We are excited to announce our newest exhibition, the 2022 School of Art Faculty Exhibition. The exhibition will open to the public on February 8, 2022, and will be available through April 23, 2022. This exhibition features works by NAU faculty members representing a variety of media and styles.
Please visit our “Plan Your Visit” page for information on scheduling your visit. We strongly recommend scheduling an appointment through our website via Waitwhile.
Participating Artists:
Kait Arndt Accordion Closed
Tubes
2019
stoneware
Landscape Gridscape
2019
Mixed media (recycled paper, thread, mesh, and hardy backer board)
Grid in Flux
2020
porcelain
Kait Arndt Accordion Closed
Tubes
2019
stoneware
Landscape Gridscape
2019
Mixed media (recycled paper, thread, mesh, and hardy backer board)
Grid in Flux
2020
porcelain
Vincent Caranchini Accordion Closed
Altar de Los Santos Desconocidos: El Barroco se encuentra con El Brutalismo (Altar of the Unknown Saints: Baroque meets Brutalism) – (1/3), (2/3), (3/3)
2022
ink, watercolor, gouache, paper, basswood, on panel
Vincent Caranchini Accordion Closed
Altar de Los Santos Desconocidos: El Barroco se encuentra con El Brutalismo (Altar of the Unknown Saints: Baroque meets Brutalism) – (1/3), (2/3), (3/3)
2022
ink, watercolor, gouache, paper, basswood, on panel
George Dorado Accordion Closed
Love in time of Covid
2021
mixed media
Madeline; Love in Time of Covid [i]s a title given to a series of paintings representing different acts of kindness. In these paintings, the protagonist could be the main characters situated in the center of the canvas; or it could also be an outsider, a perfect stranger who’s acts of kindness are touching people at the core of our human needs of caring and compassion towards one another.
This painting is entitled, Madeline; Love in Time of Covid, and was inspired by the acts of kindness of the SoA Program Coordinator, who recycled fabric remnants, sewing them into colorful, useful, and necessary pieces of health garments (masks), and gave them away to other NAU staff and administrators. Her masks are artistic confessions of harmonious interlocking of colors, and like amulets, are meant to protect us. It is art within art.
Don’t Feed Me!
2021
oil on canvas
Vishnu Temple from Moran Point
2021
oil on canvas
Hopi Girl Grinding Corn
2021
pastel
_______________________
Check back for images and more.
George Dorado Accordion Closed
Love in time of Covid
2021
mixed media
Don’t Feed Me!
2021
oil on canvas
Vishnu Temple from Moran Point
2021
oil on canvas
Hopi Girl Grinding Corn
2021
pastel
_______________________
Check back for images and more.
Debra Edgerton Accordion Closed
Gion Matsuri 1
2014
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 2
2014
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 3
2015
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 4
2015
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 5
2018
watercolor
Debra Edgerton Accordion Closed
Gion Matsuri 1
2014
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 2
2014
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 3
2015
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 4
2015
watercolor
Gion Matsuri 5
2018
watercolor
Neal Galloway Accordion Closed
Neal Galloway
Best Part of Wakin’ Up series
2013
bronze
Six Book Canyon
2013
cut book
Earth’s environment is ultimately shaped and materially affected by consumption. My work seeks to address the normalcy of over-consumption and the perception of belongings—highlighting the relationship between nature and consumer practices.
For as many of my artworks as I can, I use recycled and reclaimed supplies. I make works that take into account the environmental impact of the materials themselves and I explore these ideas through my own convictions, habits, possessions, and emotional response to nature.
For example, The Best Part of Wakin’ Up is a series of recycled-bronze sculptures based on the coffee mug form. These sculptures illustrate and explore what happens to the environment and peoples of geographic regions dependent on coffee production when coffee buyers—usually large, corporate international food conglomerates—use tactics to underpay for the coffee crop. This results in, among other things:deforestation of the native rainforest to plant low-quality high yield coffee varieties
top-soil erosion resulting from this practice
poverty and hunger resulting from being forced to sell coffee crops for a lower price than it cost to grow it in the first place
violence as the resultant economic instability ripples outward causing political unrest and as farmers plant more lucrative, often illegal crops such as coca for cocaine production.Six Book Canyon utilizes a matched set of books [that] have been carved so that, when opened and fitted together, they resemble a miniature canyon. Topography contours link one book to the next, the pages have been eroded away, and the books are transformed from objects which are valued for the contents of their information to objects which are valued instead for their form. Six Book Canyon is a meditation on time, change, information literacy, environmental experience, patience, and beauty. Often through the re-appropriation of discarded materials into art that reference[es] the natural world, I explore our relationship to nature, waste, consumption, materiality, and our emotional connection to objects and the natural environment.
Neal Galloway Accordion Closed
Neal Galloway
Best Part of Wakin’ Up series
2013
bronze
Six Book Canyon
2013
cut book
Andy Gambrell Accordion Closed
Dark Skies and Dead Flowers I-III
2021
acrylic on canvas
Materials and Process:
When I train artists and designers to draw, we celebrate the fact that the human eye is never at rest. Our focus is constantly moving from one point to another. I experience this most elegantly when viewing stars in the night sky. To encourage this experience in my paintings, I draw the path of my eye when viewing nature rather than the contours of what I see. My compositions are timeless and classical, but they become dynamic with the dance of the human eye.
The paintings in this collection were inspired by my experience of Flagstaff, Arizona. I made the geometric drawings from observation at Buffalo Park, where I drew constellations of dead sunflower blossoms in the fields in late October. The colors of the background come from the yellow and tan grasses and rich evergreen pines, and the palette of the geometric forms borrows from the saturated hues in the sky at dusk just before the dark black sky and pale white moon reveal themselves.
Cultural Context:
For over a decade, I painted within a community of late Modern masters in South Florida. My primary working relationship was with Walter Darby Bannard, but I was also influenced by other artists in our network, including Jules Olitski. My painting practice authentically renews and extends the North American Painting traditions of Color Field, Minimal, Hard Edge, and Lyrical Abstraction. In 2010, our community of abstract painters was recognized by South Florida’s Center for Visual Communication as the Miami School, a contemporary painting movement.
In the formative years of my practice as an abstract painter, I focused heavily on collage because of my fascination with gestalt and presence. I discovered a similar sensibility in the work of Irwin Kremen, an alumnus of Black Mountain College and an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at Duke University. My dialogue with Kremen’s work led to meeting the artist in 2009 when I was a professor with the University of North Carolina. Because of the line of influence from Kremen’s work to my own, four of my early works recently became part of the permanent collection of Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center in Asheville, NC.
Andy Gambrell Accordion Closed
Dark Skies and Dead Flowers I-III
2021
acrylic on canvas
Jason Hess Accordion Closed
Press molded bowl
2020
ceramic
Vase
2021
ceramic
Teapot
2021
ceramic
Five Tumblers
2021
ceramic
A desire to have objects that fulfill specific purposes inspires me to make functional pots. The infinite and elusive variety of texture and color attainable through the various making and firing processes that I use has generated an interest in presentation. I enjoy presenting my work so that a viewer might notice and appreciate subtle differences in form and surface. By grouping similar forms of differing size and color I hope to compose a visually dynamic display, which invites the viewer to enjoy the tactile nature of each individual piece and how they relate to one another.
Jason Hess Accordion Closed
Press molded bowl
2020
ceramic
Vase
2021
ceramic
Teapot
2021
ceramic
Five Tumblers
2021
ceramic
Vaughan Judge Accordion Closed
Hearth
2020
archival photograph
Vaughan Judge Accordion Closed
Hearth
2020
archival photograph
Jae Lee Accordion Closed
Extinct
2021
digital AR
In Korean mythology, we all become stars after dying. Extinct is an AR project that presents critically endangered and recently extinct species using minimalist sphere forms. For example, when the user gets closer to a sphere with an animal skin, the audience can hear a voiceover introducing the animal.
Jae Lee Accordion Closed
Extinct
2021
digital AR
In Korean mythology, we all become stars after dying. Extinct is an AR project that presents critically endangered and recently extinct species using minimalist sphere forms. For example, when the user gets closer to a sphere with an animal skin, the audience can hear a voiceover introducing the animal.
J.R. MacKenzie Accordion Closed
What do Bobcats Dream of?
2021
colored pencils
Sweet Deal (Snail)
2020
colored pencils
Tipping The Scales
2020
colored pencils
J.R. MacKenzie Accordion Closed
What do Bobcats Dream of?
2021
colored pencils
Sweet Deal (Snail)
2020
colored pencils
Tipping The Scales
2020
colored pencils
Sheri Mleynek Accordion Closed
Custom Sedona Home (Spirit Lifter Ranch)
2019
photo documentation of custom home design
Sheri Mleynek has always had a passion for hand drafting when designing fine custom homes in Sedona, Arizona. For Sheri, her fondest desire is to help clients realize their ideal living space. She works hard to understand her clients and let their personalities show in the design of their homes, down to the most precious details.
Spirit Lifter Ranch was an opportunity to let her clients’ love of horses shine through on their ten acre property. Sheri was responsible for the architectural design work as well as the interior design of their casual, yet elegant home with a pool and many patios to enjoy the outdoor living lifestyle that Sedona offers. The ranch brand, bunk house, horse stables, riding arena, and RV garage are all part of the extensive design work that she provided.
Now, Sheri’s passion is to pass her knowledge and experience onto her interior design students. Whether it is the skill and art of hand drafting or the art of listening to your clients and synthesizing their dreams into reality for a well designed project that will endure.
Sheri Mleynek Accordion Closed
Custom Sedona Home (Spirit Lifter Ranch)
2019
photo documentation of custom home design
Brian Painter Accordion Closed
Gord
2021
fabricated metal
Sign of the Time
2021
fabricated metal
Blow to the Ego
2021
fabricated metal
Cross Stream
2021
fabricated metal
Brian Painter Accordion Closed
Gord
2021
fabricated metal
Sign of the Time
2021
fabricated metal
Blow to the Ego
2021
fabricated metal
Cross Stream
2021
fabricated metal
Steven Schaeffer Accordion Closed
New Antiquity: Baroque Tumblers
2021
ceramic
New Antiquity: Baroque Bovine
2021
ceramic
Blessed Birdie
2021
mixed media
Hollow Vessel
2021
ceramic
My work is evidence of my experiences in the natural world. From walks in the woods, to river expeditions, these physical encounters have led me to a greater level of personal consciousness. Understanding my environment is an essential motivation for my creative process. Nature is the didactic arena that I seek. Through my studio work, I have realized what these experiences are consciously revealing to me.
River trips by boat have led me to many places. These vessels have been the carriers for my integration into the wild, which has allowed me to foster my personal connection with nature. As a result, the form of “boat” or “vessel” is the inspiration core of my ideas. I’m intent on creating work that offers the notion of hope and the embodiment of strength. This is a direct response to nature itself and the risks that are inherent within it. Nature is a collection of many of the formal qualities that interest me and in turn influence my work.
My work is simple in its method, yet transfers a generosity of scale to the viewer. The forms define space, and their weight is connected to the landscape they are inspired by. Within these works, an entire canyon can be created with one line slicing through its surface. My work is about the spatial relationships I’ve experienced in nature and, in turn, the work has become a voice for those landscapes.
Steven Schaeffer Accordion Closed
New Antiquity: Baroque Tumblers
2021
ceramic
New Antiquity: Baroque Bovine
2021
ceramic
Blessed Birdie
2021
mixed media
Hollow Vessel
2021
ceramic
Barbara Sheeley Accordion Closed
Intimate Portrait Aspen
2021
colored pencil on wood
Barbara Sheeley Accordion Closed
Intimate Portrait Aspen
2021
colored pencil on wood
Christopher Taylor Accordion Closed
Gizzard Stones Suite
2020
ink
Take It Easy
2021
ink
Want To Be Funny Again
2021
ink
Bad Dad
2021
ink
My practice establishes a dialogue situated within painting/drawing, sharing in the exploration of the language of abstraction, adding a personal lyrical use of language within the same painting/drawing, to formally give specificity to what is seen. My practice has shifted primarily to drawing and works on paper during the pandemic. This shift has provided me with stacks of explored ideas in drawing where I can see and feel a tactile history of a practice. I tend to go through my drawing stacks and pin drawings to the wall and curate larger ideas [that] find their way into larger-scale paintings. This in-turn slows connections down. Slowly painting aphoristically hummed drawings.
Conceptually it’s easy to understand my practice as the drawing is the writing and the writing is the drawing. I have always been attracted to language as spoken knowledge. How stories are told. How language sounds when it is heard or read. I am interested in language as a written idea and as a visually drawn idea, while collapsing the philosophic distance of the two. Forming a slower reading of language through painting. More important is the tone of the conversation. Sharing my ideas of experiencing the world through the lens of fatherhood. For the last 9 years I have been sharing my views of fatherhood via feminist ideals, in relation to the values, roles, responsibilities, and labor in a capitalistic society. Historically and culturally men did not share or do not share the joys and struggles of taking care of or raising of children. Including what men historically choose to represent in art. I aim to expand and overlap the spaces of language; written, spoken, heard, implicit and explicit as painting.
Drawing and works on paper have always been central to my practice. My drawing practice tends to be years ahead of my painting. Drawing is faster and moves in time with teaching and raising children. During the last couple of years of the pandemic, having school[-]age children, drawing has been my go-to, to stay connected to a creative life. My writing and drawing increasingly arrive to me through song. I tend to be doing chores, washing dishes, and humming “lyrics”, and envisaging drawing as songwriting, sublimating the ideas of songwriting in drawing. This opens a new avenue of engagement; expanding my conceptual understanding and the use of a lyrical tone to delve into philosophical ideas without being too direct. Like a circling or singing of a truth.
Christopher Taylor Accordion Closed
Gizzard Stones Suite
2020
ink
Take It Easy
2021
ink
Want To Be Funny Again
2021
ink
Bad Dad
2021
ink
David VanNess Accordion Closed
Portrait of Mental Health, Anxiety
2021
3D print
Anxiety: made from three different 3d scans of my head. Those scans were then combined into one model. I then reduced1/4 of the values of the vertices that make up the model by 1/4 to reflect the number of people in the US that face mental health issues.
Portrait of Mental Health, Depression
2021
3D print
Depression: made from one 3d scan of my head. In this piece[,] I combined data from the CDC on mental health prevalence in various groups and subgroups and the type of mental health issues with the vertices of the 3d scan of my head.
Beethoven Covid Sonata
2021
audio installation
Covid Beethoven Sonata: Created by taking the codon usage of the covid spike protein and comparing that to the note usage of Beethoven’s 9th piano sonata and using similar percentages as a means to convert specific codons to different musical notes. [The p]iece is [ a] collaboration with Matthew Salanga and Owen Davis and Myself.
Selfish
2021
SAD light installation
Selfish: Flashes in navy standard morse code “You are being selfish” made from 9 Seasonally Affected Disorder lights which have the same light spectrum as daily and are 10000 lumens bright.
David VanNess Accordion Closed
Portrait of Mental Health, Anxiety
2021
3D print
Portrait of Mental Health, Depression
2021
3D print
Beethoven Covid Sonata
2021
audio installation
Selfish
2021
SAD light installation
Elisa Wiedeman Accordion Closed
Turn A Corner
2021
oil and cold wax on board
When an unanticipated force threatens our existence, intuition and invisible antennae pull in an ever-changing range of information. Navigating the last 24 months have required that I: Grieve
Embrace
Kick away
Slow down
Hurry up
Hold my breath
Inhale
Exhale
Snarl
Weep
Regret
Forgive
Look back
Look ahead
Close my eyes
Lean right
Lean left
Wipe a tear
Turn the corner
Elisa Wiedeman Accordion Closed
Turn A Corner
2021
oil and cold wax on board
Grieve
Embrace
Kick away
Slow down
Hurry up
Hold my breath
Inhale
Exhale
Snarl
Weep
Regret
Forgive
Look back
Look ahead
Close my eyes
Lean right
Lean left
Wipe a tear
Turn the corner
David Williams Accordion Closed
If only I had a uterus!
2018
woodblock print
The majority of protesters at Planned Parenthood Clinics are male. These are the same people who protest mask mandates and vaccinations. Their rallying cry, “my body, my choice”. They also oppose national health care, free child care and most social programs. Bullying, false information and intimidation are their tactics, need I say more?American Idol
2022
drawing
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, and six adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, he shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. After the shooting there was a national outcry for gun reform. Restrictive gun laws were passed in Newtown and the state of Connecticut, nothing nationally. Two years later both laws were overturned by state and federal judges.
There are 153 million registered voters in the United States of which the majority support restrictive gun laws, there are 5.5 million NRA members that do not. The NRA and their lobbyist control our gun laws. If the slaughter of twenty small children changes nothing, nothing will. Do I need to say more?
David Williams Accordion Closed
If only I had a uterus!
2018
woodblock print
American Idol
2022
drawing
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, and six adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, he shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. After the shooting there was a national outcry for gun reform. Restrictive gun laws were passed in Newtown and the state of Connecticut, nothing nationally. Two years later both laws were overturned by state and federal judges. There are 153 million registered voters in the United States of which the majority support restrictive gun laws, there are 5.5 million NRA members that do not. The NRA and their lobbyist control our gun laws. If the slaughter of twenty small children changes nothing, nothing will. Do I need to say more?
Del Zartner Accordion Closed
Incubation
2021
pastel
Torque
2022
cast handmade paper, paper lithograph, steel
The Little Things
2022
paper lithograph transfers
Descent
2022
handmade paper, steel
Del Zartner Accordion Closed
Incubation
2021
pastel
Torque
2022
cast handmade paper, paper lithograph, steel
The Little Things
2022
paper lithograph transfers
Descent
2022
handmade paper, steel