WAUKESHA – Six faculty from the Cornell College (Mount Vernon, Iowa) art department will exhibit some of their recent work in the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha Fine Arts Center Gallery March 6-April 7. Admission is free, and the public is invited. The campus is located at 1500 N. University Dr., Waukesha.
One of the exhibiting artists, Anthony Plaut will give a gallery talk at noon Thursday, April 6, in the Commons, Room 101.
Regular gallery hours are 10:00-11:00 a.m. and noon-2:00 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, noon-2:00 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Fridays. It also is open during special events and for private viewing. To arrange a viewing, contact the University Relations department at (262) 521-5445.
The six artists specialize in different forms of art creation: Sandra Louise Dyas will show photographic collages; Susan Coleman landscape drawings; Doug Hanson functional pottery; Janet Lauroesch a combination of prints, digital photos, and drawings; Anthony Plaut three-dimensional collages; and Maria Schutt fiber art.
Dyas, a product of the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History, has titled her work “All You Can Eat” as she piles on the images of a single area, the East Village of Des Moines, to create the spirit of the place. Photos, text, and mixed media come together in the hubbub of a busy district, emanating its soul to the viewer.
Coleman, who studied at Webster College in St. Louis and the University of Iowa, and who has taught at several Midwestern schools and at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, concentrates on landscapes from her local environments. She also coordinates the art gallery at Cornell. Nature is playful, she believes, open to interpretation, sacred, and metaphorical to the human experience. She delves for its reference to life’s journey.
Hanson, who has been teaching at Cornell for 35 years, had his focus unalterably changed after he traveled to England in 1978-79 on a Fulbright Teaching Grant. He now visits culturally significant sites to learn the diverse ways of other peoples and exchange ideas. For the past dozen years, he has been involved with “Potters for Peace.” Hanson generally works with salt-glazed pottery and sculpture, often combining ceramic elements with metal.
Lauroesch weaves together several media in an exploration of intimacy between subject and artist and viewer, trying always to unravel the mystery of mortality. She studied illustration at Syracuse University and printmaking at the Rochester Institute of Technology and calls on all of her talents, including bookmaking, to express nuances of the inevitable. In addition to libraries and museums, she’s exhibited at churches and medical centers.
Professor of art Anthony Plaut “assembles” three-dimensional collages primarily using materials he has found and adding to each of these a spring-driven motor that the viewer must wind. He aims to leave a first impression either of a commercially-manufactured object or of a pile of junk. A closer look should reveal a deeper, shared appreciation of beauty, nostalgia, and preciousness, as he converts the ordinary into the extraordinary. All this he does tongue-in-cheek. A graduate of Cornell, he earned an MFA from the University of Chicago and has been back at his alma mater teaching since 1988.
Maria Schutt, whose emphasis is fiber arts, tries to elicit the language of materials in expressing an individual’s traits. She believes in using mixed media in capturing contemporary cultural practices. On the faculty since 2000, she graduated from Vanderbilt University, did additional studies at Berea College, and earned her MFA from the University of Arizona.
UW-Waukesha has the largest enrollment among the 13 freshman-sophomore University of Wisconsin Colleges campuses. For information about programs, admission, or financial aid, contact the Student Services office at (262) 521-5200 or visit the Web at waukesha.uwc.edu.
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