Andrew Kozlowski

duPont Gallery

October 27- December 4, 2016

Opening Reception: Oct. 27, 5-7pm

 

Programming

Papermaking Workshop

duPont Gallery

December 7, 12- 3 pm

Artist’s Talk: December 7, 4pm

Melchers Hall, Room 107

The exhibition brings together several series of artwork by Andrew Kozlowski that consider objects and their collective impact on our histories, both personal and public. 

The exhibition will feature “Trophy Room” a new site specific piece created for the duPont gallery using wheat pasted and laser cut screen-prints. The structure, a cross between a cabinet of curiosity and a bomb shelter shelving unit, will display objects culled from numerous stories.  Some objects are benign: soda cans and beer bottles found in parking lots, bits of rocks and broken boards.  Some reflect distant histories: artifacts of a Roman shipwreck, Navajo and Hopi vases, stone tools found in Florida from 20,000 years ago.  And others are from more recent events: the gun that killed Trayvon Martin, a can of tear gas from a riot in Mexico, a baseball cap from a presidential hopeful.  All together this collection reflects on the impossible clash of histories and moments that populate one’s newsfeed on a daily basis.  Here, despite their organized display they lack a reliable provenance, relying solely on the viewer’s own sense of history and memory to animate them. According to Kozlowski, “I find the provenance of the objects we hold in our hands a fascinating reminder that history has always been constructed from what has survived, through careful planning, accidental circumstance, or willful evolution.  Through my work I carve a wide path of questions, calling to question those objects that ultimately define our cultures and our histories.”

The attentive viewer will be able to see objects wandering from series to series, being repeated, mutated, and changed.  All the works in “Trophy Room” seek to ask a question, given all these things in the world, what do you hold dear, find important, and why?

About the Artist

Andrew Kozlowski received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from VCU in 2007 and his BFA in printmaking from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 2003. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, with solo exhibitions at 1708 Gallery in Richmond VA, the Philadelphia Print Center, Philadelphia PA, Spring Hill College in Mobile AL, Mary Baldwin College in Staunton VA and Studio 23 in Richmond VA.  In 2009 he completed a residency at the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium and was awarded 2011-2012 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship for his work in printmaking.  He is currently an assistant professor at Auburn University.

 

Opening Reception

Installation

Ridderhof Martin Gallery

October 27- December 4, 2016

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 27, 5-7pm

Lecture: Wednesday, October 26, 5pm in Melchers Hall, Room 107

At first glance, “The Association for Creative Zoology,” appears to document an early 20^th century scientific organization advocating for a Biblically-based understanding of natural history. The exhibition includes two kiosks used by the organization as part of their public information campaigns, carefully rendered lithographs depicting hybrid animals, a few taxidermy specimens, and even a fossil of a bull-raccoon.  The exhibition also has an educational slide show about Reverend James Randolph Denton, founder of the Association for Creative Zoology and his collaborations with the publisher Everitt Ormsby Hokes.

Pronounced like “hoax,” “Hokes” turns out to be a key ironic signal. The Association for Creative Zoology is actually an elaborate work of historical and scientific fiction created by Beauvais Lyons, who is the self-appointed Director of the Hokes Archives, who has been creating elaborate works of academic and museum parody for over three decades. Created over the course of eight years, this exhibition offers a window into one of his invented worlds, which have included imaginary archaeology, medicine and even a collection of folk art.

Lyons has taught printmaking in the University of Tennessee since 1985. He received his MFA degree from Arizona State University in 1983 and his BFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. Lyons’ one-person exhibitions have been presented at over 60 museums and galleries in the United States and abroad. His prints are in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. PA.

Opening Reception

Ridderhof Martin Gallery

September 1- October 9, 2016

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 1, 5-7pm

The horse was omnipresent in nineteenth-century France — not only did humans awake and doze off to the clatter of their hooves in the streets and the sounds of their snorts, whinnies, and neighs, avoid their dung as they walked, and smelled their horse-sweat, but they saw them portrayed in every manner and style by all types of artists. The exhibition explores this subject in detail, with major artworks in painting, sculpture, and on paper by artists including Eugène Delacroix, Theodore Géricault, André Derain, Edgar Degas, and others, with every major movement in French art from Romanticism to Surrealism represented. Featuring more than forty works, the exhibition draws from the collections of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts including the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

About the exhibition

The exhibition is the outcome of an innovative course team-taught during the fall semester by Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art, VMFA; Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Educator and Manager of VMFA Statewide Programs and Exhibitions; and Richard Waller, Executive Director, University of Richmond Museums; with course assistant Kristie Couser, Curatorial Assistant for the Mellon Collection, VMFA. The students participating in the intercollegiate seminar include: Alisa Ashley Carmichael, ’17, art history and studio art double major, Randolph-Macon College; Samantha Davis, ’16, art history and studio art double major, Randolph-Macon College; Emmett Fleming, ’16, studio art major, Virginia Commonwealth University; Alyssa M. Hughes, ’15, art history and German double major, University of Mary Washington; Jenny Kacani. ’17, art history major, University of Richmond; Dylan Maddox, ’16, art history major, Virginia Commonwealth University; Claire McDonald, ’16, art history and Italian studies double major, University of Richmond; Moriah Webster, ’15, art history major, Randolph-Macon College; and Amy Mei Woo, ’16, art history major, The University of Virginia.

According to Dr. Mitchell Merling of the VMFA, “It was a pure pleasure bringing the art and the students together, and we hope the public takes equal enjoyment in the resulting exhibition, which contains both great works by well-known masters as well as hidden gems by lesser-known but equally able artists, all on this central theme of the horse.”

The exhibition was produced as a collaboration between the University of Richmond Museums and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. It is partly funded by the Paul Mellon Endowment at the VMFA and is produced by the VMFA Statewide Traveling Exhibition Services.

Listen to audio from the exhibition read by Amy Mei Woo, Claire McDonald and UMW Galleries’ Assistant Curator and Exhibition Coordinator, Rachel Hutcheson http://spts.us/umwgalleries/the-french-horse

Opening Reception

Jon McMillan

duPont Gallery

September 1- October 9, 2016

Opening Reception: September 1, 5-7pm

Artist’s Talk: September 15, 4-5pm

The sculptures in this series address the concept of duality by bringing together disparate parts in a variety of relationships. The idea of confluence informs the work through the physical reference to processes and materials, and through a metaphorical examination of diverging thoughts, traits, sources and forms. As the meeting point of two rivers, a confluence is often the place where clay collects over millions of years of erosion. By using this material to join seemingly disconnected objects and ideas, I hope to engage viewers, drawing them into a dialogue that pulls from universal inferences as well as deeply personal reactions.

While these sculptures begin as an exploration of my own personality, they also seek to examine the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. The forms are suggestive but intentionally ambiguous, so that the dialogue between object and audience remains open ended, changing with each viewer. I select, distill and abstract forms and surfaces from multiple sources, recombining them to create objects loaded with connotations. If the work is successful, it creates more questions than answers.

About the Artist

Jon McMillan is an artist and educator residing in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he is an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at the University of Mary Washington. He holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and a BFA from James Madison University, where he also earned a minor in Art History. After undergraduate school, Jon worked for seven years as a full time studio potter before pursuing his Master’s degree. Currently, he makes functional and sculptural ceramic artwork, both of which are exhibited widely. Highlights include recent solo shows at Tennessee Tech University, Mary Baldwin College, and Luniverre Gallery in Cordes Sur Ciel, France. Jon was a finalist for the Zanesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics and was awarded “Best In Show” at the 2013 Strictly Functional Pottery National Exhibition, among other honors.

Opening Reception