Student News

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On the evening of Saturday, August 26, 2017, a group of art and wrestling enthusiasts gathered in an Athens field for a night of open-air wrestling organized by School of Art MFA Candidate Kaleena Stasiak. sumHER Slam, a performative evening of women’s wrestling, featured several graduate students from the School as well as a diverse local community of artists and supporters.

Flagpole Magazine’s Art Notes column highlights the painting practices of incoming MFA student Christina Foard and alumna Erin McIntosh as well as local artist Paul Collins in a recent article. The three artists are featured in Gallery@HotelIndigo’s Spotlight 2017 exhibition, which offers a focused glimpse into bodies of work by the three artists and is on view through September.

The exhibition The Game Show at the Lyndon House Art Center includes work by Dodd Professorial Chair Paul Pfieffer and MFA candidate Kaleena Stasiak. Pfieffer contributed a video work and Stasiak created a scavenger hunt. The Game Show also includes interactive work by Esteban Patino, sculpture by Curtis Ames and Lea Purvis, paintings by Meg Aubrey and Noah McCarthy, and photographs by Nicole Jean Hill.

Two Dodd students and one recent alumnus created and installed a colorful mural on campus in Snelling Dining Commons. Under the supervision of Professor Joseph Norman, recent graduate Gunnar Tarsa (BFA ’17) and current undergraduates Young Lim Lee and Hannah Duggan recently completed a 20-foot mural titled Word Space commissioned by Darnell Tate, Operational Manager at Snelling Dining Commons.

Kira Hegeman, a Ph.D. candidate in art education, was recently featured in a UGA College of Education profile about her role as the first artist-in-residence for the UGA Office of Sustainability. 

Alex Kaus, one of the new graduate students to the School of Art for fall 2017, features Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay, a third-year MFA candidate in Photography, in a profile on the website PHOTO-EMPHASIS.

IMAGE: Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay, Still, A Passage to India, 2016. Looped digital video

Graduate student Will Major was recently featured on the photography website Ain’t Bad. Major is a second-year MFA student in the Photography department at the School of Art. Ain’t Bad selected Major’s work from a recent call for entry, citing its wild subject matter and blend of still life imagery and portraiture in an article accompanied by extensive images.

Georgia's second largest sassafras tree is located in Athens, Georgia, and Dodd students have lent a helping hand in its restoration. The tree has been unable to maintain the healthy, woodland–type soil it needs at its roots, which have also been de–barked by horses.

Kaleidoscope is the 16th Annual First-year Studio Core Exhibiton at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. This annual exhibition showcases student work from the art school’s first year program with artworks from Drawing I, Drawing II, Color and Composition, 3D Design, and Ideation & Methodologies.

Twenty-one new graduate students join the student body at the Dodd this fall ready to delve into studies in art history, art education, and studio art and design. They describe themselves as “magpies” and “ice cream aficionados,” and their interests range from 60s DIY manuals to contemporary Chinese-American art. These grads arrive in Athens from as far as Santa Maria, California and Olympia, Washington and come from diverse undergraute backgrounds with undergraduate studies in history and graphic design at institutions such as the University of Nebraska and Sooreh University in Iran.

Student Profile: Laura Lake Smith
PhD in Art History, 2017

Laura Lake Smith arrived at the Lamar Dodd School of Art with a clear goal. As stated in her application to the PhD program, it was her intention to write a dissertation on the work of contemporary American artist Richard Tuttle. Entitled Imaging the In-between: The Serial Art of Richard Tuttle, that dissertation was completed and defended in spring 2017, the culmination of a long and rewarding journey toward understanding the work of one of the century’s most enigmatic artists.

Director of the Dodd Galleries, Katie Geha, organized an exhibition opening this Friday at Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta. The exhibition, Ancient Art Object, features Dodd painting alumnus Jaime Bull and Kaleena Stasiak, a current graduate student in Printmaking and Book Arts. Other artists in the exhibition include: Karen Lederer, Rosemary Mayer, Padma Rajendran, Ry Rocklen, Siebren Versteeg, Max Warsh and Jeff Williams. 

Art Education Graduate Student Sahar Aghasafari was awarded funding to attend a fibers workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts this past July. Aghasafari, who received her Master of Art Education from the University of Arizona after earning a Master in Art Research and a BFA in Fabrics Design from the University of Tehran, is pursuing her PhD in Art Education at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN is an internationally recognized visual art education center.

The July 3, 2017 issue of independent Athens magazine Flagpole profiles the Emerges X exhibition at ATHICA (Athens Institute for Contemporary Art), an annual exhibition that features the work of emerging local artists.