Exhibitions for the 2024-25 Academic Year


Fall 2024 Exhibitions

September 27 - November 22

Dense concentric circles made of small black marks.
Christopher McNulty, 20,045 Days, 2007, From the Days Series (2006-2008), Ink on paper, 71″X71″

First-Year Studies: Water 

Leech Gallery

This exhibition celebrates the First-Year Studies theme for 2024-2027: Water. It will feature works from the Lawrence University art collection that visually explore water from a variety of artistic media, cultures, and perspectives. 

Christopher McNulty, Days Series

Hoffmaster Gallery

Christopher McNulty's Days Series (2006-2008) draws on an idea from Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Physics: “Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities.” McNulty writes, “Several years ago, I consulted an actuary to determine my life expectancy. Using the probable number of days that I had left to live as my starting point, I created works composed of over 20,000 repetitive marks in an attempt to represent the remainder of my life and comprehend my mortality. Like unconventional calendars, these drawings both represent time spatially and function as contemporary vanitas. These works continue my earlier concerns with the vulnerability of the body, and the relationship of beauty to the imperfect and contingent. In their absurd attempt to make the invisible visible, the unknowable known, and the uncertain certain, the works also address our culture’s anxiety about the future and death.”

Christopher McNulty ‘90 is Director and Professor of the School of Art at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. His diverse body of work has explored the limitations of human thought and performance, and the tensions that exist between our ideals and everyday lives. He has exhibited work in numerous galleries and museums throughout the U.S. A history major at LU, he went on to receive his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

10 Years Out

Kohler Gallery

This exhibition features work by LU Studio Art alumni from 2014-2023 (10 years out or so from graduation). Marking the 35th Anniversary of the dedication of the Wriston Art Center, this show and attendant programming demonstrate the many different career paths a Studio Art major might pursue after in their life after Lawrence. In tandem with the show, there will be a series of zoom panels with Studio Art alumni who work in art therapy and wellness, medicine and sciences, and design and gaming fields, moderated by the LU Career Center staff. 

Alumni artists: Sadie Lancrete ’14, Liam Hoy ’16, Kelsey Stalker ’16, Austin Wellner ’16, Cael Neary ’17, Annie Connolly ’18, Emma Fredrickson ’19, Sarah Luepker ’19, Tanner MacArthur ’20, Leena Meyers ’22, and Charlie Wetzel ’23. 


 

Winter 2025 Exhibitions

January 17 – March 14

an abstracted antelope sculpture made of wood with red string knots in its ear, seen from the right side

African Objects from the Shaun Donnelly '68 Collection

Leech Gallery 

In summer 2024 LU Research Fellow Honor Winter ’26 continued active provenance and scholarly research on a collection of African objects made of wood. These objects were donated to LU by Shaun Donnelly ’68 and collected largely in east Africa in the 1970s and 80s, when Shaun was in the US Foreign Service. This exhibition will showcase Honor’s in-depth research on these objects and provide an opportunity for the campus and local communities to see and learn about these compelling additions to the art collection. 

Brittany Sievers, ceramics

Hoffmaster Gallery

Brittany Sievers is a process-based artist who utilizes modular repetition to create sculptures and installations that highlight spatial relationships of rooms or the parameters of the sculpture itself. She digs her own clay from local farms and creek beds, processes it, and uses simple actions to create sculptural installation works. Brittany aims to create a platform for each viewer to become mindful of the sourced material and asks the viewer to actively notice the touch of her hand, the contrast of sleek to handcrafted, and the area this work fills. She received a BA in Studio Art from DePauw University and an MFA from Louisiana State University.

Uihlein Fellows Reunion

Kohler Gallery

This exhibition will feature work by the four artist who served as Uihlein Fellows in Studio Art: Valerie Zimany, Debbie Kupinsky, Sarah Gross, Meghan Sullivan. This show will highlight these artists’ distinctive and diverse approaches to working with clay as the medium for both sculptural and installation works. 


 

Spring 2025 Exhibitions

April 4 – May 17

Abstract linear black marks on a tan background
Gustavo Fares, Botanical Space, 2023, from the series Abstract: Botanical Spaces, enamel on paper, 44x44

Prints from Edo Period Japan

Leech Gallery

Associate Professor of History Brigid Vance’s Early Modern Japanese History course co-curates an exhibition of Japanese wood prints in the Lawrence University Japanese Woodblock Print collection

Gustavo Fares, Abstract Organic

Hoffmaster Gallery

An active scholar and instructor, Professor Gustavo Fares has taught in the Spanish Department at Lawrence since 2000, and he also has a vigorous visual art practice. He holds an MA in Visual Arts, taught painting and drawing at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions.

According to the artist, “The Abstract Organic series appeals to nature in the ways in which the works are made as well as in the images they present. The images are built around “indexical images,” that is, images constructed with the impression on the painting’s surface of real objects, which in this case are tree branches. The use of this kind of images can be traced back to pre-historic times, to the paintings in the Lascaux and Altamira caves, as well as to modern art, such as David Smith’s early paintings. Unlike traditional landscapes, which typically represent a natural space, these images have as their leitmotif structures derived from nature but rendered in abstract configurations. Even if it is possible to recognize the presence of tree branches, their arrangements do not relate to “natural” habitats, but rather create a spatial logic similar to that of Cubism or to Jackson Pollock’s drips. Trees are also related to Wisconsin, of course, the space Lawrence University and we inhabit, and to its paper industry; thus, the series wants to establish a connection between the images and the place where they were created.”

Jiayi Young, Beyond Tomorrow: An Artist’s Quest in the Last Decade

Kohler Gallery

This exhibition puts process pieces for two projects into direct dialogue: What does the bot say to the human? and Murmur. Both projects speak to technological advancements like AI and the new human experiences they bring, which create cultural impact and new meaning to our collective identity. One project is about social media, and the other is about the moon landing.

Jiayi Young ’94 is an Associate Professor of Design at the University of California, Davis. After majoring in studio art and physics at LU, she received an MFA in Multi-media and Painting from Washington State University. Using multidisciplinary approaches, her work examines contemporary society including the culture of consumption, the programming and exploitation of the feminine, cultural assimilation, and personal identity. Leveraging social media, crowd-sourced media, and user-created content, she sets up scenarios and creates conditions to make visible empathetic relationships between people in the presence of contemporary culture. Her work invites the public to participate to come in close contact with an experience that engages the rethinking of the present-day human experience.

 


 

2025 Senior Art Show

May 30 – June 21

Leech, Hoffmaster, and Kohler Galleries 

The annual exhibition of artwork by Lawrence University’s senior studio art majors