Past Exhibits – UA Gallery | The University of Alabama

Magpie in the Mirror: Patty B. Driscoll

September 29th, 2022
in Exhibits, Past Exhibits

The University of Alabama Gallery is proud to A picture containing flowers and vegetables in a ceramic bowl. present the exhibition, Magpie in the Mirror: Patty B. Driscoll. The show will open on First Friday, October 7 and run through December 2, 2022. There will be a reception for the artist on First Friday, November 4, from 5:00 to 7:00 p

As art historian Tanja L. Jones writes in the catalog essay, “Patty B. Driscoll’s complex works of art engage questions of identity, self-awareness and equity. In this exhibition, the artist ranges across media to address belonging, acknowledgement, tradition, violence, and rebellion through painstakingly detailed objects. Some are designed to endure while others beguilingly convey that permanence is elusive and that all is not what it seems.”

Driscoll utilizes traditional genres and processes such as the still life, water gilding, metalwork, and textiles, layering her work with subtle narratives and subject matter that investigate the context of feminine and feminist identity. The artist writes that her work “is a dialogue with historical pathways, iconography and the symbolism of women, and challenges implicit societal representations and inculcated cultural values.”

Daniel White, director of the UA Gallery, writes, “Her work takes place in the role she deftly inhabits as a studio artist bridging both art history and contemporary art: the role of the connector. In this creative capacity, she connects meaning and beauty for beauty’s sake into her work, allowing a visual conversation between the two and with the viewer. Driscoll upsets traditional interpretations of what is a painting and what is a well-crafted object.”

Birmingham native Patty B. Driscoll holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts and a Bachelor of Science in studio art and art history from Skidmore College. In addition to her formal degree training, Driscoll has studied at the Florence Academy of Art, the Studio Arts College International in Florence, and the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She has been awarded a residency at Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia. Her paintings have been exhibited at the Abroms-Engels Institute for the Visual Arts, Ground Floor Contemporary, and the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama; Alexandria Museum of Art, Louisiana; Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana; Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, Alabama; and the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York. For the past 20 years, Driscoll has lived and worked in her hometown of Birmingham. Her website is here.

Click here to read this press release online.

Image credit: Patty B. Driscoll, “Garzoni and Gluck,” oil on panel, 18 x 24 x 1 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

The University of Alabama Gallery is an essential part of the education and development of UA students and our community. Admission to the gallery is free. The gallery is located in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center at 620 Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa. It is open Monday through Friday, 9 am-4 pm and First Fridays 12 noon-7 pm. Have questions or need assistance? Call (205) 345-3038.

For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in art history and studio art, visit our Degree Programs page.

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Pat Snow: You Will Never Read My Poetry.

July 26th, 2022
in Past Exhibits

The University of Alabama Gallery announces the opening show of the fall exhibition season: Pat Snow: You Will Never Read My Poetry. The exhibition will be on view from First Friday, August 5 through September 28, 2022, with a reception for the artist on First Friday, September 2, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Pat Snow investigates narrative structures and storytelling in his work. Informed by the DIY and Outsider movements of the 1980s and ‘90s, he pulls from low and high art, and words, ideas, and images from sources such as pop songs, blues lyrics, and Noam Chomsky. Snow writes, “The art and words are combined to try to find a place where our inner monologue rests alongside conversation from outside of oneself.”

The question for the viewer, he notes, is, “can the narrator be trusted? Does the narrator even trust their own words?”

Snow, a Birmingham, Alabama, native, recently returned after a decade in Austin, Texas, where he held solo and group exhibitions including at the Contemporary Museum Austin and GrayDUCK Gallery, Austin. The Austin Chronicle named Snow in their top art shows in year-end lists for several years.

Snow was a studio assistant for Luis Jiménez, Robert Colescott and Howard Finster, and worked with B. F. Perkins and Mose Tolliver. He received the MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Arizona, where he studied with Colescott and Jiménez. He received the BFA in studio art from UA where he studied with Al Sella and worked with Kentuck Festival and Art Center founder Georgine Clarke. He has been awarded an artist fellowship by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and his work is in the collections of museums including the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Image credits: ABOVE LEFT: Burden, oil on wood, 10 x 8 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, visit our Degree Programs page.

FLOW Tuscaloosa

May 27th, 2022
in Past Exhibits

The UA Department of Art and Art History is proud to present FLOW, two exhibitions in our downtown galleries with receptions for the artists First Friday, June 3, 2022 — from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in The University of Alabama Gallery and from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the Paul R. Jones Museum. The exhibitions both run through July 27, 2022.

FLOW at The University of Alabama Gallery features installations by Michi Meko and Boo Gilder. These artists share stories of human connection to place that reveal resilience and, at times, beauty and humor. Both were born in Alabama and have long histories in the state. In their work, waterways are understood as places of recreation, exploration, contemplation and change. The exhibition opens Friday, May 27 at noon.

FLOW at the Paul R. Jones Museum features installations by Kelly Taylor Mitchell and Tony Bingham. These artists share a focus on ritual, labor and the Black experience. Both draw from research to reflect their personal and communal histories that continue to impact and shape our world. In their work, waterways are understood as sources of life, power and healing. The exhibition opens Friday, June 3 at noon.

Flow Tuscaloosa, of which the FLOW exhibit is a part, draws from the successful restoration of Hurricane Creek, a Tuscaloosa natural resource, to inspire protection of the Black Warrior River and its tributaries and to bring attention to the unique history and ecology of our watershed. With the goal of fostering a practice of “placekeeping” and historical reflection through the visual arts, the curators invited five artists to show in three venues in Tuscaloosa: the Paul R. Jones Museum, The University of Alabama Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Center and the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum.

Daniel White, director of the Paul R. Jones Museum and the UA Gallery, said “We are excited to host the FLOW exhibitions in our downtown museum and gallery spaces. Selvage Collective has brought together a group of high-caliber artists who are responding to waterways, history and local lore with unique creations ranging from a neon sign to hand-crafted textiles.” White has been on hand as the artists install their pieces in the exhibit space. “These works respond to locations right in our backyard – such as Hurricane Creek or the old Bryce Hospital – and they remind us that history is always present, right “below the surface,” he smiled. “We are looking forward to celebrating these artists and their work in FLOW.”

Co-organizer Julia Brock said, “The four artists responded to research material provided by students from UA’s Department of History and the Selvage Collective to reimagine hidden or invisible histories of Tuscaloosa’s waterways. The exhibit complements other Flow Tuscaloosa initiatives – Jamey Grimes’ light installation in the lantern parade and Hannah Palmer’s exhibition Swimming Together, now on display at the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum – in offering another way to encounter this place.”

About the Artists

Boo Gilder is an Alabama-based artist and educator with a focus on community-engaged making and creative collaboration. She holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago in book and paper arts, as well as training in photography and graphic design. Formally curator of education at the Coleman Center for the Arts, a community-based contemporary art center in York, Alabama, she is currently art director at Studio by the Tracks in Birmingham, where she works with artists with autism spectrum disorder.

Multidisciplinary artist Michi Meko draws influence from Southern culture and contemporary urban conditions. He has an uncanny ability to inspire an urbanized aesthetic that is innovative, challenging and thoughtful. His works allude to conditions both physical and psychological. His work is a proclamation of strength, perseverance and remembrance. He is represented by Kavi Gupta in Chicago and lives and works in Atlanta.

neon sign art — Michi Meko and Kirstie Tepper, FLOW Curator/Selvage Collective

Multidisciplinary artist Tony M. Bingham holds degrees in communications, film and community media from Antioch and Goddard colleges and an MFA from Georgia State University. Bingham’s work explores communities and public space – sites of enslaved, extractive or industrialized labor – throughout Alabama. By making reference to unmarked burial sites and vernacular headstones, he calls into question where, how and who we collectively remember. Bingham currently teaches studio art at Miles College in Fairfield.

Atlanta-based artist and educator Kelly Taylor Mitchell is currently artist-in-residence with the studio artist program at Atlanta Contemporary and a working artist project fellow with MOCA GA (Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia). Mitchell is an assistant professor of art and visual culture and the art program director at Spelman College. Mitchell’s multidisciplinary practice centers oral history and ancestral memory woven into the fabric of the Africana Diaspora in order to present speculative histories specifically related to concepts of community autonomy, swamp marronage and inherited identity. Utilizing printmaking, papermaking, sculpture and textiles, Mitchell’s work manifests as immersive installations, performative objects and partnered artists books offering a venue for the sensorial to connect to, convey and reimagine rituals and rites of autonomous kin, collectives and individuals of the Africana Diaspora.

The Curators

These exhibitions were curated by the Selvage Collective, the collaborative team of Julia Brock, Teresa Bramlette Reeves, and Kirstie Tepper, in cooperation and partnership with Jamey Grimes, The University of Alabama’s Paul R. Jones Museum and The University of Alabama Gallery, the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum, Collaborative Arts Research Initiative, College of Arts & Sciences, Department of Geography, Department of Art and Art History, Department of History, the City of Tuscaloosa, the Friends of Hurricane Creek and the Black Warrior Riverkeeper.

FLOW is supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Alabama Humanities Alliance and the Alabama Visual Arts Network.

The Paul R. Jones Museum at 2308 Sixth Street, Tuscaloosa, is open Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., First Fridays, 12 noon–8 p.m.

The University of Alabama Gallery at 620 Greensboro Avenue, Tuscaloosa, is open Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m., First Fridays, 12 noon–7 p.m., inside the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center.

For more information about the programs in the UA Department of Art and Art History, go to this page or contact the department at (205) 348-5967.

The Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition Ashlee René Thompson – Fragments

March 29th, 2022
in Past Exhibits

The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History presents the Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition of Ashlee René Thompson, April 1 through May 6, 2022. The exhibition, titled Fragments, will be held at The University of Alabama Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center, with a reception for the artist on First Friday, April 1 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.

Ashlee René Thompson is an MFA student concentrating in painting who is also working toward a certificate in museum studies. In her artist statement, Thompsonwrites, “Artistic expression and exploration with materials drives my work and provides a means and context for introspection. Concepts associated with memory and interpersonal relationships, as well as the connection between the mind and body inspire my current practices.” Thompson said that through mark and gesture her paintings present and interpret “an anxious mind.” She said, “an inner dialogue emerges” on the canvas. “Impulsive mark-making paired with chaotic and ordered gestures reflect the irrational and calculated.” Thompson works mainly in acrylic and ink, sewing and gluing additional mixed media elements in her primarily two-dimensional canvases, but also working in three-dimensional forms.

Thompson held her MA thesis exhibition, Synaptic Transmission, in March 2021. Her work was selected for the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art’s new national juried exhibition, Emergence (June 2021), for the online In Art Gallery, and for the show, Open Exhibition, at the Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery in July 2021, among other exhibitions. She also served as the project manager for the recent exhibition, Weaving Muscogee Creek Culture: The Artistry of Mary Smith, at the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum in Tuscaloosa in 2021. Thompsonholds an MLA in general studies and a BA in art with a minor in art history from Auburn University Montgomery, where she also serves as an adjunct instructor. Her art website is here.

Image credit: Ashlee René Thompson, X, Y, Z, 2022, Acrylic and collage on canvas, 5.5”H x 12”W x 12”D. Courtesy of the artist.

Read this press release online.

The University of Alabama Gallery is an essential part of the education and development of UA students and our community. Admission to the gallery is free. The gallery is located in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center at 620 Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa. It is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 am-4:00 pm and First Fridays 12:00 noon-7:00 pm. Masks are encouraged although not required inside the gallery. Have questions or need assistance? Call (205) 345-3038.

For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, visit our Degree Programs page.

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The University of Alabama MFA Books Arts Program- MENDING

February 28th, 2022
in Past Exhibits

The University of Alabama MFA Books Arts Program Presents MENDING

A Creative Thesis Exhibit Featuring Gina Fowler, Katharine Buckley, & Luke Kelly

March 4 – 25, 2022 Reception Friday, March 4th 5 p.m. – 7 p.m. The University of Alabama Gallery

620 Greensboro Avenue
Tuscaloosa, AL 35401
Monday – Friday 9 a.m – 4 p.m.
First Friday, February 4th: 12 p.m. – 7 p.m.

205-345-3038

An Expressionist’s Journey- Susan Nomberg McCollough

September 26th, 2021
in Past Exhibits

The University of Alabama Gallery is proud to present An Expressionist’s Journey, an exhibition of paintings by Susan Nomberg McCollough, in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center, October 1 through December 3, 2021. The UA Gallery will hold a First Friday reception on November 5, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Face coverings are required inside the gallery.

Susan McCollough received her bachelor’s degree in theatre and art in 1966. She studied with the late UA art professors Alvin Sella and Frank Engel, and went on to study with Max Hellman at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Gary Sussman at the Art Students League of New York and Sonia De Franceschi of the Accademia D’Arte in Florence, Italy. She also studied art at the Delgado Museum of New Orleans (New Orleans Museum of Art) and in Pensacola, Fla.; Boston, Ma.; and at the University of California, Los Angeles.

McCollough has produced more than 500 paintings, many of which were commissioned, and exhibited in more than a dozen solo exhibitions in Alabama and
Florida. Recent awards include selection for exhibition at the 2020 International Art Prize Frida Kahlo art review in Milan, Italy, and the 2019 Monna Lisa La Gioconda Award in Lecce, Italy, from the Accademia Italia in Arte Nel Mondo.

McCollough’s artworks are held in collections in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, New York, California and New Jersey. In 2012 she donated her portrait, “Sella,” of her painting professor Al Sella, to the collection of the UA College of Arts & Sciences. For more than a decade, she served on the Art Committee at the United States Sports Academy, which attracts and honors artists from around the world and is responsible for selecting featured artists for the Olympics. She has owned Studio Three in Florida and, today works at her private studio in Gulf Shores.

Category: Past Exhibits