Newcomb Art Department
Newcomb Art News
Juliana Kasumu (MFA candidate), Kadian, Irun Kiko Series, 2015Application deadline: February 1, 2019
Tulane University
Newcomb Art Department
202 Woldenberg Art Center
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118
United States
T +1 504 865 5327
artdept@tulane.edu
tulane.edu
The Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University is devoted to the study and production of visual art within the context of Tulane University's strong tradition in the liberal arts. The Art Department fosters a collaborative and rigorous environment that promotes creative and critical inquiry, exploration, and innovation in studio arts practice. The Department emphasizes a multi-disciplinary approach to contemporary art-making and supports myriad forms of expression with concentrations in Sculpture, Glass, Ceramics, Photography, Printmaking, Digital Arts and Painting & Drawing.
The Newcomb Art Department offers an MFA degree in a small, intensive, interdisciplinary, two-year residency program that emphasizes close interaction with dedicated faculty and peers, and engagement with New Orleans’ unique cultural landscape. The graduate curriculum is focused on individual studio practice while also engaging students in cross-disciplinary seminars on art theory, pedagogy, and practice-based research as well as courses in the history of art. All admitted graduate students receive a full tuition waiver and a generous assistantship stipend. Teaching and teaching-assistantship opportunities are available to all admitted students each semester.
Located in New Orleans, a vibrant and culturally rich city in the Gulf South, the Newcomb Art Department draws from a diverse and exciting range of artistic and cultural production. Local resources include Prospect New Orleans, an international art Biennial, the newly established Joan Mitchell Center, The Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Pelican Bomb, a leading arts criticism organization.
Facilities: Graduate students are provided with a private studio and 24-hour access to world-class facilities in the Woldenberg Art Center. Sculpture houses a fully equipped wood shop, a metals area/foundry, mixed media space, digital fabrication capabilities, and space for performance. Ceramics includes large general studio workrooms as well as specialized clay, glaze and plaster mixing rooms, critique/computer and kiln rooms. Glass houses both a hot and cold shop, as well as a steel fabrication area. Printmaking has facilities for intaglio, lithography and silkscreen as well as its own darkroom. The Digital Arts studio includes 14 workstations with the latest software, five scanners, along with medium and large format printers. Photography includes graduate and main darkrooms, film processing, a lighting studio, lecture and demo rooms and an advanced digital imaging room. Painting and Drawing maintains four large classrooms with entire walls of natural north light and color-balanced lighting overhead. The Carroll Gallery serves as the Newcomb Art Department’s exhibition space, and is dedicated to presenting professional exhibitions by students and faculty, including the annual MFA candidacy reviews and MFA thesis exhibitions. The Newcomb Art Museum features national and international exhibitions and programs that utilize the critical frameworks of diverse disciplines in conceptualizing and interpreting innovative art and design.
Studio Art Faculty: Teresa Cole, Aaron Collier, Adam Crosson, AnnieLaurie Erickson, Ronna Harris, Jeremy Jernegan, Kevin H. Jones, Gene Koss, Anthony Baab, William DePauw, Sean Fader, Christian Stock.
Past visiting artists and critics: Trevor Paglen, Mickalene Thomas, Jenni Sorkin, Tania Bruguera, Arlene Shechet, Helen Molesworth, Zarouhie Abdalian, Hank Willis Thomas, Jessica Stockholder, Jason Lazarus, Curtis Mann, Hannah Whitaker, Cameron Shaw, Tanyth Berkeley, Dan Cameron, Miranda Lash, Paul Chan, Mel Chin, John F. Clark, Holland Cotter, Luke DuBois, Eve Fowler, Pat Steir, Robert Storr, Katy Grannan, Craig Drennen, Dana Hoey, Susan Kismaric, Nicola Lopez, Lothar Osterburg, Eric Parker, Alexis Rockman, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Thomas Roma, Jennifer Steinkamp, Swoon, Marcia Vetrocq, Pawel Wojtasik, and Lisa Yuskavage.
Application information
The Newcomb Art Department is accepting applications in Sculpture, Glass, Ceramics, Photography, Printmaking, Digital Arts and Painting & Drawing. The application deadline is February 1, 2019. Please note that the GRE is not required of MFA applicants in Studio Art. Further information and application guidelines can be found here. The application process can be completed online here.
Last week at Homecoming, we unveiled Kara Walker's Pastoral, a work of art installed in the Woldenberg Art Center through the generosity of one of our alumni, Sanford Heller (BA, 1994). At the unveiling, Dr. Mia Bagneris offered the following explication for Pastoral.
Kara Walker (American, b. 1969), Pastoral, 1998, wall painting in black
Kara Walker (American, b. 1969), Pastoral, 1998, wall painting in black“This piece (Pastoral) is a departure from the bulk of my work which is situated in a fictionalized version of the Antebellum South, which is the hub where profane racial mythologies shake hands with the mundane reality of day to day existence in a racially divided culture. This is a quiet little contemplative piece in which a Negress of Renown dons sheep´s clothing, or is dry humped by its filthy little self.”
Kara Walker
Born in California but raised in Stone Mountain, GA, home of the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, Kara Walker cites her upbringing in a community profoundly invested in the romantic mythology of the Old South as a force that powerfully informs her work. The artist first received notice for her panoramic silhouette installations, dark phantasmagorias evocative of antebellum plantations that confront the viewer with the weight of history, violence, and trauma and their intersections with race, gender, and sexuality.
Walker’s use of the silhouette form is masterful. She explodes the genteel connotations of the medium, presenting the viewer with violent, often brutally sexual scenes of depravity, debauchery, and even defecation. Exploiting and disrupting the silhouette’s indexical quality, Walker presents the viewer with impossibly nightmarish tableaux that, steeped in history, nonetheless have the patina of reality. Expertly, she probes the innate ambiguity of an art form that communicates only at its edges, requiring all information to be relayed in the outlines and forcing viewers to question what they see. Ultimately, Walker does not offer a hopeful vision, but in her brutally fantastic imaginaries, the artist presents a realistic picture of the crippling burden of the nation’s dark past that continues to haunt its present.
Walker achieves all this and more in Pastoral. In a compelling game of visual bait-and-switch, the figure of the Negress—a stock character in her oeuvre—merges with that of a sheep and simultaneously suggests the form of a tree. Does the Negress bear the weight of her ovine burden as a garment? Is she engaged in a bizarre bestial sex act? Will the bloodshed portended by the razor she daintily holds in her hoof-like hand be directed toward herself or someone else? The solitary, introspective figure is, as Walker suggests, somewhat of “a departure” from her more chaotic panoramas. However, the violence and “profane racial mythologies” that characterize her work remain, and Walker delivers none of the peace of an Arcadian idyll that Pastoral’s title suggests.
Dr. Stephanie Porras
November 07, 2018 6:00 PM
Stone Auditorium, 210 Woldenberg Art CenterThe members of the Alpha of Louisiana Chapter at Tulane would like to invite you to the 2018 Phi Beta Kappa Fall Lecture. Stephanie Porras, Associate Professor of Art History and Vice President of the Alpha of Louisiana Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, will be speaking on "Early Modern Globalization: Ivory Sculpture as the First Global Luxury Good." The lecture will take place Wednesday, November 7, at 6:00 PM in Stone Auditorium (room 210 of Woldenberg Art Center). A reception will follow. Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most prestigious undergraduate honors society in the United States. In addition to its role in recognizing academic excellence, Phi Beta Kappa supports teaching, research, and learning in the liberal arts and sciences.
Please join us in the Carroll Gallery on Wednesday, November 7th at 3pm for a walkthrough with Cristina Molina, Juror of the 2018 Undergraduate Juried Exhibition.
Congratulations to the recipients of this year's Juror's Awards:
Sue Choi, Alex Lawton, Harleigh Shaw, Jordan Tavan, and Nathalie Toth.
The MFA Open Studio event will also take place on Thursday evening from 5:30-7:30pm.
Sara Abbas (Painting) Studio 502
Joshua E. Bennett (Digital Arts) Studio 123
Allison Beondé (Photography) Studio 500
John Glass (Glass) Studio 119
Blas Isasi Gutiérrez (Sculpture) Studio 123F
Jarrod Jackson (Painting) Studio 504
Juliana Kasamu (Photography) Studio 500
Cora Lautze (Printmaking) Studio 123D
Joris Lindhout (Digital Arts) Studio 506
Mark Morris (Glass) Studio 115
Holly Ross (Ceramics) Studio 108
[photo: Juliana Kasamu, Process #2, 2015]
This year's juror is Cristina Molina, a member of the New Orleans artist-run gallery The Front where she regularly curates, exhibits her own artwork, and co-organizes The Front’s annual juried film festival.
Works must be dropped off in person to the Carroll Gallery. Entry forms can be submitted online through the following link: https://goo.gl/forms/AY29kCuIp0nJRGpl1.
The exhibition opens on Thursday, November 1st with a reception from 4:30-6:30pm. A walkthrough with juror Cristina Molina will take place on Wednesday, November 7th at 3:00pm.
The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present will hold its 10th Annual Conference in New Orleans, October 17-20, 2018, hosted by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University and Pelican Bomb. Wednesday evening, October 17th, the Newcomb Art Department will host the opening night's Artists Talk, the Sandra Garrard Memorial Lecture, "Machine Visions," with Trevor Paglen, at 6pm in Freeman Auditorium, 205 Woldenberg Art Center.
The following Tulane faculty, staff, and students will participate as hosts, presenters, and moderators at ASPA/10: Adrian Anagnost, Adam Crosson, Amy Crum, Kate Baldwin, Laura Blereau, Courtney Bryan, Joel Dinerstein, Christopher Dunn, Brian Edwards, Megan Flattley, Denise Frazier, Eric Herhuth, Z’etoile Imma, Zachary Lazar, Amy Lesen, Monica Ramírez Montagut, Cheryl Naruse, Adriana Obiols, Christopher Oliver, John Ray Proctor, Ama Rogan, Matt Sakakeeny, Daniel Sharp, Rebecca Snedeker, Red Vaughan Tremmel, Emily Wilkerson, and Edie Wolfe.
For more information, please visit the ASAP/10 website: https://asap10.tulane.edu.
by Emily WilkersonNew Orleans-based artist Sally Heller worked with Newcomb Art Department students for the last two weeks of September to develop the installation Mind Over Mayhem. In October, School of Liberal Arts Writer and Editor Emily Wilkerson sat down with Heller to speak about her artistic practice, her new installation in Tulane’s Carroll Gallery, and experiential learning.
Emily: Tell me a little about Mind Over Mayhem, the installation you developed in the Carroll Gallery with Tulane students.
Sally: All of my installations have titles that are a play on words, for example Bloom and Doom and Terrain Wreck, and they are usually about my general impression of the world as a chaotic place. So the idea of Mind Over Mayhem addresses what’s going on politically, and how we can bring to order these matters that are out of our control.
Emily: And how did the installation unfold?
Sally: I began the installation by accumulating low-end consumer goods, often materials or things that get used and thrown away. Then the students and I transformed these objects by bundling, cutting, and knotting them to remove them from their intended context. During the first day of installation, the students and I also applied rigging to the grid on the gallery’s ceiling, which consisted of clothesline tied in a crisscross fashion across the length of the space. At the same time, we mounted a twenty-foot photographic print onto the back wall. From there we could suspend forms, the items we collected and transformed, from the rigging and against the backdrop of the wall print. This created a three-dimensional effect—it was as though the students and I constructed a three-dimensional, abstract painting with the gallery space as our canvas.
Emily: What do you hope students gain from their experience working with you?
Sally: In constructing the installation, we made decisions about how to access the piece, where to place boundaries, and how much tension should be applied to the rigging, so the students were examining materials, planes, and space carefully. The process takes into account everything they are learning in their individual classes, such as painting and sculpture, and combines all of that into this one process.
What’s interesting to me about making this work is the potential I see in the materials themselves. And that is something I hope to impart to the students—the excitement of building with these non-traditional art materials.
Emily: Can you talk about what inspires your work?
Sally: There’s a raw energy that comes from making something with your hands, especially on a really large scale. I’m also using objects that we generally don’t pay attention to, and am turning these objects into art. By turning disposable items into something significant, you can begin to see the power in very nominal things.
Everybody’s aesthetic sensibility is really about who they are. It comes from a deep place inside you. My work and process are impacted by not wanting to stay within the boundaries of painting, a cannon that was mostly dominated by white, male artists. When I became a feminist, I realized I didn’t have to subscribe to the boundaries of painting. My process is really about me as a person.
Emily: How do you think visual art, and the liberal arts, influence the way we see and move in the world around us?
Sally: It seems that right now the political climate is all about tightening rules. And I think the liberal arts allow you to expand your thinking. I also think a liberal arts background, and exposure to the arts, allow you to have more sympathy, and not be too reactive in situations.
I believe the more knowledge you have, the better decisions you’ll make in your relationships, in your workspace, and really in every aspect of life.
Mind Over Mayhem is on view at Tulane's Carroll Gallery through October 24.
Sally Heller is a multi-material based artist who creates recognizable yet improbable landscapes constructed from cultural detritus. She has been awarded residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Civitella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy; the Vermont Studio School, Johnson, Vermont; and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York. Her work has been exhibited at the Lawndale Art Center, Houston; the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Kemper Fine Art, New York City; and Scope, Miami, among many other sites. She holds a B.S. from University of Wisconsin and an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Faculty Spotlight - Aaron Collier
Written by Emily Wilkerson
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Assistant Professor of Art Aaron Collier is inspired by questions and possibilities. His new paintings and works on paper, which will be on view in his upcoming exhibition, Of Rocks and Ruins at New Orleans’ Octavia Gallery, respond to the illusiveness of our inability to see or understand something fully.
“I find there to be an extreme amount of verisimilitude in abstract painting. Abstraction can feel more like an experience with the world than viewing something chronicled in its totality,” Collier explains. While his paintings are mostly composed of varying expanses of color and little recognizable imagery, Collier doesn’t claim to be a purely abstract artist; in other words, he doesn’t wish for there to be a complete divorce between his imagery and the world.
Of Rocks and Ruins will be comprised of Collier’s newest body of work that is inspired by traditional paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks,” 1483-1486, as well as his experience visiting Palatine Hill in Rome. In a recent conversation, he explained that while some architectural elements are more intact at Palatine Hill’s ancient site, visitors essentially examine shards and fragments in order to create a vision of what once was.
“The questions that drive my practice are several: how can we enjoy, how can we take pleasure in, how can we exist within finite knowledge? How can we savor and appreciate these beautiful, astounding fragments?”
Collier began teaching in Tulane’s School of Liberal Arts in 2006 as a professor of practice in painting and drawing, focusing on fundamentals in foundations courses such as line, shape, and color. During those first few years, he began reconsidering these same fundamentals in his own work.
“The daily opportunity to observe and participate in the creative processes of Tulane's driven students is incredibly inspiring, challenging, and humbling. Students have no idea how thankful I am for such a gift.”