 2018: Exploring the art of ceramics in Andy Casto's graduate ceramics workshop! These little figures appear as models in a few new oil paintings.

Spring 2018: Medieval Book Studies with Melissa Moreton

I learned how to make goat skin parchment! I'm going to use it as a cover material for a limp parchment binding-- aka the medieval 'paperback.'

Fall 2017: Learning how to make paper!
Nepalese, Indo-Islamic, and Japanese with Rhada Pandey.

Huzzah! A new state, home, studio, easel, school! I'm ready to have a great next 3 years and am looking forward to seeing how much my artwork changes.

July 14 - August 3
Reception July 14th, 6pm

FSU Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA)
510 W Call St.
Tallahassee, FL 32301

Alexis Beucler
Emily Ann McCullers
Jessica Perez
Kylie Elizabeth McGinnis
Sarah Piper

Furry & Feathered is a yarn bomb art in the open competition & exhibition in Thomasville, GA. On the main street, artists in groups of 1-3 each cover one of the 21 trees! Maria Ojeda, Madalyn Tucker, and I each have a tree and are covering it up! Here's a work-in-progress shot of me working on the installation!

More info about the event here!

Group show at the Tallahassee Glassworks Gallery in October.
Opening reception: October 7th, 2016.

I showed the Liquid Landscape panels VIII - IX and two soft sculpture trees

Quincy Fest, May 2016.
FSU's Art students created chalk drawings for the festivities with Carrie Ann Baade. Thanks to Tony Barton, Julianne Humphreys, and Alexis Beucler for your work. Special thanks to our local crew which included the ladies in pink: Jakalya, Zoë, and Destiny

Consensus: An Exhibition

Contemporary artwork ranging from abstract painting, sculpture, video collage, ceramics, drawing, and narrative painting all join in unanimity. Creating in discrete disciplines but within an alike environment, these works reverberate an aura of the here and now.

Works from FSU BFA artists Alexis Beucler, Kelley Cunningham, Max Epstein, Aubrey Finnegan, Sara Gottfried, Menika Lue, Kylie McGinnis, James Parker, Sarah Piper, Kristin Sanders, Michael Sauers, Madalyn Tucker and regional artist & FSU professor, Mark Messersmith, will be on display from 1 April - 4 April 2016.

Please join us this First Friday at Railroad Square to stomp across Max's new space and enjoy some art!

Getting ready for the first show in Max Epstein's gallery space and glass workshop, Tallahassee Glassworks, BIG MIKE performed a tea ceremony in celebration.

The show is titled Concensus

I received FSU's Excellence in Visual Arts award. From May 2015 - May 2016, my Liquid Landscape (panels I- IV) paintings will be on display in the Honors, Scholars, and Fellows House smile emoticon it's above the new Chick-fil-a on the FSU main campus.

And no, I did not change my name to "Alexis Boucle." It's still "Alexis Beucler"

Distraction Destruction: Emerging Artist Show
"Painting is the answer to painting"

Opening 4th March 2016
At the 621 Annex
Railroad Square, Tallahassee, FL

Featuring
Giovanna Alvarez
Alexis Beucler
Sara Caruso
Kelley Cunningham
Matthew Dudley
Nicholas Geshwiler
Haley Greenberg
Jordan Groff
Kellyann Henderson
Julianne Humphreys
Menika Lue
Diana McLemore
Samantha Murray
Dylan Oliveira
Maralyn Tucker
Zak Weinberg

Collaborative show between artists Alexis Beucler (left), Laura O'Connor (center), and Maria Ojeda (right)

Meet Maria Ojeda! Working with fiber arts and drawing collage, Maria is one of the three artists in the "Marked Lands" collaborative show.

Statement: "Like water, the formation of civilization brings with out all it passes over. Collectives pick up and deposit geological and cultural sediment, moving assiduously through suggested routes, which by use, become carven paths. Connections haphazardly break the silence of cyclical nature. Power lines, utilities, and all other necessary implants designed for survival quickly disappear in the noise of repetitious life. Humanity accumulates in piles & sprawls, contracting, overflowing, and expanding. An infusion of fences, telephone poles, and paths upon path upon paths... Cliffs break under weight of organization. Crowned peeks are flattened, replaced with towers of human imagination, beaming comfort across appropriated lands.

By using material and memorial remnants, I attempt to stage these events. This has become an aesthetic from comfort as a necessity and construction as a compulsion; a struggle between settlement and movement, where whimsy reconciles."

Meet Laura O'Connor! Working with drawing collage and ceramics, Laura is one of the three artists in the "Marked Lands" collaboration show.

Statement: "I seek to understand my yearning for connection and search for belonging through the objects I craft. Over years of transience, I have met many people and acquired different languages: yet despite shared experiences, I continue to untangle a deep lonesomeness. Through cathartic repetitive processes such as ceramic coil rolling and geometric structure building, I create landscapes from shared stories using images of networks. I strive to honor the beauty and interaction between raw materials, allowing space for each to be seen as it truly is."

"Marked Lands" is a collaborative exhibition between three artists, Alexis Beucler, Laura O'Connor, and Maria Ojeda. Painting, cardboard and clay, fiber and paper, all come together in an exploration of infrastructures of self and civilization.

When: Thursday, 3 March 2016 from 7-9pm
Where: Phyllis Straus Gallery (2214 Bellevue Way, Tallahassee, FL32304)

Light refreshments & a limited edition of catalogues will be available!

An evening of multitudes. We are of participating and performing, of listening and speaking, of seeking and interacting.

Hunter Heerema
Alexis Beucler
Madalyn Tucker
Cailín Alainn
Daniel Rodriguez
Zachary Pelo
Catherine Liu
Brooke Huseby
Gabrielle Arnold
Danielle LeBlanc
CD Davidson-Hiers
Luke Lovelady

Thursday, February 25, 8-10pm

Light refreshments will be available.
An edition of posters available on a first come, first serve basis.

Performances will begin at 8:30. This event is happening alongside Working Method Contemporary's "Image Abreaction"
https://www.facebook.com/events/209337089419245/

"Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" is an invited collaborative art show in the Phillis Straus Gallery: "A disparate collection of works that are currently still in progress, set aside for a while, or abandoned completely. Also kind of like the NPR show, but not as clever."

I exhibited the Ladies on a Mountain WIP painting.

Dates: January 29-Feb 6th

"Liquid Landscape" received an "Honorable Mention" award at the Valdosta National 2016 group exhibition!

GALLERY
Where: Dedo-Maranville Fine Arts Gallery, VSU Fine Arts Building, corner of Oak and Brookwood.
When: The exhibit runs from 6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Reception: A free, public opening reception is scheduled for 6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Gallery hours: 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Fridays.
More information: Contact Julie Bowland, gallery director, (229) 333.5835, or email Julie Bowland.

I was accepted into the Valdosta National 2016 annual exhibition!

Here's an excerpt from the Valdosta news report link above:

"VALDOSTA — The Valdosta National art exhibit has become one of the best annual art shows in Valdosta. While the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts’ Spring Into Art is the premier exhibit to showcase local and regional artists, Valdosta State University Art’s Valdosta National has become the region’s premier showcase of art from across the nation.

Granted, anyone nationwide can enter the open Spring Into Art, and anyone local can enter the juried Valdosta National, and occasionally these lines do cross, but the Valdosta National allows area art patrons the opportunity to see distant artists’ styles and themes.

This is VSU’s 28th annual juried art show open to artists nationwide.
Julie Bowland, VSU Fine Arts Gallery director, said 338 works were submitted this year by 115 artists stretching from across the U.S. From the hundreds of entries, 47 artworks representing 42 artists from 28 states were selected for the show, she said.

“The exhibition is an explosively colorful and diverse collection of visual expression which includes oil, acrylic, and mixed media painting, graphite and pastel drawing, mixed-media sculpture, printmaking, silver gelatin print, digital photography, collage and video,” Bowland said.

Carrie Anne Baade is the person who made the choices. She has exhibited works throughout the nation and world. Her “oil paintings are rich with allegorical narratives,” according to bio information provided by Valdosta State University Art. She is an associate professor of painting and drawing at Florida State University.

Letterpress On Campus
This article mentions Florida State University's letterpress class that I participated in:

Florida State University – Tallahassee, Florida— Letterpress is a new class within the FSU Printmaking curriculum, and started in the Spring of 2015 under the direction of Denise Bookwalter (Director of the FSU printmaking program) and Allison Milham (former FSU adjunct professor). Allison Milham designed and executed the entire letterpress studio, and taught the inaugural class last spring. The class is built around learning traditional letterpress printing techniques (hand-set metal type, etc.) in combination with more experimental techniques (pressure printing, laser etched printing plates, etc.). Students are taught the fundamentals of how the press works, so they can take that knowledge into any studio and find success on any press they come across. The pressroom has two Vandercook 219s (one is an Adjustable Bed), and one Chandler and Price Pilot Press.

Denise Bookwalter created the letterpress class so that it is open to both printmaking students, and students outside of the printmaking program. Ashley Gorham is teaching a Printed Book class in the studio in which the advanced printmaking students are using the Vandercooks to make artist’s books. For many of her students, this is their first experience with letterpress printing (and look how much fun they’re having!). The programs are still very new but possibly in the future there will be a community education program to broaden the interest and knowledge in letterpress.

"Tall Tales & Cheap Tricks" was a narrative painting art show by BA/BFA Undergraduate Students of FSU taking place the 2nd of October in the Railroad Square Art Park 621 Annex Art Gallery. The show was curated by the illustrious and enigmatic Carrie Ann Baade.

"Lasting Encounters: The Self" was a FSU BFA & MFA art show in the Phyllis Straus Gallery curriated by Christopher Steven Watkins and Carlos E. Kempff on September 17-27th.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines encounter as a meeting face to face—among other similar things. When one thinks about it, there is only one truly lasting encounter throughout one’s life, and it is with one self. The construction of the self and its identity is an arduous task that involves many individuals, situations, and history: other lasting encounters. This exhibition will highlight how, within their practice, visual artists deal with themes of identity and heritage in a globalized world, where race, gender, and sexuality have taken center stage in the discussion of cultural development.

Artists featured: Alexis Beucler, James Parker, Laura O'Connor, Brooke Huseby, Scott Bell, Rayna DeReus, Michelle Eccles, Sharon Norwood, Melissa Artieda, Lucia Riffel, Connor Hersey, Gisela Fernandez, Mathew Adams, Nathaniel Hendrickson

This show was curated by Haley Lauw on 5 December 2014 in the 621 Annex gallery, Railroad Square, Tallahassee, FL. The show exhibited works from FSU BFA/BA Undergraduate Students.

Participants: Melissa Artieda, Kaylee Behn, Alexis Beucler, Whitney Brtowski, Leiani Childree, Jessica Ciani, Natalie Colline, Samantha Downey, Aubrey Finnegan, Meg Fulford, Karla Galvan, Melissa Gibbs, Russell Green, Hunter Heerema, Celeste Ivory, Morgan Jackson, Jaymi London, Michele Magaro, Frank Manley, Kylie McGinnis, Kiana McLemore, Lindsey Monteiro, Elisabeth Pancoast, Tarek Patton, Ryan Shaw, Samantha Sole, Luke Votzke, Taylor Williams

This group show was curated by Kelly Boehmer and Chuck Carbia in the 621 Annex, Tallahassee FL. The show exhibited works from FSU BFA/BA Undergraduate Students.