New faculty in Winthrop’s College of Visual and Performing Arts were invited to showcase pieces at an art exhibition titled De Novo II. “De Novo” comes from Latin, meaning in a ‘new form’ or ‘manner’. The exhibition, taking place from Feb. 1 through Mar. 5, is intended to introduce the talents of new faculty within the CVPA to Winthrop students and the surrounding community.
“We try [to] showcase our faculty and students as much as possible within our gallery spaces,”said Karen Derksen, director of Winthrop University Galleries. “In the last few years, we have had a number of new faculty join the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of Design. It is a great way to showcase to our students and community the talented faculty coming into the College of Visual and Performing Arts.”
While there were no specific guidelines for the participants in this year’s exhibition, the faculty worked together collaboratively to determine what pieces would highlight their creativity for each faculty member.
“The first part of the planning process is to contact potential faculty to participate in the exhibition. Once they have [agreed], I work with each of them individually to determine which pieces would best showcase their creative work. I look for commonalities between each creator’s work such as color, subject matter or medium. I then work with the faculty to determine exciting ways to install these pieces in the gallery,” Derksen said.
Over the years, Winthrop has presented faculty exhibitions in a number of ways, but it seemed ideal to take an opportunity to introduce the new faculty. Last spring, the gallery was able to showcase eight new faculty members. This year, they were able to showcase an additional four including, assistant professor of fine arts, Myles Calvert, associate professor of illustration in the Department of Design, Elizabeth Dulemba, assistant professor of fine arts, Stephanie Sutton, and professor of design and chair, Eva Roberts.
“Being an academic gallery space, we have the opportunity to showcase to students and our community the talents of our faculty. It’s always nice for the community to see what faculty members are doing creatively as well as providing an introduction to these new faculty.”
Myles Calvert, who has a master’s degree in printmaking, formulates moments where time, color, and imagery can be wrestled with to arrive at a resolution. This creates a space for personal and unique thoughts that feed into larger interests.
“I have two very separate mediums in the current exhibition. One set is a part of a series, featuring large screen prints on a very smooth cotton rag paper. The ink is textured with a puff additive to give it volume and lift. The other work is neon
tubing and a power source, so the light it emits is quite intense,” Calvert said.
Award-winning illustrator and author, Elizabeth Dulemba has established a process to her creations which includes creating thumbnails, half-size illustrations, pencil drawings at a reduced size and scanning it at a very high resolution. She changes drawings to sepia and prints them onto high quality watercolor paper, sometimes at the same size as they will be in the book. This is followed by painting her pieces by hand, making minor changes, scanning again, and sending the digital files to her publisher for printing.
“I hope to transport viewers to another world or place in my artwork. Staring at work by Garth Williams when I was a kid is what made me want to become an illustrator. I would crawl into his illustrations and stay in them for hours. I attempt to recreate that experience for my viewers with my own work,” Dulemba said.
Award-winning artist, Stephanie Sutton has one piece for the show titled, “Music Videos from 2018.” As this piece is her most recently completed work, it speaks directly about isolation and is relevant to the current pandemic. The work was originally installed as large video projections in a darkened room but, with the limits of the space and social distancing, she reconfigured the viewing experience to a small bench and single-channel video projection.
“I’m curious about the separation between the audience and the subject and I aim to dissolve the screen or lens between the two. So, for this piece, I would hope that viewers can be alone with the video and perhaps recognize themselves in the performer on screen. The work is about sharing company with yourself and how your reflection can simultaneously be a source of comfort, desire, and frustration. If that doesn’t speak to the viewer, hopefully the music will. The performer on screen uses tropes found in popular music videos as a means of appealing -and reflecting back on- to the viewer,” Sutton said.
Eva Roberts, who has a Master of Product Design, presents two books, one of which is titled, ““When I Go Back to My Home Country”: A Remembrance of Archie Ammons by Emily Herring Wilson,” a book that Roberts describes as “a mis-match” text.
The typographer found the text interesting as it included quotes, letters, excerpts from letters, poetry, the author’s ongoing narrative, photographs, and examples of Ammons’ work. The other book is called, “Forgotten First” which is written about B-1, the first black navy band.
Roberts said, “It reads more like a novel even though it’s actually a historically researched book.”
“I hope they will pick up the books and handle them,” Roberts shared. “I’ve told the gallery that they’re not precious, they’re meant to be read. There are actually still copies available if anyone wanted to own them. I love books so I hope that they’ll be attracted to the idea or reinforce the idea of owning a book…I think how they look and feel is important in the experience of a book. I think it’s more than just the reading, I feel like the holding of it and how it’s laid out typographically and then the content perhaps. I find the content of both of these books to be really compelling because they’re historically accurate…They are actually researched books and yet they read in a very narrative type of way.”
Photo by Cooper Beck
