UT Tyler Faculty Showcase Talent in Art Exhibit

By DEBI OKEKE/Staff Writer

Between their work grading papers and lecturing, it’s easy to forget that UT Tyler art professors are practicing artists too.

The UT Tyler Studio Art Faculty Exhibition pulls back the curtain, revealing the personal practices and passions that fuel their teaching. This show brings together various artistic works by faculty across the Department of Art and Art History.

From charcoal and graphite pieces to fabricate steel, the exhibit highlights the expertise and creativity of UT Tyler professors.

The featured talent include Dewane Hughes, Madison Branch, Maclovio Cantú IV, Lorianne Hubbard, Jessica Sanders, Alexis Serio, Merrie Wright, Tyler Wynne and Chris Stewart.

“We’ve got some very talented faculty, and these artists are coming at their form of expression in a lot of different directions, so we’re really covering all the bases with media,” said Stewart, professor and department chair in an interview on East Texas Live.

At the Meadows Gallery, viewers experience real art made by real people whose creativity extends far beyond the classroom walls. Each piece gives a glimpse into the minds of artists and reflects years of carefully crafting and honing their work.

The exhibition invites viewers to see the instructors as working artists whose creativity shapes both their classrooms and their community.

Adjunct Instructor, Jessica Sanders has her porcelain, stoneware and wire artworks displayed. The vivid patterns and motifs splashes a wave of color onto the white walls of the gallery. They ripple and flow across the wall, giving it a fabric-like movement despite being made of hard ceramic.

Another one of her pieces, “Odds, Ends, Remains, and Leftovers,” shows loose beads and found objects in bottles and small metal tins capturing the feeling of things left unfinished. Fragments of work and leftovers of previous creations turned into its own art.

“When making this work, I was thinking about my own family legacy,” Sanders said. “I come from a long line of quilters and fiber works, and while these are ceramic and not fiber, I love the connection to what has come before me but in a contemporary way.”

Just a little bit farther in the room, you come across Lorianne Hubbard’s hauntingly beautiful black-and-white portrait of a woman wearing a flowing white dress, holding a bouquet of flowers to her chest. “Buried and alive” captures multiple moments of expression at once, some happy and fulfilled and the others numb and lifeless.

There are bushes of flowers and plants lying next to her, getting more and more wilted as they move further from her body. Hubbard specializes in charcoal and graphite to produce extremely dark and human artworks. The contrast between the bright, soft folds of the dress and the shadowy background enhances the surreal atmosphere of the piece.

There are many more paintings, prints and sculptures, such as “Life is a Party,” a daring screen print by Maclovio Cantú IV, and “Meadow Trumpets,” an imaginative fabricated steel sculpture from Dewane Hughes. Walk through the gallery at the Cowan Center and experience the well-crafted and thought-out work from our fellow minds at UT Tyler. The exhibition is open until Oct. 31.

ProfessorStewart sums it up nicely.

“It’s just an opportunity to see things that people make with their own hands.”