Student Spotlight: Molly McVey

As part of our new "Student Spotlight" series, the Pittsburg State University Department of Art blog will be periodically highlighting the work of one of our students. This week, we're featuring the work of Molly McVey, a senior 2D Studio Art major and Photography minor who comes to us from Overland Park, KS. As part of her educational program here at Pitt State, Molly participated in an internship at Kelly Jackson Photography. Recently, Molly's work was accepted into the exhibition for the annual PhotoSpiva competition at the Spiva Center for the Arts. 

Perspectives

Department of Art: What was your path to pursuing an art degree at Pitt State? What got you interested in art?

Molly McVey: The reason that I choose Pittsburg State to study art is because I liked the size of the department and how small the classes are and that you really get to know your professors and other students.

What got me interested in art was being involved in 4-H when I was younger.  Instead of showing cows, goats, or sheep, I entered into the art categories such as photography, painting, drawing, and ceramics. That is where my interests started with art and it grew from there. I took as many art classes as I could in high school and that is where I started to consider a career in art. My high school photography teacher and my drawing/painting teacher inspired me to pursue art in college, and I couldn’t be happier that I am studying it at Pitt.

DA: Tell us about your work. What type of work do you most enjoy creating? How would you define your artistic style?

MM: My photography recently has been in black and white. I have switched back and forth between color and black and white through the years, but I always seem to come back to black and white. I feel that it tells more of a story and there is more emotion within the photographs. I really enjoy combining and merging photos together to make something new. I will also place textures into my photos where they normally wouldn’t belong. I would define my artistic style to be somewhere between abstract and straight photography. 

DA: What class at Pitt State has had the biggest affect on the way you approach your work?

MM: The class that has impacted my work the most would be the studio critique classes. It has taught me to look at my work from different points of view. I appreciate getting feed back from the all the professors in the department. It is interesting to hear what they have to say about my work and the different ways that I can improve it.

Chandelier

DA: Tell us about a project you completed recently that you were really proud of. Where did you get your initial idea or inspiration, and how did the project develop over time? Describe your process. 

MM: A project that I have recently completed that I am extremely proud of would be my final project for my Portrait Photography class that I took at the tech center this past fall. We were able to do any creative shot that we wanted and I decided to take cubism as my inspiration. I researched many different ways to create a cubist style in photography and I ended up putting my own spin on it. I used one image as my base and then built onto it with different images from different perspectives of the same person. This project has opened a whole new set of doors for me. I am planning on working with this style throughout this semester, and I can’t wait to see where it goes!

DA: Who are some artists that inspire you? What is it about their work that you find compelling?

MM: A couple artists that have recently inspired me are Jerry Uelsmann and Sean Kernan. Uelsmann is known for merging images together and I find it interesting that he is able to combine images together, but still make them seem effortless and simple. This goes for Kernan also, his images are very simple, but can convey a strong story with a few images combined together. 

DA: What is an experience you've had at Pitt State that has changed the way you think about art?

MM: An experience that I’ve had that has changed the way I think about art is going to the artists’ lectures of those who have shown in the galleries. Being able to hear how professional artists have created their work and their experiences in the art world has really changed the way I view and think and about art. 

Buffalo

DA: Tell us about your experience participating in the internship program. Where and when did your internship take place, and how did it come about?

MM: I enjoyed doing the internship program a lot. It has helped me prepare for life after graduation. There are a lot of responsibilities that come along with the program, like the weekly blog posts and the paper work that has to be filled out by your employer, professor, and yourself.

I did my internship with Kelly Jackson Photography. Kelly Jackson took my older sisters high school senior portraits and she took mine as well. I decided to e-mail her and see if she did any type of internship or shadowing program and thankfully she did! She also agreed to do the program so that I could get college credit for it. I worked with her for half of the summer and then into the Fall 2015 semester to receive all three credit hours for the course.

DA: What was the most challenging aspect of your internship? What was the most fun?

MM: The most challenging aspect of my internship was getting used to the long days and early start times, but Kelly was so much fun to work with. She was always showing me knew ways to edit photos and how to take certain shots during photo shoots. I can’t wait to work with her again this summer!

Barn Cat

DA: Tell us about your plans for the future. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?

MM: After graduation I am planning on moving back to the Kansas City/Overland Park area and finding a job in the photography field. I would like to be a photo retoucher for a company or a photographer’s assistant. 

DA: What projects are you working on right now that is outside of coursework?

MM: I am currently working on my portfolio by refining it and making it stronger as a whole. I want to have a strong piece to show future employers when I start to look and interview for jobs in the coming semesters.

Watching

DA: Where's the best place to see more of your work online?

MM: The best place to see more of my work would be my website, www.mollymcvey.weebly.com

"Collective Memory" IDEA Series To Take Place February 18th

Each year the Museum of Art at Pittsburg State University selects certain exhibits from its programming season to highlight through an interdisciplinary event entitled the IDEA Series (Interdisciplinary Education Through the Arts Series). This event is intended to generate discussion based on ideas suggested by the artwork from a variety of viewpoints. Join us on February 18, 2016 as we celebrate the extraordinary research and personal stories of faculty and local community members connected to this year's theme “Collective Memory,” inspired by two Pittsburg State University Museum of Art exhibitions:  

• Collective Fusion will be displayed in Porter Hall’s Harry Krug Gallery from January 22 -April 6, 2016. The Museum of Art celebrates the wide-ranging talents of faculty, staff, and Friends of Museum with an exhibit, “Collective Fusion.” 

• Kansas People’s History Project will be on display from January 22 – April 7, 2016. Please visit Kansas History Project’s website for additional information about the project: http://kansaspeopleshistoryproject.com/

The IDEA Series has an incredible lineup of speakers. Mark your calendar for February 18, 2016. The presentations will take place throughout the day in the Overman Student Center's Sunflower Room with a reception to follow at 4pm in Porter Hall's Harry Krug Gallery. 

9:30 - Welcome 
10:00 – Olive Sullivan
10:30 - 10:50 - Xiaolu Wu 
11:00 - 11:20 - JT Knoll 
11:30 - 11:50 - Norman H. Philipp/ S. Portico Bowman
12:00 – LUNCH
1:00 – 1:20 - Steve Cox
1:30 – 1:50 - Don Viney
2:00 – 2:20 - Megan L. Bever
2:30 – 2:50 - James Greene
3:00 – 3:30 - Keynote: Dave Loewenstein
4:00 – Reception for IDEA Series, Collection Fusion & Kansas People's History Project exhibitions @ Harry Krug Gallery

Further information about the IDEA Series and the speakers will be posted at: www.facebook.com/PittsburgMuseumofArt and https://psumuseumofart.wordpress.com/idea-series/

For more information: Rhona McBain at (620) 235 – 4296 or rshand@pittstate.edu

Pitt State Art Students and Alumna Exhibit Work in PhotoSpiva Competition

The Department of Art at Pittsburg State University would like to congratulate two students, Molly McVey and Jessica Purevich, and a recent alumna, Rebekah Parrish, on having their work accepted into the exhibition for the annual Spiva Center for the Art's PhotoSpiva competition. Works displayed in this year's exhibition were selected from a field of 664 images by 119 photographers; only 101 were selected.

Project by Rebekah Parrish

Established in 1977, PhotoSpiva is the longest-running competition of its kind. As stated by the founders, the objective of PhotoSpiva is to “present an exhibition of excellence in photography, celebrating the scope and vigorous activity of today’s contemporary photographers.” Spiva, located in Joplin, MO, is an independent community arts center whose mission is to promote the arts, nurture creative expression, and stimulate and educate diverse audiences within the four-state region.

Perspectives by Molly McVey

This year's juror, Sean Kernan, is a widely exhibited photographer, writer, and teacher. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, New York, Harpers, Bloomberg, Communication Arts, Graphis, Polyrama (Switzerland), Photo World (China), as well as magazines in Iran, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland, and has done a wide range of advertising work for clients such as AT&T, Amex, GE, Pratt & Whitney, Dow Jones, Harvard, and Knoll. Kernan has taught and lectured at the New School/Parsons, Art Center (Pasadena), Yale Medical School, American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), International Center of Photography (ICP), University of Texas, Wesleyan University, and both the Maine and Santa Fe Workshops. He has won numerous awards, most recently an Honorary Doctorate from Art Center in Pasadena.

Noxious Taraxacum by Jessica Purevich

The exhibition at the Spiva Center for the Arts Main Gallery will be open between March 5th and May 1st. Exhibited photographs will be available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds supporting Spiva. An awards ceremony, where winning competitors will be announced and awarded cash prizes, will be held at 7:00pm on Friday, March 11th. Following the presentation, juror Sean Kernan will deliver a lecture. This event will be open to the public, with $10 admission.

Collective Fusion: Collective Memory in the Harry Krug Gallery

A new exhibition was recently installed in the Harry Krug Gallery in Porter Hall. Collective Fusion: Collective Memory features work created by Pittsburg State University faculty and staff, and Friends of the Museum of the Pittsburg State University Museum of Art. The works installed from the gallery come from all areas of campus. While Collective Fusion is a recurring exhibition, this year's theme "Collective Memory" adds a new angle to the show. Collective Fusion: Collective Memory seeks to connect the experiences of individuals within our community to create a larger, interconnected narrative. 

This exhibit showcases the wide-ranging hidden talents and creativity of our colleagues. This will be the first exhibition for many of the artists. Some of the pieces featured in the show include quilted works by administrative assistant Sally Nixon, photographs by Assistant Professor of Graphics and imaging Technologies Rion Huffman, painting by Professor and Chair of Communications and Interim Chair of Art Dr. Cynthia Allan, and 3D printed sculpture by Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Technology Dr. David Miller. Some of the artists created their work in Porter Hall at a Faculty and Staff Art Making Night hosted by the Museum of Art. At this event, faculty and staff were invited to create collage works inspired by artist Cory Peeke, whose work was displayed in the University Gallery in the fall. 

Collective Fusion: Collective Memory  will be used as a point of inspiration for this year's IDEA (Interdisciplinary Education through the Arts) Series, which will take place on February 18, from 9:30am to 4:00pm in the Sunflower Room of the Overman Student Center. This interdisciplinary lecture series will feature presenters from several different disciplines across the campus and community, who will speak on the subject of "Collective Memory" as it relates to their area of expertise. The reception for this exhibition will be February 18th at 4:00, immediately following the lecture series, in the Harry Krug Gallery.

This exhibition will remain in the Harry Krug Gallery through April 7, 2016. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m and Friday 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. 

Student Work from last semester's Soft Sculpture class

This past semester, Professor S. Portico Bowman lead the inaugural group of her new Soft Sculpture class. The class was created as part of the new direction of the art curriculum, which is now structured around courses on special topics that allow students to explore particular media and processes in depth. 

Professor Bowman's course was divided into four parts with themes of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. With each of those categories students were taught techniques, such a earth casting, sewing, felting, knitting, and paper-making. Students created a project inspired by each element that used one of the techniques. Additionally, the class also created a community service project and visited Guest Home Estates.  

"I think this was a good class for us as a department to create," says Bowman, adding, "I think I had a great group of students that helped make it so..."

This new course is part of a new structure for the art department that includes special topics courses for upper level students. For a full list of the courses offered by the art department, check the Schedule of Classes.

Automatism In Art: a student organized and curated exhibit

Pitt State art student Robert Raio drove by an old school desk that had been discarded on a curb next to some other trash. "I saw the desk and felt I could make it into something more," he says. That desk has become the centerpiece of a new exhibition in the Art  Connectors gallery space on the second floor of Porter Hall. Automatism in Art: Shining the Light on Doodling, the exhibition organized by Raio and other student artists, features doodles created in sketchbooks by student artists paired with fully rendered pieces based on those doodles in various media. Visitors to the exhibit are invited to doodle on the desk, which sits in the center of the gallery space. 

The exhibit, which includes the work of several PSU art students and two recent alumni, features work in an array of 2D media. Frames and shadow boxes to display sketchbooks with the students' original doodles were created by PSU Wood tech students from the saw club. Along with the student work and interactive desk piece, the exhibition presents information on the history and significance of automatism in art, including this curatorial statement:

“In art, Automatism usually refers to the accessing of material from the subconscious or unconscious mind as part of a creative process- as seen in the surrealist movement.” 

– Tate, British Museum of Art.

Practicing this in art is a challenge. To constrain your mind to letting go of rationality in the moment, while mechanically letting your hands create is a subconscious and/or unconscious process. When connecting this process in art of the surrealist movement, artists by extension were standing up against the “norm”. They challenged themselves, and others to explore curiosity and creativity in a more fluid approach. Research in neuroscience, psychology, and design has recently concluded that people who “doodle” are often better at grasping new concepts, and staying focused.  Doodling engages “default” networks in the brain that would ordinarily go dormant without external stimuli. The artwork displayed in this exhibit did not start with a preconceived notion. The exhibited artists were asked to freely doodle in their sketch books, and to let go of artistic rationality in relations to automatism in art. The exhibited artists were then asked to create a final piece using their doodle or doodles as structural form within their own creative composition.

"Automatism in art is important," says Raio. "Once an individual understands automatism and how to utilize it, they don't need to find inspiration to start creating work. Doodling is doing." He adds that he looks forward to seeing what the students who participated in the show may create moving forward from this experience, now that automatism is in their "art tool box." In addition to inspiring more students to integrate automatism into their process, the success of the show has inspired others to make plans to organize and curate future student exhibitions.

Automatism in Art's opening reception was held at 4pm on Thursday, January 14th. The show will remain up and open to the public through February 5th. 

Highlights from Professor Li-Lin Tseng’s Sabbatical

In the spring of 2015, Associate Professor of Art History Li-Lin Tseng took a sabbatical leave, during which time she took a three-week research trip to Asia. There she visited major film archives and libraries in Taiwan and China, including the Chinese Taipei Film Archive, the China Film Archive, the Shanghai Municipal Archive, and the Shanghai Library. This research will contribute to her book project, titled Shanghai Crossing: Early Chinese Filmmakers, Film Stars, and Film Critics and Their Many Encounters with the West, 1896-1937, which focuses on intellectual and technical changes and exchanges among early Chinese and European and American film professionals.

As part of her trip, Professor Tseng was very fortunate to have an opportunity to speak with other scholars in her field, such as the film producer and scholar, Liao Gene-fon, from the Department of Motion Pictures at the National Taiwan University of Arts. She was also able to arrange a visit with the grandson of Zheng Zhengqiu, the father of Chinese cinema. Professor Tseng is will soon publish an article examining Zheng’s cinematic art, so this visit provided her with a unique opportunity to probe into the inside story of Zheng’s work.

In Beijing, Professor Tseng also visited a number of historical sites and art communities, including the Forbidden City, the Ming Tomb, the Great Wall, and the 798 Art Zone. She is currently in the process of developing a study abroad proposal in order to take PSU students to visit these sites as well as other art communities in the near future.

In March, Professor Tseng was invited by the Confucius Institute at Savannah State University to give a talk, titled “From Shanghai to Hollywood: The Chinese and Chinese Cinema in America, 1896-1937, and After.” There she also I screened two films, A Trip Through China (1916) and Shadow Magic (2001).  Later that month she attended the 2015 Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Chicago, IL, where she presented a paper, “‘Arrested Civilization’: John Thomson and His Travel Photography, 1873-1874,” for the panel “Seeing Qing China Differently.”  

Also during her sabbatical leave, Professor Tseng worked on several papers and proposals for conferences, including a paper titled “Electrifying Illustrated News: Zheng Zhengqiu (鄭正秋) and the Transformation of Graphic Arts into Dramatic Cinema, 1910-1935,” which will appear in the peer-reviewed international journal, Twentieth-Century China (Maney Publishing) in 2016. She also presented her a paper titled “From Shanghai to Hollywood: Chinese Cinema in Transition, 1896-1937” at both the Mid Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies (MAR-AAS) Conference and the Midwest Conference of Asian Affairs (MCAA) this year. Professor Tseng was able to take advantage of this opportunity for sabbatical leave and produce a great deal of work. This work will both further the conversation regarding this subject matter in her field, as well as inform her teaching to students of art history.