The Dodd Galleries at the Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Liu Shiming Art Foundation from New York City invite you to celebrate the current exhibition Liu Shiming: Descending the Mountain Together in our Margie E. West Gallery this Thursday January 26 from 4 to 6 pm. The exhibition will remain on view until February 3, 2023.

Guests will enjoy food and refreshments, a poetry reading by doctoral student in languages and literacy education Yixuan Wang, and remarks by distinguished members of the university and the foundation. Furthermore, the occasion will mark the public dedication of the Lamar Dodd School of Art's first Liu Shiming scholarship award. 

Liu Shiming

Liu Shiming (1926-2010) was a member of the first generation of sculptors to graduate from China's prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts. Grounding his work in a local context, Shiming developed a folk art style within the Chinese tradition. He emulated ancient figurine making of the Han dynasty while paying homage to ordinary life he observed in Henan and Hebei provinces in Northern and Central China. In 2018, the Central Academy of Fine Arts established the Liu Shiming Sculpture Museum, which is dedicated to researching and investigating Shiming's artworks and their art historical meaning.

Descending the Mountain Together, a mini-retrospective of the work of Liu Shiming, includes twenty-three sculptures in wood, bronze and ceramic, all on loan from the Liu Shiming Art Foundation. The exhibition inaugurates the annual Liu Shiming award, which is given to a graduate student in the Lamar Dodd School of Art working in sculpture, ceramics or three-dimensional art and design.

This year's award recipient, Mickey Boyd, is a 3rd-year MFA student in sculpture. Awarded a 2022 Graduate Research Award by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at UGA, Boyd's practice is grounded in formative experiences working in his father's shop and appreciating the big sky of his family's home in central Colorado.

View of the exhibition Descending the Mountain Together in the Margie E. West Gallery, January 2023. Artworks on loan from the Liu Shiming Art Foundation.

Mickey Boyd, Housing Complex.

More About the Liu Shiming Art Foundation

The Liu Shiming Art Foundation was founded in 2021 to preserve the works of acclaimed Chinese artist Liu Shiming, as well as for the advancement of the global discourse surrounding the arts, history and culture. The fund aims to support art students and emerging artists by encouraging the creation of all forms of art and multicultural study. The Foundation goals are to foster a greater understanding and appreciation of Asian art forms and to contextualize them within a global purview. Engaging students and artists to conceptualize the creative process by focusing on a multicultural East and West perspective should be fundamental to the human experience.

More About the Dodd Galleries

The Dodd Galleries at the University of Georgia is dedicated to understanding and promoting contemporary art as a tool and catalyst for education. The Galleries consist of five exhibition spaces that act as laboratories and testing grounds for innovation located among our classrooms and studios. Committed to the idea of art-as-research, the galleries host established and emerging artists, designers, critics, and curators of national and international stature along with interdisciplinary programming designed to question, educate and inspire. The mission of the Galleries is to challenge contemporary perceptions of artmaking and promote the idea that art is essential to the production of knowledge. The Galleries produces rotating exhibitions and events that examine the cultural and social contexts around us, instigates cross-disciplinary dialogues and essential art experiences, and provides a framework for intellectual and creative inquiry.