2018-19 Season

May 3 – 17, 2019

Art majors and non-art majors alike contribute work in a wide variety of media to this inventive exploration of creativity.

(Left) Sarah Schaaf, Arno, 2018, oil on canvas; (Right) Sonora Schuck, La Marchesa, 2018, ceramic, 5″ x 6″ x 9″

March 1 – April 10, 2019

Jessie Dees, Samara Lyons, Josh Porter, Sarah Schaaf, Sonora Schuck and Stephanie Wayne

Laurie Frick, Melting (detail), 2017, cut dyed wool felt on stretched linen, 72″x 60″

January 16 – February 19, 2019

Hasan Elahi and Laurie Frick

Art Talk and Reception with the Artists  | Thursday, January 24,  6 – 8 p.m.

Data,Mine features the data-driven artwork of Hasan Elahi and Laurie Frick. The exhibition title references the methodology and relationship each artist has with data. In the early 2000s, Elahi started an elaborate project in self-surveillance when he was mistakenly put on a terrorist watch list. His digital work examines issues of surveillance, citizenship, migration, and the challenges of borders and frontiers. Laurie Frick, an artist with a business background, anticipates the future of data and envisions a time when personal data is a unique glimpse into our hidden personalities. By analyzing her life patterns, such as sleep and daily tasks, Frick has created a body of personal data she then translates into vibrant works created from a variety of media, such as leather, wood, and watercolors. Frick is currently mining data from the dating website, Ok,Cupid to create visual patterns helping people to understand one another better.

Justin Favela, Popocatepetl e Iztaccihuatl visto desde Atlixco, after José Maria Velasco, 2017, tissue paper and glue, 64″x 82″, photo Mikayla Whitmore

October 29 – December 4, 2018 

Tiffany Calvert, Angela Dufresne, Justin Favela, Stephen Rolfe Powell, 
and HuiMeng Wang

Lexington Gallery Hop Reception for the Artists  | Friday, November 16,  5 – 8 p.m.

As an adjective, pretty has many connotations. To be pretty is to be aesthetically pleasing, sensorially charming, and relatively beautiful. Yet the relative nature of that beauty also often renders things that are “pretty” as  diminutive, decorative, and vapid. Yet even with this dismissal, we, as human beings, are invariably drawn to things that are pretty, and their aesthetic pleasure has the capacity to carry with it a further exploration of many theoretical, political, and practical issues. This exhibition seeks to complicate the notion of “pretty” by bringing together artists whose work engages with the aesthetics of prettiness, yet undercuts the diminutive and dismissive connotations of the label. This exhibition curated by Transylvania University assistant professor of art history, Emily Elizabeth Goodman, Ph.D.

September 10 – October 18, 2018 

Claire Ashley, Susanna Coffey, Jaclyn Mednicov and Maryam Taghavi

Art Talk and Reception with the Artists  | Thursday, October 18,  6 – 8 p.m.

This exhibition, facilitated by Trevor Martin ’92, Executive Director of Exhibitions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, features a quartet of contemporary artists connected to the city of Chicago. Through painting, sculpture, installation, and video, their works celebrate color, texture, and repetition to interrogate a range of material use and form.