Campus Center Gallery, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, Hilo, Hawaiʻi, October 2006-April 2007
The Art Department and the Student Activities Council of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo present the Hilo National Invitational Works on Paper Exhibition in the Campus Center Gallery during October, 2006 - April, 2007.
The 2006 Hilo National Invitational Works on Paper Exhibition features a diverse group of artists from throughout the United States. The artists are Michael Barnes, Illinois; Larry Chatman, Wisconsin; Dale Clifford, Georgia; Mathew Egan, North Carolina; Sandria Hu, Texas; Scott Ludwig, North Carolina; Nell Ruby, Georgia; and Koichi Yamamoto, Delaware. The artists share the teaching of art in colleges and universities as a common bond. Collectively the group of artists have exhibited their work and have lived and worked throughout the world.
Featured Artists
Michael Barnes
Michael Barnes is currently Associate Professor of Art, Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. His work has been presented in numerous national and international exhibitions and is included in permanent collections in the United States and abroad. During 2006, Barnes received a juror's award in the Biennial National Print Exhibition at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. Barnes presents a series of lithographs in the invitational exhibition.
Michael Barnes makes figurative images that can appear to be animal or human, but in enigmatic circumstances. The figures sit or stand in ambiguous environments. The images are drawn with attention to detail and establish ranges of subtle values and even subtler contrasts. Light and soft shadows create a luminosity that defines an atmospheric space.
Larry Chatman
Larry Chatman is Professor of Art at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. A native midwesterner, Chatman has been teaching in colleges and universities for more than 30 years. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Italy and Germany and is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Madison (Wisconsin) Art Museum, and the Racine (Wisconsin) Art Museum, among others. Chatman presents a series of photographic color inkjet prints in the exhibition.
Chatman's prints are elegant in color and composition, but are subtle in character. The subject may not be obvious to the casual viewer, but becomes apparent through sustained observation.
His travels, particularly to Italy, provided the artist with a perspective on graffiti, which from his early experiences were limited to "tagging," or the marking of territory and were generally inane, uninformed, and without redeeming value In Italy, Chatman discovered writings that were the voices of people concerned about the future of their country and society. These were the "voices of contemporary activists that were emblazoned on the lovely canvas of facades nearly 1000 years old."
Dale Clifford
Dale Clifford is Professor of Foundation Studies in the School of Fine Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta Georgia. Clifford has also taught for the Savannah College of Art and Design in Lacoste, France and for the American University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East.
Clifford presents a series of relief prints using linoleum block and wood block. The subject matter in each work is an animal or more specifically "road-kill" that were inspired from traveling the highways and back roads of Georgia and South Carolina. The animals are recognizable, but the forms are established in a system of shapes that employ a broad range of textures and patterns.
The imagery in Clifford's work arises directly from his environment. Clifford is not concerned with strict representation, but significantly uses the forms and the spaces that he observes in his environment as vehicles that address formal issues. Ultimately, he presents familiar subjects in imagery that can intrigue and, perhaps, challenge perceptions. The work included in this exhibition was funded in part through a 2004 Savannah College of Art and Design Presidential Fellowship for Faculty Development.
Matthew Egan
Matthew Egan is Assistant Professor of Art at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina where he has taught studio art since 2005. He taught at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates prior to ECU. His work in the 2006 Pacific States Biennial National Print Exhibition at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo received a juror's award.
Egan displays a series of lithographs in the exhibition. The prints contemplate social, political, and cultural elements. Egan states that the images "are often filtered through the strong influence of my subconscious and intuition in relation to the external surroundings and influences. At times, this process reveals a plausible conjunction between the subjects, generating a formal, visual, and contextual relationship."
His relationship and reaction to the subject matter and his manipulation of materials can obscure the original intent and make possible new perceptions. Materials and techniques in drawing, printmaking, and digital manipulations, establish a working dialogue for the artist that integrates the materials and the processes that is evidence in the resulting visual images.
Sandria Hu
Sandria Hu lives in Houston, Texas and is Professor of Art at the University of Houston at Clear Lake. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, in Mexico, and in Europe. She is a four-time Senior Fulbright Fellow and has received fellowships in visual arts from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the DeCordova Museum of Art, Massachusetts, the Dallas Texas Museum of Fine Art, Texas, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, and Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium, among others. Sandria Hu's work in the exhibition are prints from solar plates, a new photo-printmaking medium, used in combination with chine collé, applications of collage elements.
For the past twenty years Sandria Hu has been influenced by her experiences in places where she has lived and worked. She has lived in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, Ukraine, Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, and of course, Texas, where she has taught for the past thirty years. The images in her work are abstract. They are landscapes inspired from nature. Color, shapes and textures, and the selections of chine collé paper germinate from this source.
Anne Irons
Anne Irons of Honolulu, Hawaiʻi has been exhibiting her work throughout the State of Hawaiʻi and the continental United States for many years. Irons taught for more than 25 years in high schools in Hawaiʻi and California. In 1986, she became a full-time artist. During 2006, she received a juror's award and a purchase award from Graphic Chemical and Ink Company (Villa Park, Illinois) in the 2006 Pacific States Biennial National Print Exhibition at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.
Irons presents work in monoprint and mixed media. Her work is concerned with her resident environment which is a means for defining the shapes in her compositions. The shapes and colors in her work entice the viewer into a relationship with the work.
Scott Ludwig
Scott Ludwig resides in North Carolina. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at the Appalachian State University in Boone. He has exhibited his work throughout the United States and in Canada, Turkey, and Cuba. Ludwig received a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship to Turkey in 1999. During 2005 and 2006, he was awarded a series of grants that funded travel and research to Havana, Cuba and to Bosphorus University in Istanbul. He has been awarded a visiting artist residency at the Malaspina Printmakers Society in Vancouver, British Columbia during the spring of 2007. Ludwig’s work in the exhibition consists of "hybrid prints" that combine ultrachrome prints with monotype and etching on handmade surfaces that are mounted to rag paper.
In May of 2006, Ludwig traveled to the wetlands and barrier islands of Southern Louisiana to participate in a week-long photography program sponsored by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON). The primary objective was to raise consciousness of the little-known fact this incredibly fecund, yet extraordinarily fragile ecosystem, unlike any in the continental United States, is slowly vanishing as a result of cumulative, human-induced and natural impacts: an acre every thirty minutes (approximately 25 square miles each year).
In Cajun culture, the term gris-gris refers to a small bag containing a collection of bones, cloth, stones, etc., believed to be endowed with the spiritual power to protect or ward off evil. The prints that Ludwig is presenting in the Hilo Exhibition consider this notion. By combining imagery that documents his wetland experience, with area nautical charts, diagrams, and illustrations, Ludwig’s work evokes sensations of loss and destruction. But in the end, the work is about hope and an appeal for the protection of this precious, national estuary.
Nell Ruby
Nell Ruby is Assistant Professor of Art at the Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States. In her most recent solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Lamarr Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, her work was an installation in the gallery space spanning sixty-four feet. Ruby, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, displays mixed media works on paper using ink, gouache, acrylic, and pencil.
In her work, Nell Ruby explores the animated quality of the space between definable objects. She uses line as a force to imbue prosaic mass-manufactured products with wit and life. Ruby is interested in social issues concerning consumerism, popular culture, and authenticity.
In her words, "I am responding to an American climate that seeks perfection in a collective ideal, but fails to satisfy the human need for an authentic experience."
Koichi Yamamoto
Koichi Yamamoto is currently Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Delaware. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Canada, Japan, India, Bulgaria, Poland, England, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. Yamamoto who completed his undergraduate education in the United States received his graduate degree in art in Canada. He also lived and studies in Poland and the Slovakia Republic. He received a purchase award in the 2006 Pacific States Biennial National Print Exhibition at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. His work is in the permanent collection of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.
For Yamamoto, visible surfaces only provide records from recent events and critical judgments require understanding of that which is beneath the surface. Yamamoto’s work attempts to describe a cross-section of history. The work requires careful viewing, slowly over a length of time, to provide a meaningful investigation.
Exhibition Location
The Campus Center Gallery is located on the third floor of the Campus Center at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. The Art Department Gallery is in Building 395, Manono Campus. An exhibition program will be available at the Campus Center information desk or through the Art Department. For more information regarding the exhibition, please contact the