Exhibition Season 2007/2008

Celebrating the School of Art's last year in the Visual Arts Building on South Jackson Street, Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries introduce for 2007/2008 a season of exhibitions, workshops, and performances.

The eleven artists in this year's Exhibition Series operate at the intersections, margins, and spaces in between traditional disciplines, emphasizing art that must be experienced and engaged in the moment. Opening in Fall 2007 at Broad Street Gallery, Brett MacFadden exposes a side of graphic design that is usually left unseen with his Snap to Grid, an exhibition of MacFadden's meticulously hand-drawn type and window gilding. Both arcane and digital technologies are employed to contribute to this dialogue on the (suprisingly) liberating framework of the "grid," an organizing feature in most design and art computer software the MacFadden exposes as a foil against which his experiments are played out.

Following in October, Collective Vision celebrates the accomplishments of the Lamar Dodd School of Art Board of Visitors, our board of arts professionals, enthusiasts, and patrons from across the country. Since 1998, the School of Art has been fortunate to have a committee of advisors whose hard work and vision have steered the School of Art in exciting new directions. Held in conjunction with the Board of Visitors Fall Meeting, this exhibition presents the work of the fifteen members of our board who are practicing artists.

RG Brown finishes the Fall 2007 season at Broad Street Gallery with his disPLACEMENTS: Georgia Arc, a collaoration between the visual arts and archeological geophysics at the University of Georgia. This partnership results in a peculiar archeological field study as an act of deciphering, of close and attentive reading for artist, scientist, and audience.

Launching the Spring 2008 season at Broad Street Gallery is artist Anya Kivarkis, also an artist in the Visiting Artist/Scholar lecture series. Kivarkis creates work that, as she writes, "disrupt(s) how jewelry operates as a signifier of access to luxury, as excessive embellishment has historically signaled wealth and civility." Created as a direct response to current social, cultural, and economic conditions, Kivarkis' work challenges the authority of the "historical ornament through alteration and mutation." The delicate and beautiful contribute to this dialoge aesthetically, culturally and politically.

Extending Kivarkis' foray into material culture, luxury and desire, artist Libby Black takes inspiration from specific purveyors of material excess - Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci and Kate Spade to be exact. By studying and extracting from their goods the very symbols of luxury status (logo and particular style) Black creates luxury anew with paper, glue and pigment. Surface, anticipation, and distraction are major themes in this work, showing objects of desire as simply, and finally, objects.

Concluding Spring 2008 at the Broad Street Gallery is Susan Cofer, an Atlanta-based artist who is well-known for her intensely delicate and enigmatic drawings of organic shapes. In this one-person exhibition at Broad Street Gallery, Cofer delivers a body of work that is distinctly different in form, but linked in concept to the drawings. The first exhibition of this series, the portrait busts in artist-made boxes detail the features and belongings of fellow artists and art patrons either living and operating in, or otherwise connected to Atlanta, Georgia, Cofer's sculpture immediately recalls the assemblage constructions of Joseph Cornell, as well as the African traditions of sculptural portraiture.

Intent

The Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries are dedicated to understanding and promoting contemporary art as a tool and a catalyst for education. The Galleries consistently produce rotating exhibitions and programming that examine the cultural and social contexts around us, challenge contemporary perceptions of art making, and provide a framework for intellectual and creative inquiry. By inviting established and emerging contemporary artists, designers, critics and curators of national and international stature from off-campus as well as within, and setting them in direct dialogue with University and local audiences, the Galleries establish immediate relevancy. The Galleries and their vision are well-aligned with the University’s commitment “to teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things,” and to excellence in creative endeavors that are focused on organized programs to create, maintain, and apply new knowledge and theories, promoting a rigorous and lively creative atmosphere conducive to experimentation, innovation, scholarship and inquiry.

Broad Street Gallery Exhibition Series 2007/2008

Brett MacFadden | Snap to Grid
On View August 28 - September 28, 2007
Opening Reception: Tuesday, August 28, 6 - 8 pm
Type Drawing Workshop with Brett MacFadden and Mike Essl Tuesday, August 28, 2 - 4 pm
Mike Essl: Lecture in conjunction with Snap Monday, August 27, 5:30 pm
Visual Arts Building, Room 116

Collective Vision:
An Exhibition of the Lamar Dodd School of Art Board of Visitors
On View October 12 - November 9, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, October 12, 5:30 - 7 pm
Panel Discussion: Professional Practices in the Arts
Thursday, October 11, 5:15 - 6:30 pm, Courtyard Main Gallery
Panelists: Shelly Wischussen, Chief Preparator at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; Geoff Bates, Director and Curator of the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park at Governors State University in University Park, Illinois; Patty Brundage, Gallery Manager at Leo Castelli for 20 years; Susan Cofer, Atlanta artist represented by Solomon Projects

RG Brown | disPLACEMENTS: Georgia Arc
On View November 15 - December 14, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 15, 6 - 8 pm, Gallery Talk at 7 pm

Anya Kivarkis
On View January 29 - February 29, 2008
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 29, 7 - 9 p.m.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Tuesday, January 29, 5:30 p.m.
UGA Student Learning Center, Room 102

Libby Black
On View March 4 - April 4, 2008
Opening Reception: Tuesday, March 4, 7 - 9 p.m.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Tuesday, March 4, 5:30 p.m.
UGA Student Learning Center, Room 102

Susan Cofer
On View April 15 - May 16, 2008
Opening Reception: Tuesday, April 15, 6 - 8 p.m.

Visit Broad Street Gallery
Broad Street Studios Building, 257 W. Broad Street
Athens, Georgia 30601 (706) 542-0069

Hours
The Broad Street Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 9 am - 5 pm
Closed Weekends and University-observed breaks