The University of Arizona Alumnus / Winter 2009

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CONTINUUM

Celebrating the Art of UA Faculty, Students, and Alumni
by Margaret Regan
Photos provided by UA School of Art

Jessica Drenk ’07 uses odd things to make fine art. Make that really odd things: Drenk routinely takes PVC pipe, toilet paper rolls, and coffee filters, and recycles them into elegant abstract sculptures.

A recent wall installation, at Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson, consisted entirely of thousands of paper coffee filters. Twisted and curved and layered, the filters seemed to sprout out of the wall like flowers. The “coffee filters have been given new life,” Jessica says. “I live mostly within a man-made environment, (but) I am inspired by the beauty of nature.”

Miles Conrad, the gallerist who’s snapped up Jessica’s work, says her “thesis show was one of the best I’ve ever seen.”

Drenk is one of the youngest — and most contemporary — of the more than 200 UA-affiliated artists who will exhibit their works salon-style at the university’s brand-new Visual Arts Graduate Research Laboratory. In a two-day gala celebration Feb. 20 and 21, the artists’ work will be displayed all over the building, but rising star Drenk will get a room of her own, sponsored by Conrad Wilde.

“The plan is still evolving, but it might be a room-size installation,” Conrad says.

Artists of all stripes — painters, photographers, printmakers, sculptors — working in all styles will display their art in the sleek new modernist building, at the far northern edge of campus at Mabel and Fremont, on the other side of Speedway from the School of Art. The Friday night festivities will open the celebratory show, Continuum, and offer up-to-the-minute performance art and video screenings, along with drinks and nibbles. Saturday afternoon, art faculty will deliver a total of eight lectures and demos. For instance, ceramics professor Aurore Chabot, who makes fired clay sculptures in brilliant colors, will talk about contemporary ceramics. Kate Albers, a professor of the history of photography who joined the faculty last fall, will cover recent photographic trends. The art will be for sale both days, with proceeds benefiting the School of Art.

Graduate art students moved into the new building last semester, hauling their canvas and paint to the Lab studios, and hammering out sculptures in the new wood and metal fabrication shop. Until now, grad student art studios were scattered all over campus. Now, for the first time, they’re housed under one roof, a set-up that fosters conviviality and artistic cross-pollination for young artists working side by side. The building also has a seminar room, an art gallery, and a sculpture garden.

A good chunk of the artists in the Continuum show went through the School of Art’s bachelor’s or master’s of fine arts programs, and some are current students. In fact, all of the artists, from retired professors to mid-career alumni artists to staff members to undergrad art majors, have a UA connection. Continuum is proof of the School of Art’s continuing influence on the Tucson art scene and in the broader arts world.

Three local galleries that count on the talent of the UA grads and professors each will stage mini-shows: Etherton and Davis Dominguez, whose UA artists tend to be mid-career, and Conrad Wilde, which goes for the younger art demographic. Wilde’s nine artists include Tim Mosman, a staff member at the Center for Creative Photography. MOCA, Tucson’s young Museum of Contemporary Art, also will honor four UA artists, including Dave Lewis and Jessica James Lansdon.

Davis Dominguez shows 19, including current Professor Alfed Quiroz, a provocative political painter; visiting Professor Jan Olsson, a Paris-based painter; and abstractionist Josh Goldberg. Etherton’s 15 UA-affiliated artists include Bailey Doogan, a beloved professor emerita and nationally known painter who had a big show at the Tucson Museum of Art several years ago. James G. Davis, a retired professor and founder of the Rancho Linda Vista art community in Oracle, shows his edgy paintings around the U.S. and in Germany.

Etherton’s Nancy Tokar Miller also earned a master’s degree at the UA in 1971. A fluid painter who makes Asian-inspired

near-abstractions, she travels around the world to find her subjects. She’s coming around full circle at the UA. Continuum will get under way just one day after a major career retrospective of her paintings opens at the University of Arizona Museum of Art.

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