Morlan Gallery

 Auction Block (detail) LEXINGTON, Ky.—Zoé Strecker’s Auction Block, an installation sculpture that includes choreographed audio recordings, ceramics and mirrors that create the visual illusion of infinity, opens Friday, Feb. 19, in Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery. The opening reception, from 5-8 p.m., is part of Lexington’s Gallery Hop. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, runs through March 26. Gallery hours are weekdays, noon-5 p.m.  (The gallery will be closed during Transylvania’s spring break, March 15-19.) Strecker says that humor plays a serious role in the investigation of the web of dramatic tension involved in the buying and selling of objects. She asks, “What has value for whom?  When and why does value shift? How does social pressure affect our judgment as economic creatures?” The acclaimed artist will discuss her exhibit from 12:30-1:20 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23, in the gallery. The talk is free and open to the public. Strecker is currently on the faculty at Transylvania, where she serves as the Kenan Visiting Artist and teaches ceramics. She has an MFA in ceramic sculpture from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and a bachelor’s in English from Grinnell College. She is most known for her public art commissions in Kentucky (Harrodsburg and Berea) Memphis, Tenn., Fairbanks, Ala., and Boulder, Colo. She has twice received Kentucky’s most prestigious art award, The Al Smith Fellowship, among many other grants and awards. Strecker has appeared on Kentucky

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery opens 2010 with a photography exhibit focusing on Kentucky. MY/KY: Life through the Lens opens January 15 and runs through February 12. An artists’ reception will be held Friday, January 15, from 5-7 p.m. in the gallery. Kentucky, it seems, has always been an enigma, simultaneously admired and derided. Daniel Boone wrote, “I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise, at the risk of my life and fortune.” Mark Twain, on the other hand, said, “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens twenty years after it happens anywhere else.”  Socorro, digital print 2009. Carla Winn. Regardless of such widely variant response, the mystique of the Bluegrass State swings broad and wide—from the loftiest spire to the deepest, most verdant hollow.  MY/KY: Life through the Lens is a small group invitational exhibition that attempts to capture not only the attractive but also the elusive Commonwealth.  In artistic tradition, five Kentucky photographers have given us a new way of seeing the Kentucky, its people, its industry and its land. Don Ament reframes Kentucky’s energy concerns; Angela Baldridge (Transylvania class of 2004) examines tobacco’s tradition and industry; Frank Döring gives an insider’s view of the equine world; Mary Tortorici’s depopulated landscapes offer a fuller view of the people who do live

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Jack Girard, Rhinoceros, 2009. Collage, mixed media. 48″x72″ LEXINGTON, Ky.—Retributions: Elections, Floods, and Wishing Wells, a collection of new paintings, drawings and sculptures by Transylvania art professor Jack Girard, that pays homage to perseverance, opens at Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery November 2 and runs through December 9. The centerpiece for the exhibition is an eight-panel work that was inspired by a recent visit to Saint Brigid’s Well in Liscannor, County Clare, Ireland. These pieces attempt to make ordered sense of the worn and layered tributes, or votives, left by visitors over many years—rosaries, statuettes, framed pictures, jewelry, carpet fragments, flowers, toys, personal letters, photographs, pacifiers, baby bottles and business cards.  Ironically, there is speculation that Saint Brigid may well be a fictional character who shared attributes with a pagan Celtic deity of the same name and was invented for purposes of converting the Celts to Christianity. A public lecture with Girard is scheduled for Thursday, November 5, from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in Morlan Gallery. This event is free and open to the public. The Morlan Gallery is open weekdays from noon-5 p.m. and by special appointment. The gallery will be closed for the Thanksgiving holidays November 26 and 27. The gallery will be open Friday, November 20, from 5-8 p.m. for the Lexington Gallery Hop. For more information, contact gallery director Andrea Fisher at (859) 233-8142 or visit www.transy.edu/morlan.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania art history professor Nancy Wolsk will give a public lecture titled “Who’s/Whose Nude? Contemporary Women and the Nude,” Thursday, September 17, at 7 p.m. in the Morlan Gallery as part of the Figuration to Fragmentation exhibition. The 30-minute talk will be followed by a short question and answer period. Wolsk’s areas of research and specialization include the world of French painter Pierre Bonnard and representations of women and domestic interiors from 1900 to 1914, The Nabis (late 19th -century/early 20th -century French, avant-garde artists), representations of Parisian gardens, French art from 1890-1914 and the history of the city of Paris. At Transylvania, Wolsk teaches courses in art history, twentieth-century art and architecture and  women in art. In May 2004, she led a travel course to Florence, Italy with anthropology professor Barbara LoMonaco titled “Italian Women: Representations and Realities.” Figuration to Fragmentation: The Human Form in Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture, which articulates a clear vision of the role of the figure in contemporary ceramics, opened Friday, September 11 and runs through Thursday, October 15. The exhibit is a collaboration between Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery and the University of Kentucky’s Tuska Center for Contemporary Art, and includes a diverse selection of artists. Tom Bartel, Kira Campbell, Sergei Isupov and Hunter Stamps’ work will be shown at Morlan, while Tanya Batura, Anne Drew Potter, Keith Wallace Smith and Liz Zacher’s work will be on display at Tuska. For a full listing of workshops,

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I Almost Had It, I Just Needed Another Inch, Kira Campbell LEXINGTON, Ky.—Figuration to Fragmentation: The Human Form in Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture, which articulates a clear vision of the role of the figure in contemporary ceramics, opens Friday, September 11 and runs through Thursday, October 15. The exhibit is a collaboration between Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery and the University of Kentucky’s Tuska Center for Contemporary Art, and includes a diverse selection of artists. Tom Bartel, Kira Campbell, Sergei Isupov and Hunter Stamps’ work will be shown at Morlan, while Tanya Batura, Anne Drew Potter, Keith Wallace Smith and Liz Zacher’s work will be on display at Tuska. The exhibits are for mature audiences and are free and open to the public at both locations, and both galleries will be open Friday, September 18, from 5-8 p.m. for the Lexington Gallery Hop. An on-line catalog will be produced, featuring an essay, by noted ceramic critic Adam Welch, on the use of the figure in contemporary ceramics. In addition to the exhibit, there will be a lecture series, held at both Transylvania and UK, on consecutive Thursday nights, and a mini-conference, The Role of the Figure in Contemporary Ceramics, at UK on October 1 and 2. Schedule of eventsFriday, September 11    Both exhibits open Artist Talk: Tom Bartel and Hunter Stamps, 7 p.m. with reception to follow.Opening reception for artists Tom Bartel, Kira Campbell, Sergei Isupov and Hunter Stamps, 8 p.m.Morlan Gallery,

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