Creative Activities

Maria DePrano

Maria DePrano, Associate Professor of Art History, has been awarded an I Tatti Fellowship for 2013-2014. For more information about the fellowship, visit http://itatti.harvard.edu/

Michelle Forsyth / Chris Watts

Group show at Mulherin+Pollard in New York City, February 28 - March 31 2013

http://mulherinpollard.com/

Link to recent Daily Evergreen article on Michelle Forsyth:

http://dailyevergreen.wsu.edu/read/wsu-professor-michelle-forsyth-weaves-a-love-story

Io Palmer

Solo show at the Sheehan Gallery at Whitman College in Walla Walla.

http://www.whitman.edu/sheehan/Sheehan_Season12-13.html

WSU art faculty exhibit in regional, national venues

Contacts:

• Thom Brown, WSU Department of Fine Arts, 509-335-8686, thom.brown@wsu.edu
• Michelle Forsyth, WSU Department of Fine Arts, 509-335-3278, mforsyth@wsu.edu
• Phyllis Shier, WSU College of Arts and Sciences, 509-335-5671, peshier@wsu.edu

PULLMAN, Wash. - The creative work of Washington State University faculty member Michelle Forsyth will be showcased through Feb. 10 at Auxiliary Projects gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y., and regionally in Spokane. Faculty members Nik Meisel, Hiromi Okumura and Io Palmer also have regional exhibits in January and February.

Forsyth's solo exhibition, "Letters to Kevin," was cited as "one of the 10 best shows of the month" in the online publication Blouin ARTINFO. Comprised of 100 5-by-5 inch plaid watercolor paintings in various colors, textures and forms, the exhibit includes fabric that Forsyth wove, a technique she learned from YouTube videos.

"Michelle's exhibition is located in one of the most important national and international centers of art," said Thom Brown, chair of WSU's Fine Arts Department. "She has been working at a high level for a number of years; her New York exhibition demonstrates this, placing her well within a vital contemporary context and discussion."

The inspiration for the exhibit, Forsyth explained, came from a colleague who told her that a painting she was working on reminded him of her husband's shirts. "Letters to Kevin" began tongue-in cheek at first, she said, but soon transformed into something more. Forsyth traveled extensively for much of her previous work, but "Letters to Kevin" is a shift in focus to her domestic life.

"That was kind of a new and fruitful place for me, you know," she said. "What happens when you close the door? Can you seek inspiration out of what's around you every day, (rather) than going out to search something out? That's the genesis."

The meaning and inspiration behind "Letters to Kevin" became clear to her when, in an attempt to create a reproduction of a shirt that did not belong to her husband, she did not have a personal connection to the pattern.

"I decided to make them almost like love letters, so to speak, or kind of mementos," she said. "Almost like a gift to my husband. They document his plaid shirts but, at the same time, they're abstract paintings so they kind of oscillate between those two states of representation."

A more comprehensive exhibit of Forsyth's work, "Gray/Grey," is being shown at the Lied Center for the Visual Arts at Whitworth University in Spokane through Feb 9.

Also on the regional front are Hiromi Okumura's exhibition, "Perpetual Motion," at the Wawawai Canyon Gallery in Pullman; Nik Meisel's exhibition, "Yakima River Diaries," at Central Washington University in Ellensburg; and Io Palmer's exhibition, "Parted Leisure/Labored Ways," at Whitman College's Sheehan Gallery in Walla Walla.

Links to news and exhibits:

• Blouin ARTINFO: http://bit.ly/10T7O93
• Michelle Forsyth's New York exhibition: http://www.auxiliaryprojects.com/#/38661295840.
• Forsyth's exhibition "Gray/Grey" through Feb. 9 at the Lied Center for the Visual Arts, Spokane: http://bit.ly/TWLfvv
• Hiromi Okumura's exhibition "Perpetual Motion" through January at the Wawawai Canyon Gallery, Pullman. Artist website: http://hiromiokumura.com/
• Nik Meisel's exhibition "Yakima River Diaries" through Feb. 8 at Central Washington University, Ellensburg: http://bit.ly/YsDBNy
• Io Palmer's exhibition "Parted Leisure/Labored Ways" Feb. 22-April 12, at Whitman College’s Sheehan Gallery, Walla Walla: http://www.whitman.edu/sheehan/Sheehan_Season12-13.html

Avantika Bawa

Solo show at Gallery Maskara, Mumbai.
Reviews
Art Slant
Mint/ WSJ

Solo show at Suyama Space, Seattle
Review

Dennis DeHart

Land of the Stratus, an artist book by Dennis DeHart, is included in the exhibition DIY: Photographers and Books at the Cleveland Art Museum.

Ten photographic prints from the series At Play, are part of the Pacific Northwest Photography's Viewing Drawers at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

Michelle Forsyth

Forsyth recently gave two lectures at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand.

Her work will be featured in a solo exhibition at Whitworth University (Spokane, WA); and in a traveling exhibition called Papercuts, curated by Reni Gower at Georgia State University, Ernest G Welch Gallery (Atlanta, GA).

Doug Gast

September 2012

Artist Residency and two solo exhibitions (Performance/Audio Installation) at L.P.E.P. in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "L.P.E.P. is a cultural house dedicated to generating multidisciplinary exchanges between artists and promoting the intersection between art, communication, and other practices and disciplines."

September 19 - December 1 2012

Particles on the Wall: Group exhibition at the Museum of Culture and Environment at Central Washington University

November 2012

Artist Residency and group exhibitions with The Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest Hungary

Kevin Haas

This fall Kevin Haas will be an artist in residence at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium, and a visiting artist at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunst in Gent, Belgium, and at Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY.

Marianne Kinkel

Marianne Kinkel's recent publication: The Races of Mankind:The Sculptures of Malvina Hoffman was recently reviewed in Art in America by Sue Taylor.

Nik Meisel

Associate Professor Nickolus Meisel has installed an intervention in downtown Seattle, WA. Sponsored by the Office of Arts and Cultural affairs “begin.” is located at the SW corner of Marion and Western and can be seen here on his website.

Early in the summer it was announced that Meisel is one of 28 finalists for Portland Art Museum’s 2013 Contemporary Northwest Arts Awards.

Nik was also just added to the Washington State Arts Commission’s roster of artists for 2012-2013.

He will present at 2013 Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education in Amherst, MA with the panel Sonic Wormholes: Hearing, Thinking, and Moving Within and Across Disciplinary Boundaries.