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Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition 2026 
April 7 - May 1, 2026 
Experience the culmination of three years of intense creative study and exploration in this exhibition, highlighting artwork from graduating MFA students at the Ģ������ƵBelcher College School of Art and Design. The MFA Thesis Exhibition 2026 artists share their visual, material, and conceptual insights in this year’s exhibition. 
Exhibiting Artists: Holly Hill, Lynne M. Hudson, Remi Roce, Brooklin Routt, and Reese Seigfried.

20th Anniversary Exhibition 
January 20 - July 2, 2026 
Step into a visual timeline that celebrates the 20th Anniversary of the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum through a dynamic exhibition showcasing decades of Ģ������Ƶ's dedication to collecting and curating contemporary art. This special anniversary exhibition honors the Museum’s roots in the Belk and Chelsea Galleries, highlighting key moments from its early focus on studio glass and women artists to its evolving commitment to contemporary Native American voices. Visitors will encounter artwork from each chapter of the Museum’s history, reflecting the people, places, and priorities that shaped its collection. The exhibition also commemorates the Museum’s national accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums—an honor held by only a select group of university museums. With each work on view, the 20th Anniversary Exhibition invites you to experience the legacy and future of art at Ģ������Ƶ. 
Exhibiting Artists Include: Joshua Adams, Martha Armstrong, Pinky/MM Bass, Cundo Bermúdez, Joyce Blunk, Cynthia Bringle, Julie Buffalohead, Joan Falconer Byrd, Al Carter, Nanette Carter, Dale Chihuly, Diane Withrow Coyle, Richard Craven, Andrea Dezsö, Fritz Dreisbach, James Esber, Donna Ferrato, J. Fiber, Jane Fine, Louis Finkelstein, Margaretta Gilboy, Robert Godfrey, Joseph Greenberg, Barbara Grossman, Tom Hammond, John Heliker, Luzene Hill, Alex Hitchcock, Kevin Hogan, Sergei Isupov, Nick Joerling, George Jolly, Gary Kachadourian, Corita Kent, Kenneth Kerslake, Barbara Kruger, Wifredo Lam, William H. Langston, Warja Lavater, Robert Levin, Sol LeWitt, Bonny Lhotka, Matt Liddle, William R. Lidh, Harvey K. Littleton, John Littleton, Lucille Lossiah, Ramona Lossie, Gordon Mahy, Dona McKinney West, Kreh Mellick, America Meredith, Raúl Milián, Tom Nakashima, Edith Neff, David Nichols, Kenneth Noland, Bonnie O’Connell, Judith O’Rourke, Luis González Palma, Mary Althea Parker, Philip Pavia, Betí Jimine Perez, Thomas Philabaum, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, George Rector, Richard Ritter, Cara Romero, Edward Ruscha, Akira Satake, Gabriel Shaffer, Roger Shimomura, Randy Shull, Hollis Sigler, Duane Slick, James E. Smythe, Nora Speyer, Taller Leñateros, Janice Tanner, Mildred Thompson, Jeff Todd, Yaffa Todd, Selina Trieff, Claire Van Vliet, Kate Vogel, Marguerite Wildenhain, and Jan Williams.  

58th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
February 17 - March 20, 2026 
Ģ������Ƶ’s Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is one of the longest-running Catamount art traditions. This exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity for Ģ������Ƶundergraduate students to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. Entries are reviewed by an outside art professional who selects the works for exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. Selected works will be on view at the Museum from February 17 through March 20, 2026. An awards ceremony will be held at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum on Thursday, February 26, 2026, from 5:00-7:00 pm. This year, the exhibition juror is Tracy Templeton, an artist recognized for her hybrid printmaking practice exploring memory and place. An awards ceremony and public reception will be held at the WCU Fine Art Museum on Thursday, February 25, 2026, from 5:00-7:00 pm.  
Exhibiting Artists Include: Aster Ayer, Macie Bishop, James Wood Boone, Kylie Malia Noelani Chatham, Cayenne Dabels, Rhiannon Eason, Ella Gamble, Jonah Gillen, Christopher Herman, Victoria Im, Klovyr Jade, Natasha Lambert, Frank Lendle, Diana Limbo, Courtnie Little, Samantha Mack, Jillian Nelson, Valeria Enid Ramos, Lyn Rivenbark, Charlie Stuckey, Roby Summerfield, Lily Tran, Daniel Velazquez Perez, Justin Wade, and Savannah Woodard. 

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2025 
November 4 - December 5, 2025 
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. The Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2025 highlights their comprehensive course of study at Ģ������Ƶ and serves as a preface to their forthcoming careers as professional artists. The studio art portion of this exhibition can be viewed inside the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. 
Exhibiting Artists Include: Tyler Carlson, Kylie Chatham, Robin Delp, Sally Drumheller, Casey Earnhart, Chey Ellis, Riley Elaine, Jonah Gillen, Morgan Harshaw, Natasha Lambert, Diana Limbo, AJ Martin, Charleston Reagan, Lyn Rivenbark, Mac Smith, Emma Swanson, and Daniel Velazquez Perez. 

North Carolina Glass 2025 
August 12 - December 5, 2025 
Discover the glass medium through the work of today’s visionary glass artists. North Carolina Glass 2025 brings together over thirty established and emerging creators from across the state, showcasing a broad spectrum of contemporary glasswork. From handblown vessels and flameworked geometries to textured pâte de verre surfaces and neon sculptures, this landmark exhibition highlights the innovation and diversity of glass as a contemporary art form. Continuing Ģ������Ƶ’s decades-long tradition of glass-focused exhibitions, North Carolina Glass 2025 celebrates the state’s vibrant Studio Glass Movement and offers visitors an inspiring look at the cutting edge of this remarkable medium. 
�ճ�� North Carolina Glass series began in 1974 when Ģ������ƵArt Professor Joan Falconer Byrd, who studied glass and ceramics as a graduate student under Harvey Littleton, began curating regular exhibitions of North Carolina glass in WCU’s Belk Gallery. Recognizing the importance of chronicling the developments of this experimental medium, she highlighted the early pioneers of the Studio Glass Movement including William Bernstein, Mark Peiser, Fritz Dreisbach, and Richard Ritter. The series continued biannually from 1974-1986, with a special exhibition held in 1995 featuring the second-wave generation of glass artists. In 2012, the North Carolina Glass series was revived as a collaboration between Denise Drury Homewood and Joan Falconer Byrd, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Studio Glass Movement in America and presented as a three-gallery exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. As the Museum and Bardo Arts Center celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, glass once again enlivens the galleries in North Carolina Glass 2025. 
Exhibiting Artists: Gary Beecham, Alex Bernstein, Katherine Bernstein, William Bernstein, Geoffrey Bowton, Robert Burch, David Chatt, Courtney Dodd, Nick Fruin, Ben Elliott, Shane Fero, Judson Guérard, Danielle James (DJ), Cole Johnson, Rob Levin, John Littleton, Tadayoshi Littleton, Brandon Lopez, Jason McDonald, Kit Paulson, Kenny Pieper, Dori Settles, Robert Stephan, Scott Summerfield, Kimberly Thomas, Jeff Todd, Yaffa Todd, Sarah Vaughn, Kate Vogel, and Hayden Wilson. 

No Ordinary Company: The Gifts of Connie Bostic 
August 12, 2025 - October 17, 2025 
The Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition honoring the life and legacy of Fairview-based artist Connie Bostic, on view from August 12 through October 17, 2025. Bostic, who was an alum of Ģ������Ƶ and passed away in January 2024, made a lasting impact on the region’s cultural landscape, not only through her own artistic work but also through her involvement with many art ventures that connected artists and their audiences. In 2010, she gifted more than fifty works of art to the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s permanent collection in honor of her mentor Robert Godfrey, who shared her commitment to the arts. No Ordinary Company: The Gifts of Connie Bostic brings together a selection of these donated works, including paintings, prints, and drawings by artists Bostic knew and respected, alongside a powerful centerpiece: a tour-de-force painting from her own Here and There s��������. �į 
Exhibiting Artists: Connie Bostic, Porge Buck, Al Carter, Larry Caveney, Margaret Curtis, Elma Johnson, Linda Larsen, Joanna Obermüller, Mary Althea Parker, Teresa Prater, Ann Ropp, Mark Schieferstein, Michael Sheldon, Taylor Spence, and Tom Thompson 

2025 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial 
January 21 - July 3, 2025 
Outside of the classroom, faculty members in the School of Art & Design are active artists and scholars that make significant contributions to the arts. The 2025 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial Exhibition provides students and the community with an opportunity to view recent work created by these distinguished faculty members whose primary research output is studio based.  
Exhibiting Artists: Tom Ashcraft, William Clements, Heather Mae Erickson, Ben Hamburger, James K. Kirkpatrick, Ron Laboray, Susan Alta Martin, Greg McPherson, Martha Neaves, Jillian Ohl, Nathan Ellis Perry, Tatiana Potts, Tom Schram, John Seefeldt, Erin Tapley, and Richard Tichich.
Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition 2025 
April 8 - May 2, 2025 
Experience the culmination of three years of intense creative study and exploration in this exhibition, highlighting artwork from graduating MFA students at the Ģ������ƵBelcher College School of Art and Design. The MFA Thesis Exhibition 2025 showcases work in various media and surveys a range of conceptual themes and creative approaches that characterize the global cultural landscape and contemporary art practice. 
Exhibiting Artists: Joey Martin, Jeannie Regan, Yuwen Renjie, and Daniel Simone.
57th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
February 18 - March 21, 2025 
Ģ������Ƶ’s Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is one of the longest-running Catamount art traditions. This exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity for Ģ������Ƶundergraduate students to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. Entries are reviewed by an outside art professional who selects the works for exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. Selected works will be on view at the Museum from February 18 through March 21, 2025. 
Exhibiting Artists: James Wood Boone, Alexis Bumgardner, Wes Burgess, Zoila Carrasco, Kylie Chatham, Carlen Davis, Isaiah Davis, Sally Drumheller, Casey Earnhardt, Rhiannon Eason, Natalie Fletcher, Julian Parker, Madison Haggard, Indigo, Darrah S. Harrison, Minami Imamura, Gustavo Jacome-Flores, Diana Limbo, Courtnie Little, Naomi Michelle, Nancy Peneff, Wren Petersen, Valeria E. Ramos, Jessica Rial, Emma Swanson, Lily Tran, Daniel Velazquez Perez, and Angel F. Volpe 

Bachelor of Fine Art Portfolio Exhibition 2024
November 12 - December 6, 2024 
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. The Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition highlights their comprehensive course of study at Ģ������Ƶ and serves as a preface to their forthcoming careers as professional artists. The studio art portion of this exhibition can be viewed inside the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. 
Exhibiting Artists Include: Dani Akre, Amber Bachmann, Katie Barnett, Naomi Michelle, Macie Bishop, Zoila Carrasco, Isaiah Davis, Nikayla Glover, Riley Highland, Samara McKnight, Valeria Ramos, Jessica Rial, Samantha Taube, and Grace Turner.

At the Table 
August 13 - December 6, 2024 
At �ճ�� Table is inspired by Ģ������Ƶ's 2023-24 campus theme of Community and Belongingness and ties in with recent conversations in our community about the importance of having one’s voice heard and being given a seat at the table. Featuring numerous nationally known artists, the exhibition brings together contemporary works of art from the 1980s to the present that explore ideas of community, power, and representation through their depiction or use of a “table”. Everything from the kitchen table and conference room table to the concept of having “a seat at the table” is offered as food for thought in this exhibition. Tying the artists together is how they use this idea of the “table” to signify a place where people come together in connection, endure and overcome injustice, and make decisions that can change an individual life or the course of humanity. 
Much of the artwork in At The Table is on loan from museums and galleries across the country, including artwork by Donna Ferrato, Jacqueline Hassink, Beth Lipman, Narsiso Martinez, Elizabeth Murray, Charles F. Quest, Cara Romero, and Sandy Skoglund. Other works are drawn from private collections or the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s own permanent collection, including significant works by Heather Mae Erickson, Roger Shimomura, Hollis Sigler, and Bob Trotman. In addition to visual artists, the exhibition incorporates verse by poet laureate Joy Harjo and a project celebrating Black history by Danielle Daniels and Amanda Ballard. 
The artists represented in the exhibition use the recurring motif of the table to open up a dialogue on a range of contemporary issues, including the disenfranchisement of agricultural laborers, the need for amplifying underrepresented voices in history, the struggle for power over one’s body, and the threat of nuclear holocaust, among many other topics. 

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2024 | Graphic Design 
April 16 - May 3, 2024 
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. The BFA Portfolio Exhibition gives graduating students in the WCU School of Art and Design the opportunity to share their work with the wider community. In the Spring 2024 semester, fifteen graphic design majors showcase independent projects developed during their final semester of the graphic design program. This program focuses on preparing students for multiple disciplines within contemporary design practice. 
The Graphic Design program is focusses on preparing students for multiple disciplines within contemporary design practice. Promoting the development of sustainable solutions, holistic research practices and understanding the relationships among people, context, and content to advance best practices in human-centered design. The School of Art and Design’s Bachelor of Fine Art with an emphasis in Graphic Design focuses on critical thinking, social research and practices, and professional production combined with a strategic relationship to cultural and historical investigation.
Exhibiting Artists Include: Hannah Bauer, Katie Cooper, Lian Franck, Laura Hack, Henry Klesius, Madison Livingston, David Miles, Joseph Miller, Jonquil Murphey-Kral, Noel Ramsay, Aubrey Sanderson, Heather Sitton, Christopher Stanhope, Taylor Tremmel, and Justeena Youmans-Royal. 

Stellar Picks: A Community Choice Exhibition
April 9, 2024 - October 18, 2024
The Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum at Bardo Arts Center has tallied the votes, and the results are in on which objects will be included in our newest exhibition Stellar Picks: A Community Choice Exhibition! This exhibition is for everyone who has a favorite piece of art in the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum collection—or would like to discover one! The Museum recently launched a new web portal for searching the Museum's permanent collection online. The portal includes images and information about hundreds of works of art from the Museum's 2,100-piece collection, which focuses on contemporary art of the Americas. Over the last several months, the public was invited to browse the new online database and cast a vote for the object they would most like to see on view. This exhibition opens on Tuesday, April 9, and will be on display through Friday, June 28, 2024. Visit arts.wcu.edu/collectionportal to explore the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s online collection portal for works in various mediums. The online collection portal was made possible through the funding provided by the North Carolina Arts Council.  
Exhibiting Artists Include: Rosemarie Beck, Thomas Scharman Buechner, Sydney A. Cross, Jane Culp, Fritz Dreisbach, Stephen Dee Edwards, Shane Fero, Donna Ferrato, Robert Godfrey, Bryant Holsenbeck, Ursula Huber Peer, Harvey K. Littleton, John Littleton & Kate Vogel, Newsworthy Drawing Club (Julie Armbruster and R. Brooke Priddy Conrad), Joel Queen, Keith Rasmussen, Richard Ritter, John Rose, Manuel Tzoc, Wally Smith, and Tadashi Torii. 

56th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
February 20 - March 22, 2024 
Ģ������Ƶ’s Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is one of the longest-running Catamount art traditions. This exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity for Ģ������Ƶundergraduate students to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. Entries are reviewed by an outside art professional who selects the works for exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. Selected works will be on view at the Museum from February 20 through March 22, 2024. 
An awards ceremony will be held at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum on Thursday, March 14, 2024 from 5:00-7:00 PM. This year, the exhibition juror is Erika Diamond, a textile-focused artist, curator, and educator based in Asheville, NC. 
Exhibiting Artists Include: Katie Barnett, Adam Bryant, Alexis Bumgardner, Jessie Butner, Matthew Cain, Zoila Carrasco, Nathalie Catalán, Isaiah Davis, Sally Drumheller, Rhiannon Eason, Anilia Hornsby, Gillian Kaminski, Kiara Leary, Madi Livingston, Joshua Masters, Gloria Melo-Estrada, Naomi Michelle, Michaela Morse, Berlyn Perdomo, Jessica Rial, Alexis Shafir, Samantha Taube, Daniel Velazquez Perez, Lydia Vereen, and Gogaji Renn Yang.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2023 | Studio Art
November 7 - December 8, 2023
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. The BFA Portfolio Exhibition gives graduating students in the WCU School of Art and Design the opportunity to share their work with the wider community. �ճ�� School of Art and Design’s Bachelor of Fine Art with an emphasis in Studio Art is created for students who wish to hone their focus more intensively on fine art and design. Completing the BFA curriculum will prepare students for a career or post-graduate study in art, design, or related disciplines. 
Program emphases allow students to explore a specific area of study while following a rigorous art curriculum. 
Twelve studio art majors will share their capstone projects in the fall 2023 semester. Their art portfolios, which include paintings, sculpture, ceramics, installation art, and other mediums, explore a wide range of topics from gun violence and vulnerability to gender expectations and perceptions of disabilities. 
Exhibiting Artists Include: Olivia Bartlett, Jessie Butner, Nickolas Dinnall, Josh Jordan, Kit Kaufman, Kiara Leary, Joshuar Masters, Gloria Melo-Estrada, Mackenzie Neely, Linzy Rainess, Amy Woods, and Julie Youtz.

Spark of the Eagle Dancer: The Collecting Legacy of Lambert Wilson 
August 8 - December 8, 2023, and January 16 - June 28, 2024 
Spark of the Eagle Dancer: The Collecting Legacy of Lambert Wilson, features over 140 works of contemporary Native American art from the collection of one of Western North Carolina’s most notable art enthusiasts. Lambert Wilson, who devoted his life to supporting and encouraging Native artists, amassed an extensive collection during his lifetime, focusing primarily on artists of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee Nation, and sovereign nations of the Southwest. This exhibition brings together a selection of baskets, pottery, carving, painting, photography, and more that tell the story of the relationships Wilson built and the impact that he made by dedicating himself to this remarkable collection. 
Those who live in Western North Carolina know Lambert Wilson as a respected educator and supporter of the arts. He started his collection of contemporary Native American art in the 1970s, when he was studying middle grade education as an undergraduate student at WCU. As part of an introductory art history course taught by Mrs. Janie Leftwich, Wilson completed an extra credit assignment to visit the John Julius Wilnoty Eagle Dancer sculpture at Medicine Man Crafts in Cherokee, NC. This encounter motivated him to acquire his own collection of Cherokee artwork. From that first moment of inspiration, Wilson saw artwork as a vehicle for culture, learning, and friendship. He spent decades forging relationships with Native artists and being curious about their process of making. With each object acquired, he learned more about the histories and traditions of each artist’s culture and took an interest in their lives. Ultimately his impulse to collect went far beyond the material and was an expression of his love for people and community. In 2006, Wilson met his partner Jenny Holland, who shared his passion for Native art. Together they expanded the scope of the collection to include work by Native artists of the Southwest. Spark of the Eagle Dancer gives visitors a glimpse into this vast collection built over 47 years and features work by 83 artists of various tribal affiliations. 
This project was supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. 

55th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition
February 21 - March 24, 2022
Ģ������Ƶ’s Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is one of the longest-running Catamount art traditions. This exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity for Ģ������Ƶundergraduate students to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. Entries are reviewed by an outside art professional who selects the works for exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. This year, the exhibition juror is Margaret Curtis, a feminist artist, and painter who has been creating work since the late 1980s.
Exhibiting Artists Include: Olivia Bartlett, Cassidy Burns, Matthew Cain, Amanda Clark, Bella Cugini, Erin Elsey, Elise Evans, Annette Gomez, Kinsley Gunter, Heather Hennessey, Chance Holmes-Snowden, Josh Jordan, Gillian Kaminski, Kit Kaufman, Henry Klesius, Kiara Leary, Abby Ledet, Madi Livingston, Madison (Darla) Lohwasser, Joshua Masters, Gloria Melo-Estrada, Naomi Michelle, Jessica Rial, and Matt Stapley.

Courtney M. Leonard - BREACH: Logbook23 | CORIOLIS
January 17 - May 5, 2023
Starting January 17, 2023, the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum at Bardo Arts Center presents an immersive art installation that explores cultural and historical connections to water, fishing practices, and sustainability. Created by ceramic artist Courtney M. Leonard as part of her BREACH series, the installation BREACH: Logbook23 | CORIOLIS is a response to the artist’s research in Western North Carolina and asks the question, “Can a culture sustain itself when it no longer has access to the environment that fashions that culture?” The exhibition will be on view through May 5, 2023.
A member of the Shinnecock Nation in Long Island, New York, Leonard grew up in a culture that centered around the sea. Water and whaling form an integral part of Shinnecock cultural practices and lifeways, which are being disrupted by climate change, coastal erosion, and other environmental stressors. Leonard started her BREACH installation series in 2013 as a response to these disruptions and through her artwork has continued to connect with a wide variety of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities about their changing connections with water and subsistence. BREACH: Logbook 23 | CORIOLIS is the newest installation in this series.
Leonard begins her installation projects by visiting the location where her work will be shown and talking with communities in that region about their cultural connections with water. For this iteration of her BREACH series, Leonard visited the Western North Carolina region in October 2022 and met with members of the Cherokee community, WCU faculty in the sciences, scholars in the Cherokee Studies program, and Ģ������Ƶstudents. She visited several sites connected with water and fishing, including the Tribal Trout Hatchery in Cherokee and a historic fish weir on the Tuckasegee River. These conversations informed the final look and content of her installation, from her color palette and audio soundtrack to the shapes painted on the walls.

2023 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial
January 17 - May 5, 2023
Every two years, the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum offers faculty in the School of Art and Design the opportunity to share their artwork with the University community. Outside of the classroom, faculty members in the School of Art & Design are active artists and scholars that make significant contributions to the arts. The School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial Exhibition provides students and the community with an opportunity to view recent work created by these distinguished faculty members whose primary research output is studio based.
Exhibiting Artists Include: Tom Ashcraft, Heather Mae Erickson, Jenny Fisher, Ben Hamburger, Anna Helgeson, Jane Hughes, Morgan Kennedy, James K. Kirkpatrick, Ron Laboray, Mary Anna LaFratta, Susan Alta Martin, Greg McPherson, Martha Neaves, Nathan Ellis Perry, Tatiana Potts, John Seefeldt, David Skinner, Erin Tapley, Richard Tichich, and Flor Widmar.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2022
November 8 - December 9, 2022
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. This exhibition highlights their comprehensive course of study at Ģ������Ƶ and serves as a preface to their forthcoming careers as professional artists. The studio art portion of this exhibition can be viewed inside the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. The graphic design portion of this exhibition can be viewed directly outside the Museum, in Gallery 130 at Bardo Arts Center.
The School of Art and Design’s Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Studio Art is created for students who wish to hone their focus more intensively on fine art and design. Completing the BFA curriculum will prepare students for a career or post-graduate study in art, design, or related disciplines. Program emphases allow students to explore a specific area of study while following a rigorous art curriculum. The Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Graphic Design focuses on critical thinking, social research and practices, and professional production combined with a strategic relationship to cultural and historical investigation.  
Exhibiting Artists Include (Studio Arts): Hosanna Bell, Ava Clark, Sara Cline, Fionnuala Coen (Nu), Isabella Cugini, Anastasia (Sia) Diavatis, Heather Hennessey, Matt Madden, Harrison Mark, Samita Martinez, Yssach Petty, Amber Rousseau, Roy Torda, Adrianne Wilkerson
Exhibiting Artists Include (Graphic Design): Mackenzie Bertrand, Maxwell Collins, Nathaniel Diaz, Chandler DuBose, Elijah Hawkins, Trevor Hiner, Dani Inkidar, Kadamma Jackson, Sabrina James, Nathan Lisiecki, Ray Matlock. Ali Moore, Daniela Morgan, Jordan Petruk, Joshua Stapleton, Angelina Vang

Cultivating Collections: Glass
August 19 - December 9, 2022
Cultivating Collections is a multi-year series of exhibitions highlighting specific areas of the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s permanent collection. In this year’s exhibition, student researchers tell the stories of the Museum’s glass collection, which includes a range of artists who have made significant contributions to the Studio Glass Movement in Western North Carolina. This gallery highlights a range of artists who have connections to the history of glass in Western North Carolina. Many of them made significant contributions to the Studio Glass Movement and are teachers, mentors, and innovators who have inspired other artists to work in glass.
We want to thank our Student Curators, Interview Participants, and Artists for their participation in helping this exhibition come to life. Additionally, we would like to extend gratitude to Timm Muth and his team at Jackson County Green Energy Park for providing the students with hands-on experience working with glass. The Ģ������ƵOffice of the Provost partly funded this year's Cultivating Collections exhibition. Related field trips were funded by the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design.
Student curators include: Jenna Cary, Amanda Clark, Fionnuala Coen, Kyle Heavner, Matt Madden, Sam Martinez, Joshua Masters, Amber Rousseau, and Tina Thames. Interview participants include: Cara Barker, Brunk Auctions, Fitzallen Eldridge, David Goist, Cole Johnson, Ricardo Nazario y Colón, Heidi & Ashton Nichols, Susan Rhew, Ģ������ƵHunter Library Special and Digital Collections.

The Way I’m Wired: Artist Reflections on Neurodiversity
August 16, 2022 - May 5, 2023
Everyone’s brain is wired differently. The Way I'm Wired: Artist Reflections on Neurodiversity invites artists to share their lived experiences with neurodiversity and how these experiences have impacted their work as an artist. The term “neurodiversity,” first used by sociologist Judy Singer in the 1990s, is the idea that everyone’s brain is “wired” differently. We each think, learn, and relate to those around us in a wide variety of ways. While society conditions us to perceive certain types of brain functioning as “normal” and others as “abnormal,” neurodiversity encourages us to think outside this binary and to see neurological differences as a natural form of human variation, each deserving of respect, acceptance, and understanding.  
This exhibition aligns with the 2022-2023 campus theme of Mental Health and Wellness and connects with this year’s campus One Book—Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive, Outside the Lines by Jonathan Mooney.

We Will Not be Silenced: Standing for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
August 16 - December 9, 2022
On March 3, 2022, a group of Indigenous women gathered at Kituwah Mound, the site of an important Cherokee mother town, to bring awareness to the violence affecting the sisters, mothers, daughters, and grandmothers of Indigenous communities across the continent. Joined by two photographers, Dylan Rose (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) and Ashley Evans (Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina), these Indigenous women posed for portraits, set against the backdrop of the mountains, to advocate for justice. Each woman bore the red handprint of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement, a symbol that acknowledges the astonishingly high rate of violence directed at Indigenous women in both the United States and Canada.
This exhibition includes a series of photographs and sculptures that bring voice to the international Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement through the lens of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Comanche Nation, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and Métis Nation artists.
Sky Sampson, the Director of the Ģ������ƵCherokee Center and organizer of this project explains, “The red handprint upon our faces represents the hand that was once there to silence us. We have removed that hand and are moving forward with our voices. We need people to listen and share the names of these women across the country. We need your help to make a change and to raise awareness. Help us take action today.”

When Was the Last Time You Saw a Miracle? Prints by Corita Kent
August 16 - October 21, 2022
Shaped by her experiences as an artist, teacher, and Catholic nun, Corita Kent used her art to bring people together and ignite social change. Her screenprints position words in innovative ways to awaken her viewers to new ideas. In When Was the Last Time You Saw a Miracle? a selection of prints from the 1950s and 1960s, which are drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, Kent combines vivid color with quotations, everyday slogans, and biblical scripture to create inspirational messages of hope and harmony for humankind.

Cultivating Collections: Vitreographs, Glass, and Works by Black Artists
May 31 - July 29, 2022
Cultivating Collections is a multi-year series of exhibitions that highlights specific areas of the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s Collection, which includes over 1,800 works of art in a wide range of media by artists of the Americas.  Through this series, the Museum and Ģ������Ƶstudent researchers identify key acquisition areas and pinpoint where significant change is needed.  This year, Cultivating Collections reflects on three areas of the Collection—vitreographs, glass, and works by Black artists. Key works in each area come together to tell the story of past, present, and future collecting directions.
Featured artists include: Walter Darby Bannard, Frederick Birkhill, Warrington Colescott, Ruth Fine, Nancy Genn, Laura Grosch, Dorothy Simpson Krause, David Dodge Lewis, Bonnie Lhotka, Harvey Littleton, Peter Loewer, Tom Nakashima, Judith O’Rourke, Miklos Pogany, Karin Schminke, Dan Welden, Sandy Willcox, Ann Wolff, T.A. Zive, Arlene Burke-Morgan, Clarence Morgan, Martin Puryear, Therman Statom, Mildred Thompson, James Tanner, Fritz Dreisbach, William Bernstein, Shane Fero, Jack King, Robert Levin, Harvey Littleton, David Nichols, Roger Parramore, Richard Ritter, Tadashi Torii, and others.
Vitreographs:
The main gallery of Cultivating Collections features selections from the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s vitreograph collection, which consists of over 850 prints made using a glass matrix. It is the largest collection of vitreographs in the world and includes the complete archive of prints produced at Littleton Studios in Spruce Pine, NC from the mid-1970s through 2008. Harvey and Bess Littleton launched this collection in 2005-2006 when they gifted over 750 vitreographs to the Museum. With the help of the Littleton family, this gift grew in subsequent years, creating an unparalleled collection that tells the story of a distinct period in the history of printmaking, one in which Western North Carolina plays a central role.
Works by Black Artists:
To celebrate the creativity of Black artists and acknowledge the need for greater representation of artists of color in the collection, this year’s student curators felt it was important to create a gallery solely devoted to Black artists. The Museum’s collection currently includes artwork by eight Black artists who have made significant contributions to the art world. Several of these artists have vitreographs in the collection, and their work is also on display in Cultivating Collections: Vitreographs. Some of their prints speak overtly to the Black experience in America by referring to racial divides in the U.S., the Civil Rights Movement, and the untold histories of Black Americans. Other works explore broader ideas about spirituality, visual abstraction, and science.
Glass:
This gallery highlights a range of artists who have connections to the history of glass in Western North Carolina. Many of them made significant contributions to the Studio Glass Movement and are teachers, mentors, and innovators who have inspired other artists to work in glass. 

Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition 2022
April 5 - April 29, 2022
Experience the culmination of three years of intense creative study and exploration in this exhibition highlighting artwork by graduating MFA students in the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. Eli Blasko, Kate Chassner, Seth Echlin, and Kyle Kelsey share their visual, material, and conceptual insights in this year’s exhibition.  

54th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition
February 15 - March 18, 2022
The 54th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity for emerging artists to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. Entries are reviewed by an outside art professional who selects the works for exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. Selected works will be on view at the Museum from February 15 through March 18, 2022. This year, the exhibition juror is Catherine (Cat) Shteynberg, Assistant Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. This exhibition includes cash awards in several media categories, including two awards in 2-D Media, two awards in 3-D Media, 1 award in Design, and 1 award in Time-Based Media, as well as an overall Best in Show. An awards ceremony will be held at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum on Thursday, February 24 from 5:00-7:00 PM.
Exhibiting artists include: Timo Cashman, Indigo Cervantes, Ava Clark, Kayden Deeter, Spencer Douglas, Zhane Elliott, Faye Gant, Nikayla E. Glover, Caroline Hufnagle, Zeke Jennette, Gillian Kaminski, Samita Martinez, Joshua Masters, Chris Morgan, Ollie Morrison, Thomas Odell, Skylar Owenby, Nicole Petersohn, Madi Rose, Amber Rousseau, Tina Thames, Taylor Tremmel, and Jordan Truss. This exhibition and awards ceremony is supported in part by the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design and Blick Art Materials.

Raymond Baccari: Humans Excited About Being Human
February 1 - April 29, 2022
Described by the artist as an “empathy machine,” this interactive, sonic installation by Raymond Baccari amplifies visitor heartbeats. Empowering visitors to listen to this steady pulse of life within themselves and others, Baccari’s work connects us with our own corporeality and our shared humanity.   

Carrie Mae Weems: The Usual Suspects
February 1 - April 29, 2022
The exhibition includes recent photographic and video works questioning stereotypes that associate black bodies with criminality. Images from the All the Boys and The Usual Suspects series implicate these stereotypes in the deaths of black men and women at the hands of police and confront the viewer with the fact of judicial inaction. Blocks of color obscuring faces point to the constructed nature of our notions of race and how these imagined concepts obscure humanity—here with very real and deadly outcomes. People of a Darker Hue, a meditative compilation of video, found footage, narration, and performance commemorates these deaths. 
Considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—she has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.  
Carrie Mae Weems: The Usual Suspects is organized by LSU Museum of Art. The project, which includes a fully illustrated catalogue, is a collaboration between the LSU College of Art + Design, the LSU School of Art, and LSU Museum of Art. Support for this exhibition is provided by The Winifred and Kevin P. Reilly Jr. Fund with additional support from LSU Museum of Art Annual Exhibition Fund donors. 

Kate Roberts: Between Thresholds III
February 1 - April 22, 2022
On extended display from the Contemporary Clay 2021 exhibition, Kate Roberts’ Between Thresholds III contemplates the connection between the vulnerabilities of clay and the mortality of people, objects, and places.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2021
November 9 - December 10, 2021
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. This exhibition highlights their comprehensive course of study at Ģ������Ƶ and serves as a preface to their forthcoming careers as professional artists. The studio art portion of this exhibition can be viewed inside the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. The graphic design portion of this exhibition can be viewed directly outside the Museum, in Gallery 130 at Bardo Arts Center.
Exhibiting artists include: Studio Art: Victoria Alexander, Lexie Castle, Amanda Clark, Erica Horn, Noelle Kelly, Skylar Owenby, Jordan Redden, Madi Rose, Zachary Schneider, and Aleaha Waldroup. Graphic Design: Nanette Bollenbecker, Spencer Douglas, Francesca Gaza, Cameron Hagler, Bonnie Hammond, Katie McElhaney, Kathy Michaud, Israel Morales, Christopher Morgan, Abigail Parker, Christina Perry, Hannah Presnell, Alex Stamouli, Zhane Strachan, Malcolm Thompson, Arturo Torrecilla, and Scarlett Young.

Contemporary Clay 2021
August 17 - December 10, 2021
Back for its next iteration at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum, Contemporary Clay 2021, gathers artists from a variety of backgrounds who push boundaries on topics including race, culture, sexuality, gender, and class. Guest curated by Heather Mae Erickson, Associate Professor of Ceramics at WCU, Contemporary Clay surveys the ever-expanding field of American-made ceramics. The exhibition encourages viewers to consider the concepts, processes, and context of clay in contemporary art. Each artist, from emerging to established, is featured because of their noteworthy contributions to the field.

Jefferson Pinder: Selections from the Inertia Cycle, 2003-2014
August 17 - October 22, 2021
The Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum presents a new exhibition featuring video performance works from Jefferson Pinder. An interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Pinder focuses on themes of labor and endurance in his video art practice with metaphoric references to African American identity, history, and experience. Curated by Julie Levin Caro, Professor of Art History and Faculty Director of Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College, the exhibition brings together five video performances from Pinder’s Inertia Cycle series. This series examines complex issues of race, ethnicity, and class through Pinder’s grueling physical performances. The videos are set to engaging sound scores drawn from African, folk, and hip-hop music.
Pinder’s portrayal of the black body at work, under distress, and moving through pain and exhaustion constitutes an act of resistance and social commentary. As Pinder states, “I portray the black body both frenetically and through drudgery in order to convey relevant cultural experiences.” Pinder approaches his subject matter with a sense of lyricism and sometimes with humor. In the five videos on view—Marathon, Mule, Lazarus, Ben Hur, and Thoroughbred—Pinder immerses the viewer in scenes of physical conditioning to prompt an emotional response.
Pinder has produced highly praised performance-based and multidisciplinary work for over a decade. His work has been featured in numerous group shows including exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, The High Museum, Tate Modern in London, the 2016 Shanghai Biennale, and the Smithsonian Museum of African American History. He was awarded a United States Artist’s Joyce Fellowship Award in the field of performance in 2016 and was selected as the John S. Guggenheim Fellow in 2017. Pinder received a BA in Theatre and MFA in Mixed Media from the University of Maryland and studied at the Asolo Theatre Conservatory in Sarasota, FL. Currently, he is a Professor in the Contemporary Practices department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition 2021
April 13 - May 7, 2021
This exhibition showcases work in a variety of media and surveys a range of conceptual themes and creative approaches that characterize the global cultural landscape and contemporary art practice. Featured MFA candidates include: Perry Houlditch, Mo Kessler, Lydia See, and Lex Turnbull. The MFA program from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design is an inter-disciplinary studio art program and creative research environment where ideas are given form. Through close association with a diverse faculty, visiting artists, scholars, and their peers, students develop a contextual and historical awareness of their practice focusing on exploration, creative research, and art making.

53^rd Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition
March 2 - March 26, 2021
Ģ������Ƶ’s Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is one of the longest-running Catamount art traditions. This exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity for emerging artists to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting.  Entries are reviewed by an outside art professional who selects the works for exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. This year, the exhibition juror is Karlota I. Contreras-Koterbay, Director of Tipton and Slocumb Galleries at East Tennessee State University.
Exhibiting artists include: Paris Annas II, Sydney Brear, Anastasia Diavatis, Spencer Douglas, Libby Fleet, Caitlyn French, Francesca H Gaza, Nikayla Glover, Raven Harrill, Zeke Jennette, Gillian Kaminski, Chloe Kaylor, Sadie Lewallen, Madison (Darla) Lohwasser, Ray Matlock, Jonathan Pittman, Fisher Sherrill, Alex Stamouli, Emily Southard, Torrion Stevenson, Zhane Strachan, Jordan Truss, and Scarlett Young.

Water for Thought
February 16 - May 7, 2021
Capturing the arresting visual qualities of water through photographs, and drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, as well as outside lenders, this group of images creates an atmosphere of calm and contemplation and invites us into a space of romantic reverie. Several photographs in the exhibition carry a deeper psychological or political dimension and use water to express ideas about loss, change, and memory. The Museum invites visitors to experience the exhibition on both levels—as an aesthetic boost to the spirit and a deeper dive into important societal issues.  

Mildred Thompson: Helio Centric
February 16 - May 7, 2021
Sunspot activity and cosmic movements fascinated Mildred Thompson, and she used these ideas as a jumping point to develop the abstract visual language for this series of vitreographs. Recognized as one of many African American women artists of the 20^th and 21^st centuries that have made significant contributions to the art world, Mildred Thompson (1936-2003) pursued a multi-dimensional career as a studio artist, teacher, writer, and musician. She moved between different mediums including painting, sculpture, and printmaking and was known for using scientific concepts as inspiration for her abstract art. In 1993, while teaching at the Atlanta College of Art and working as the associate editor for Art Papers magazine, Thompson spent a week as an artist-in-residence at Littleton Studios in Spruce Pine, NC. Here she experimented with vitreography, a printmaking process that uses a glass plate to produce a printed image. During her residency, Thompson produced a series of prints entitled Helio Centric, a term used in astronomy to describe how the planets of our solar system revolve around the sun. 
Exhibition Acknowledgements
Mildred Thompson: Helio Centric was organized by the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum and is part of an ongoing effort to showcase works from the Museum’s Permanent Collection. The Museum would like to thank Judith O’Rourke, Kate Vogel & John Littleton, Malaika Newsome, Melissa Messina, Galerie LeLong, and Emory University’s Rose Library for their research assistance during the development of this exhibition.

2021 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial
January 26 - May 7, 2021
Every two years, the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum offers faculty in the School of Art and Design the opportunity to share their artwork with the University community. For this year’s Biennial, each faculty member contributed work that connects with Western Carolina University’s 2020-2021 campus theme of Water. Often, water is not only part of the process of creating art, or the inspiration behind a piece, but an integral, and occasionally moving, element in the final product.
In the context of artmaking, water has endless purposes, including; the ability to suspend and move other materials, create temperature changes, clean surfaces, bond materials together, allow paint to move with ease, help clay to conform to a mold, adheres wool fibers to one another, cool glass tools during use, makes pulp to create paper.
On a practical level, the works encourage us to think about how water functions in our everyday lives and how we depend on water to perform day-to-day activities, whether at home or in the studio. While many of the faculty use water to produce their work, the presence of water is most powerful when it is used to create meaning. The exhibition highlights representations of water, such as steam, rivers, flooded landscapes, and even the atmosphere around us. You will notice allusions to water in the form of toy boats, maps, and monsters. All of these experiences come together to illuminate the important role water plays in human myths and legends, memories and identities, histories and rituals, and even our safety in the era of COVID-19. These works ask us to consider our physical and psychological relationship with water, as well as its spectrum of impact on our lives and ecosystems, as both a destructive force and sustainer of life.
Exhibiting artists include: Tom Ashcraft, Heather Mae Erickson, Ben Hamburger, Matt Hellgeth, Jane Hughes, Morgan Kennedy, Kevin Kirkpatrick, Ron Laboray, Mary Anna LaFratta, Matt Liddle, Susan Alta Martin, Greg McPherson, Martha Neaves, Nathan Ellis Perry, John Seefeldt, Laura Sellers, David Skinner, Erin Tapley, and Richard Tichich.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2020: Studio Art and Graphic Design
November 10 - November 19, 2020
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. This exhibition highlights their comprehensive course of study at Ģ������Ƶ and serves as a preface to their forthcoming careers as professional artists.
Exhibiting artists include: Studio Art: Jay Brown, Cristina Colom Muñoz, Kelsey Dozier, Madeleine Franzen, Caitlyn French, Rachel High, Chloe Kaylor, Tracie Macias, Jonathan Pittman, Sadie Sequoya, Fisher Sherrill, Cameron Tarte, and Maya White. Graphic Design: William Bundy, Libby Fleet, Graham Gooden, Matthew Harris, Brian Heindl, Emily Hughes, Zoë Koval, Winston Massey, Emily Miller, Kristen Price, Hallie Sholar, Melinda Solorio, Casey Sweet, and Justin Toms. 

Cultivating Collections: Paintings, Ceramics, and works by Latinx and Latin American Artists
August 18 - December 4, 2020
This multi-year exhibition series highlights specific areas of the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum permanent collection. In 2020, Cultivating Collections features paintings, ceramics, and work by Latinx and Latin American artists. Working under Curator Carolyn Grosch, undergraduate students in WCU’s Exhibition Practicum course assisted in the selection of works to display, interviewed artists, and evaluated strengths and opportunities for the collection. Previously, the 2019 version of Cultivating Collections focused on photography, artist books, and contemporary Native American art.

52nd Annual Juried Undergraduate Art Exhibition
February 18 - March 20, 2020
Ģ������Ƶ’s Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is one of the longest-running Catamount art traditions. For emerging artists, this exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. Their work is reviewed by an outside art professional who has the challenge of making selections from the many talented students who apply. This year, the exhibition is juried by Tracey Morgan, owner of Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville.
Exhibiting artists include: Victoria Alexander, Christopher Cagle, Cristina Colom, Kelsey L. Dozier, Jeremy Gilbert, Mariah Harris, Connor, Henderson, Kaitlyn James, Zoë Koval, Sarah Tess Kunkleman, Tracie Macias, Winston Massey, Christina Perry, Kristen Price, Hallie Sholar, Melinda Solorio, Marguerite Suminski, Justin Toms, Aleaha Waldroup, Maya White, Katie Williamson, and Sierra Wills.

Time and Again: Glass Works by SaraBeth Post and Kit Paulson
January 29 - May 1, 2020
Funded in part by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, this exhibition brings together two Penland-based artists, Kit Paulson and SaraBeth Post, whose works in glass explore ideas about time, history, memory, and the antique. In many of their works, objects from the past are remade and reimagined in glass, creating a bridge between past and present.

Curious Terrain: WNC From the Air
January 22 - May 1, 2020
Experience stunning aerial photographs of the WNC region by Alex S. MacLean, an artist and pilot with over 45 years of experience taking images from the birds-eye perspective of an airplane. Newly commissioned by the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum, MacLean's striking images of the seven western most counties of North Carolina capture the unique qualities of the region’s built environment while also raising broader questions about humanity’s impact on the land through agriculture, energy, industry, and housing. Funding for this exhibition was provided in part by a grant from The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.

Claire Van Vliet: Stone and Sky Art
January 21 - April 24, 2020
This exhibition brings together a selection of vitreographs by Claire Van Vliet, a renowned printmaker and book artist. The landscapes on view, printed at Harvey Littleton Studios in Spruce Pine, NC between 1993 and 2010, depict dramatic rock formations from New Zealand, Ireland, and the American Southwest. A vitreograph is a printmaking medium that uses a glass plate to produce a printed image. See an example of a Van Vliet glass plate from her time at Littleton Studios on display in the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum Exhibition.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2019: Studio and Graphic Design
November 12 - December 6, 2019
Experience work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design. Highlighting their comprehensive course of study at Western Carolina University, this exhibition serves as a preface to their forthcoming careers as professional artists. The exhibition features student artwork from both the Studio Art and Graphic Design programs.
Exhibiting artists include: Studio art: Jenny Cowan, Victoria Duncan, Mariah Harris, Kaitlyn James, Sarah Jolly, Sarah Kunkleman, Charles J. Paine III, Thaddeus Prevette, Kayla Rossier, Kimberly Springs, Elijah Troutman, Lindsey Turner and Kayla “Kyrie” Lynette Wright. Graphic design: Zachary Alexander, Joel Basnett, Andrew Beck, Isabel Hernandez, Alison Kabrich, Jade Majercik, Jackson Matthews, Dustin Newton, Taylor Stump, Bryan Vernon, Kimber Ward and Scott Wilson.

Resounding Change: Sonic Art and the Environment
August 20 - December 6, 2019
This exhibition features sound-based artwork that encourages visitors to listen more closely to the natural world and to think about how sound is being used in a time of environmental crisis. What can sound tell us about the current conditions that shape our planet? What aspects of environmental change can we better understand through sound? Through these and other themes, the works in the exhibition consider our connection with the natural world and humanity's place in Earth’s intricate ecological web. This exhibition was supported in part by the Ģ������ƵCampus Theme Committee, the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design, Guitar Center, and Winding Stair Nursery in Franklin, NC.

Chakaia Booker: Auspicious Behavior
August 20 - October 25, 2019
Chakaia Booker is an abstract sculptor who creates textured and layered works in both 3-D and 2-D media. Her work addresses African-American identity, racial and economic inequality, and environmental concerns. “Auspicious Behavior” is a traveling exhibition that was organized by the Ewing Gallery at the University of Tennessee and will feature 19 of Booker’s chine collé prints and four of her sculptures made from repurposed tires.

Cultivating Collections: Photography, Artist Books, and Contemporary Native American Art
June 4 - July 26, 2019
Experience highlights from three growing areas in the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum Collection. This multi-year exhibition series highlights specific areas of the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum permanent collection. In 2020, Cultivating Collections features paintings, ceramics, and work by Latinx and Latin American artists. Working under Curator Carolyn Grosch, undergraduate students in WCU’s Exhibition Practicum course assisted in the selection of works to display, interviewed artists, and evaluated strengths and opportunities for the collection.

Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition 2019

April 9, 2019 - May 3, 2019
The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at Ģ������Ƶis pleased to announce the 2018 MFA Thesis Exhibition. The exhibition spotlights works by three graduating artists and represent a synthesis of each student’s experience at the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design MFA Program in Studio Art. The MFA Thesis Exhibition features work in a variety of media and surveys a range of conceptual themes and creative approaches that characterize the global cultural landscape and contemporary art practice. MFA candidates represented in this Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum exhibition are Chelsea Dobert-Kehn, Lauren Medford, and David Skinner.

51^st Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition
February 18 - March 22, 2019
Ģ������Ƶ’s Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is one of the longest-running Catamount art traditions. For emerging artists, this exhibition is an extraordinary opportunity to share their artwork with a larger public and to enhance their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. Their work will be juried by Lee Walton, Associate Professor of Art at UNC Greensboro, where he directs both the Graduate Program and the Interdisciplinary Arts and Social Practice program.
Exhibiting artists include: Abigail Mosher, Alison Kabrich, Annabela Cockrell, Brandi Swisher, Casey Sweet, Christen Ray, Dustin Newton, Elijah Troutman, Elizabeth Stone, Elliott Suess, Grace Woodard, Hallie Sholar, Heather Warriner, Joel Basnett, Katherine Coyne, Katy Milke, Matthew Harris, Lindsey Turner, Luke Webb, Mitch Foust, Sarah Kunkleman, Starkim Noble, Taylor Short, Thaddeus Prevette, Victoria Alexander, Tyler Martino, Zachary Alexander, and Zoe Koval

2019 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial
January 15, 2019 - May 3, 2019
Outside of the classroom, faculty members in the School of Art & Design are active artists and scholars that make significant contributions to the arts. They regularly exhibit in venues across the globe, from New York to Los Angeles to Japan and speak at major conferences in their fields. The School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial Exhibition provides students and the public an opportunity to view recent work created by these distinguished faculty members whose primary research output is studio-based.
Exhibiting Artists Include: Erin Adams, Tom Ashcraft, Heather Mae Erickson, Jon Jicha, Justin Morgan Kennedy, James K. Kirkpatrick, Ron Laboray, Mary Anna LaFratta, Matt Liddle, Susan Alta Martin, Greg McPherson, Leigh Ann Parrish, Nathan Perry, Laura Sellers, Erin Tapley, and Richard Tichich

Outspoken: Paintings by America Meredith
January 15, 2019 - May 3, 2019
As a painter, independent curator, and publishing editor of the First American Art Magazine, Meredith uses visual art and writing to address important issues in the Native community. Her work celebrates Cherokee language and culture, examines changing customs, and challenges Native American stereotypes. This exhibition draws particular attention to the importance of language in Meredith’s work, bringing together paintings that incorporate Cherokee syllabary, reference Cherokee oral histories, and pair found-object text with visual imagery.
This exhibition draws particular attention to the importance of language in America Meredith's work, bringing together paintings that incorporate Cherokee syllabary, reference Cherokee oral histories, and pair found-object text with visual imagery.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2018
November 20, 2018 - December 7, 2018
The BFA Portfolio Exhibition provides an opportunity for students to share their work with the campus and community while enhancing their skills in presenting artwork in a professional gallery setting. The students must write artist statements, compile digital images of their art, and prepare their work for display by matting, framing, and creating mounts. Their work is reviewed by an outside art professional who has the challenge of making selections from the many talented student submissions. This exhibition features the studio art and graphic design production from graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students in the School of Art and Design.
Exhibiting artists include: Studio Art: Jenny Cowan, Victoria Duncan, Mariah Harris, Kaitlyn James, Sarah Jolly, Sarah Kunkleman, Charles J. Paine III, Thaddeus Prevette, Kayla Rossier, Kimberly Springs, Elijah Troutman, Lindsey Turner, Kayla “Kyrie” Lynette Wright. Graphic Design: Zachary Alexander, Joel Basnett, Andrew Beck, Isabel Hernandez, Alison Kabrich, Jade Majercik, Jackson Matthews, Dustin Newton, Taylor Stump, Bryan Vernon, Kimber Ward, and Scott Wilson.

Defining America
September 11, 2018 - May 3, 2019
Inspired by WCU’s 2018-19 interdisciplinary learning theme of the same name, “Defining America” brings together artists with varying perspectives on the concept of “America” and asks visitors to reflect on the values, definitions and assumptions attached to that concept. Exhibiting artists include: Trenton Doyle Hancock, Ramiro Gomez, Nari Ward, Tom Sachs, Javier Tellez, Randy Shull, Shan Goshorn, Porge Buck and Martin DeWitt, along with Kevin Bradley and Julie Belcher of Yeehaw Press. DeWitt retired in 2010 as founding director of WCU's Fine Art Museum.

Julia Buffalohead: You and I
September 11, 2018 - December 7, 2018
The exhibition features mixed media works by Julie Buffalohead, a contemporary artist whose enchanting depictions of animal and human figures investigate the complexities of relationships, both personal and cultural. An enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Buffalohead’s work is inspired by elements of Native storytelling, particularly the animal and “trickster” characters that are prevalent in Native mythologies. Of Ponca and non-native descent, Buffalohead uses her work as a platform for considering differences in cultural perceptions, the intricacies of bi-racial identity, and contemporary issues facing indigenous communities. She also addresses a number of shared human experiences, including motherhood, childhood, and emotional struggle. Julia Buffalohead: You and I examines the feelings of both togetherness and separation that are expressed in the artist’s images.

Grids and Gradients: The Visual Systems of Vernon Pratt
August 21, 2018 - November 9, 2018
Drawn primarily from the collection of the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum, this exhibition brings together a selection of recently-acquired paintings by Vernon Pratt, an artist who worked at the intersection of art and mathematics. Pratt took a systematic approach to his creative process, often exploring the rich array of possibilities within a given set of parameters. The paintings on view focus on two of Pratt’s characteristic elements—the grid and the gradient. Math activities for both college-age and middle-school students will be developed in conjunction with the exhibition to help illuminate the connections between art and math that permeate Pratt’s work. A special thank you to The Vernon Pratt Project for their support of this exhibition.

thevernonprattproject.com.

Glass Catalyst: Littleton's Legacy in Contemporary Sculpture
June 14, 2018 - December 7, 2018
Celebrating the efforts of Harvey Littleton, one of the greatest proponents of using glass as an expressive medium, the exhibition explores the work of contemporary artists concentrating in glass and how they are building off the foundations laid by Littleton during the early years of the Studio Glass Movement. Artists featured in the exhibition include Alex Bernstein, Carol Milne, Hayden Wilson, Matt Eskuche, Shane Fero, Robert Burch, Dean Allison, Carmen Lozar, Carole Frève and others. Glass enthusiasts, sculptors, lovers of innovation, and even knitters will especially enjoy this display of works ranging from cast figures to blown glass to delicate lamp-worked forms

Mary Althea Parker: Abstract Impulse
June 15, 2018 - August 24, 2018
This exhibition is a small selection of Mary Althea Parker’s works held by the WCU Fine Art Museum, focusing primarily on Parker’s paintings made after 1950. Mary Althea Parker was a passionate painter and educator who dedicated her career to exploring abstraction. In 1948, Parker saw an exhibition of Hans Hofmann's work at the Addison Gallery of American Art that had a significant impact on her paintings. Hofmann's "brand" of abstraction, with its vibrant color and dynamic energy, resonated with Parker, and motivated her to take classes with Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. While many of her titles continued to reference the real world, her approach to painting shifted to being non-representational and followed Hofmann's credo that "There are bigger things to be seen in nature than the object".
Joshua Adams: Facing Culture
June 15, 2018 - August 24, 2018
The exhibition brings together a selection of masks and carvings of the human face by Eastern Band Cherokee artist Joshua Adams, who expresses a deep reverence for his culture through his artwork. A teacher of woodcarving at Cherokee High School, Adams' work reflects on the importance of preserving his culture, and how outside influences have, and still do, impact Cherokee life and belief. Intended for display rather than ceremony, these representations of the human face range from traditional Cherokee forms to contemporary twists on tradition. Made from a variety of woods with details fashioned from rabbit fur, feathers, porcupine quills, and traditional arrows, Adams' works demonstrate the technical complexity of mask making and the array of materials that enliven this artform. Sculptors, wood carvers, historians, craft enthusiasts, and those interested in Cherokee art and culture will not want to miss this exhibition.
LINING: SHEATHING
January 16 - May 4, 2018
LINING: SHEATHING is a large-scale installation about the tactile and protective qualities of textiles by collaborators Denise Bookwalter and Lee Running. The artists have been working together for five years, creating installations and artist books that include printed fabric, handmade paper, woodblock prints, custom garments, and embroidery. This installation has been developed in residencies at Penland School of Crafts, Penland NC, Constellation Studios, Lincoln NE, and Small Craft Advisory Press, Tallahassee FL. The focal point of the installation is a room-size tent suspended beneath a skylight. The tent is made from large printed and dyed textile panels which create a space that viewers can enter. Viewers are invited to try on one of the handmade garments and view the series of eight queen bed sized woodblock prints on handmade paper. For the exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum, Bookwalter and Running will also create a three-story site-specific window installation for the atrium of the Bardo Arts Center.
Willie Cole: Soles and Boards
January 16 - May 4, 2018
Since 1989, Willie Cole has employed the image of the clothes iron in his work. Cole morphs this utilitarian object to represent and reference a range of associations from African masks to scarification to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. This exhibition presents prints from Cole’s time working at Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis, Minnesota from 2011-2012.
50^th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition
February 27 - March 30, 2018
A highlight of each spring season, the Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is the longest-running exhibition tradition at Ģ������Ƶ. Dr. Beth Hinderliter, Associate Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Studies at James Madison University, serves as the juror for this display of creative expression in a variety of media by undergraduates at Ģ������Ƶ. All undergraduate students enrolled at Ģ������Ƶare eligible to apply.
Exhibiting artists include: Ali Qurayshah, Ali Kabrich, Annabela Cockrell, Brent McCoy, Christen Ray, Cristina Colom, Crystal Mitchell, Haylie Barber, Jesse Lloyd, Jessica Koett, Kaitlyn James, Katelyn Williamson, Katherine Coyne, Kristen Kiser, Laura Casas, Lindsey Turner, Madison Pressley, and Maya White.
Alumni Invitational Exhibition
February 13 - May 4, 2018
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the College of Fine & Performing Arts, the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum invites 12 accomplished alumni of the School of Art & Design back to campus for this exhibition.
Exhibiting artists include: Amy M. Anderson, Connie Bostic, Mary Charles Griffin, Luzene Hill, Sally Jacobs, Cole Johnson, Dakota Ling, Jeff Marley, Olivia Mears, Tom Pazderka, Byron Tenesaca, and Preston Tolbert.
Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibitions 2018
April 10 - May 4, 2018
The FAM is proud to partner with the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design in the presentation of new work by candidates in the Master of Fine Arts program. In this highly anticipated exhibition debut, master artists introduce their work to the campus, community, and the world.

Sustain + Ability
Fall 2017 - December 2018
SUSTAIN + ABILITY is an exhibition highlighting work at the intersection of art and social practice. This exhibition features artwork from the collections of the WCU Fine Art Museum and Asheville Art Museum, and prompts viewers to consider the implications of their castoffs. The artists represented in this exhibition transform everyday objects into playful, mysterious objects that challenge the viewer to consider the origins of each maker's materials.
Artworks included in this exhibition are on display throughout Bardo Arts Center and include: Cycle by Hoss Haley located near the box office, Spiral by George Peterson in the BAC Star Atrium, For Every Woman I Have Seen Parts of Africa's Dream in Her Honor by Lonnie Holley located on the BAC second floor by the performance hall balcony and Crows by Bryant Holsenbeck perched near the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2017: Studio Art & Graphic Design
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November 21 - December 8, 2017
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This exhibition features the studio art production from graduating seniors in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the School of Art and Design. Following a comprehensive course of research and studio production, students present a group portfolio exhibition as a debut to their careers as professional artists. Exhibiting artists include: Laura Casas, Sarah Cook, Tayler Coursen, Hannah Faub, Eric Garcia, Steven Handy, Garrett Hawkins, Erin Johnson, Skyler Kicinski, Derek Moose, Starkim Noble, Louis Panchy, Taran Swimmer, and Gabriella Thompson.

Return from Exile: Contemporary Southeastern Indian Art
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August 21 - December 8, 2017
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The exhibition features more than thirty contemporary Southeastern Native American artists working in a variety of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, basketry, sculpture, and pottery. The Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum will be hosting the national traveling exhibition Return from Exile: Contemporary Southeastern Indian Art, curated by Tony A. Tiger, Bobby C. Martin, and Jace Weaver. Return from Exile is one of the first major exhibitions to focus on contemporary artists from tribal nations with a historical connection to the Southeastern United States. These include the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (or Creek), and Seminole, all of whom were forcibly removed in the 1830s to present-day Oklahoma as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The title of the exhibition represents the return of these artists to their ancestral homelands.

Ancient Forms, Modern Minds: Contemporary Cherokee Ceramics
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May 29 - November 10, 2017 

The pottery of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians originated in Western North Carolina nearly 3,000 years ago. Pottery techniques have changed and altered over time, from initial constructions of large, thin-walled pots with stamped geometric designs, to blackware from the early 20th century. Using contemporary techniques, Cherokee potters often incorporate Cherokee syllabary and other popular Cherokee symbols and forms into their work. This exhibition features the work of 11 Cherokee artists, such as Joel Queen and Davey Arch, and brings together both historic and contemporary pottery techniques. Ancient Forms, Modern Minds was organized by the Asheville Art Museum and made possible through the generous support of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation.

Water Portraits: Barbara Tyroler
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May 29 - August 25, 2017
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Barbara Tyroler is an artist, photographer, educator, and community worker based in Chapel Hill, NC. This exhibition features select works from her water portrait photography. Her water portraits of individuals, groups, and couples are semi-abstractions produced from within or outside of various swimming pools. In some photos, her subjects’ bodies are recognizable, in others, only an impressionistic surface is visible. Tyroler’s portraits are lyrical studies of form and design as well as the story of people and places visually transformed by the reflective properties of water.

Print Plus One: Beyond the Glass Matrix
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May 29 - July 28, 2017 
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In the late 1970s, Harvey K. Littleton, founder of the Studio Glass Movement, relocated to Spruce Pine, NC. Here, Littleton continued his experiments in vitreography, a printmaking technique that eventually became the creative focus of his workshop, Littleton Studios. Print Plus One: Beyond the Glass Matrix, features the work of seventeen artists who produced vitreographs at Littleton Studios. Many of these artists did not typically work in the print medium but were painters, sculptors, ceramists, or glass artists. The exhibition pairs vitreographs with objects made in these artists’ primary medium from the collections of the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum and Asheville Art Museum.

Voice: The Charge of Art and Activism
May 29 - July 28, 2017
Every artist employs certain convictions in their work. For some, it is a commitment to the formal aesthetic and material possibilities of an image or piece. For others, the notion that art must be a thing of beauty is traded for the immediacy of the message and the desire to draw attention to social injustices and inequities, no matter how difficult the subject; beautiful or not. The four artists represented in this exhibition, chosen from the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum permanent collection, were selected for their humanist intervention as agents of change. Through vastly different images, each artist is fearlessly devoted to exposing and giving voice to the often-challenging issues facing the human condition. Guest-curated by Greg McPherson, artists featured in this exhibition include Drew Cameron, Erwin Eisch, William Kelly, and Corita Kent.

Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibitions 2017
The FAM is proud to partner with the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design in the presentation of new work by candidates in the Master of Fine Arts program. In this highly anticipated exhibition debut, master artists introduce their work to the campus, community, and the world.

• Sara V. Rincon: subLiminal
  April 5 - April 14, 2017
  The work explored in subLiminal deals heavily with color, emotion, amorphisms, and texture, which is meant to invoke discussions of tactility, functionality, and the place between personal and private sphere work, decorative and conceptual pieces, and ease versus disease. The room is filled with blobs and points of color, thought of as set design. The subLiminal room is in itself a suggestion, however, it is up to the audience what they wish to take away from it.
• Jordan Krutsch: Things happening
  March 22 - March 31, 2017
  While playing and investigating with an array of materials, objects, and processes in the studio, I try to make sense of how I experience the world around me. This experimentation and play, combined with an ever-present curiosity brings me to an underlying question in my present work –How does someone come to determine what is considered final when considering the ‘life’ of a piece? Is it a finished product? Is it constantly changing or developing? What, if any, is its final state? My research shows itself in kinetic installations, drawing machines, robots, and other various machines that I adapt to the locale. When making my work I choose to design hand-made components and source found and re-appropriated objects, further expanding communication through a visual vernacular. Much of the work, shown as installation, allows for travel to different environs sparking new questions, which in turn, lead to more avenues fueling my excitement and curiosity further. Arranging and displaying my artwork in each setting or context it encounters is an interesting challenge and critical to its operation. Finally the viewers’ reactions and engagement helps inform my practice.
• Donna Sepulveda: Shift
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  March 1 - 17, 2017
  Humans change with each second that passes. There is a haze of trying to save each moment. With my photographs, I am freezing a series of moments in time in order to preserve them. This work depicts fleeting of life- time change, or a shift. Shift represents many ideas: the physical movement of my subject matter and the camera, the movement captured in the photographs, and the changing of time. My vision is to create images with multiple portrays of a person or subject. I am engaged in the subject’s aura through their subtle movement by experimenting with techniques that spirit photographers use to capture “ghosts” in their images. As I leave the shutter open, the camera captures their emotions, expressions, and movements. The effect is a combination of aesthetic choices of my subject matter, composition, and superimposition. The final images save memories and expose that people change with the passing of time.

49th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition
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April 3 - 28, 2017
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Colorado-based artist Martha Russo serves as juror for this exhibition that features the best of new and innovative creative expression in a variety of media by undergraduates at Ģ������Ƶ.
Exhibiting artists include: Laura Casas, Lindsay Kappius, Madison Pressley, Megan Kaltenbach, Molly, Coccia, Navi Naisang, Robert Henderson, Tyler Martino, and Victoria Simmons.

Miwa Matreyek: Infinitely Yours
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February 7 - May 5, 2017
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Animator, director, designer and performance artist, Miwa Matreyek creates live, staged performances where she interacts with her animations as a shadow silhouette, at the cross-section of cinematic and theatrical, fantastical and tangible, illusionistic and physical.

Soft Diplomacy: Quilting Cultural Diplomacy in Liberia 
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January 17 - May 5, 2017
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Quilting is a responsive expression of Liberian women's identities and reactions on nationhood. Soft Diplomacy examines the ways that Liberian women participate in nation-building and facilitate cultural diplomacy across the Atlantic. The exhibition included a panel discussion on Thursday, February 9 discussing cultural exchange with Soft Diplomacy guest curator, Stephanie Beck Cohen and Ģ������Ƶprofessors, Saheed Aderinto and Jennifer Schiff.


Women Painters of the Southeast
January 17 - March 24, 2017
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Selected from the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition fills the museum walls in a celebration of the contributions of women painters from across the Southeastern U.S.
Exhibiting artists include: Margaret Curtis, Mary Charles Griffin, Janie McWhirter, Connie Bostic, Marie Hudson, and Anna Jensen.

MFA Thesis Exhibitions 2016
The FAM is proud to partner with the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design in the presentation of new work by candidates in the Master of Fine Arts program. In this highly anticipated exhibition debut, master artists introduce their work to the campus, community, and the world.

• Janet Richardson: Brutal world
  November 9 - 18, 2016
  History repeats itself. My large scale paintings and small ceramic sculptures embrace historical and fictional characters from past and present, powerful/powerless, good/evil, humorous and satiric. The paintings are executed with rough, quick strokes with large characters painted on wide scale canvas, up front in a dominate position to project power, triumph or tragedy. The dramatic, bold colors in which they are painted project the raw brutalism of the culture in which they are produced. Incorporated into my practice are social and cultural commentaries to show the over-arching theme of war, oppression, injustice and suffering on a massive and individual level.
• Jenna McDonald: It’s my party and I’ll cry
  October 26 - Nov 4, 2016
  It’s my party and I’ll cry is a party-like installation centered around ideas of celebration, home and feminine identity. The title, taken from the 1963 song ‘it’s my party’ is meant to be a play on words. The work of this thesis exhibition intends to highlight the feeling of simultaneous joy and sadness by exploring the idea of a self-aware party. A collection of 365 hand written and painted poems or 'drawings' is the centerpiece of the show. They account for the entirety of my 29th year ending on my 30th birthday. Ritual is presented as a meaningful example of self reflection and linked to the personal achievement of surviving another year which is often synonymous with a reason for celebration. All together the poems serve as a dairy of formal, conceptual, and banal patterns revealing biases, daily concerns, celebrations, and lamentations. These drawings are shown alongside paintings and sculptures referencing party decorations, crafts, and household decor, intentionally blurring the line between art and decor. The daily poems address ideas about how we present our lives to one another, what is important, what is personal, what is hidden, and what is available for viewing. The paintings and assorted assemblages also address ideas of pleasure, priority, and the passage of time. As one year comes to a close and another begins, the marker or climax (in this case an installation as party) is imbued with a sense of anticipation, fear of the unknown, and remembrance.
• Paul Farmer: Never fully right
  October 3 - 21, 2016
  In my sculptural paintings, which I refer to as Hybrids, the covering/uncovering relationship between the beautiful and the repulsive elements is a metaphor for art’s attempt to reveal Truth, which Heidegger describes in terms of the relationship between the “world” and “earth”. Referencing James Turrell’s work in regards to my volumetric light sculpture, I will demonstrate how it seeks to free the individual from the weight of maintaining a self-constructed reality, allowing one to experience temporary freedom from self and be open to the light of revelation. In further pursuit of this objective, my work enters the realm of time and sound based media. I will discuss three videos, one about the anxiety of maintaining a self-constructed reality, one about the search for truth of being, and one that aims specifically at experiencing what Heidegger calls Dasein, a primordial state of being in the world. For comparison I will examine Stan Brakhage’s experimentations with visual perception and the act of seeing.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2016
November 21 - December 9, 2016
This exhibition features the studio art production from graduating seniors in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the School of Art and Design. Following a comprehensive course of research and studio production, students present a group portfolio exhibition as a debut to their careers as professional artists.
Exhibiting artists include: Charlendez Brooks, Eric Dean, Caroline Drew, Storm Favara, Alyssa Jordan, Ross Byrd, Victoria Simmons, and TyAnn Stubbs.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Graphic Design Portfolio Exhibition
November 21 - December 9, 2016
Works presented in the BFA Graphic Design Portfolio Exhibition are the result of students’ semester-long studies in contemporary graphic design. Students will display works done in traditional print media, digital design, and motion graphics.
Exhibiting artists include: Lauren A. Medford, Byron Tenesaca, Ashley Zawila, Jazlyn Briggs, Kelley Wheeler, Logan Brashar, and Kimberly Fansler.

Contemporary Clay: A Survey of Contemporary American Ceramics
October 6 - December 16, 2016
Contemporary Clay, guest-curated by Heather Mae Erickson, is an exhibition that examines the evolving, expanded field of clay and ceramics that runs October 6 – December 16, 2016. There are exciting shifts throughout the field, pushing this limitless material through new processes and concepts. This exhibition aims to show the depth and breadth of this material and its user’s ideas, ranging from, but not limited to, traditional and non-traditional functional objects, rapid prototyping, use of mixed materials in objects and installations, and unfired clay as a final material. This exhibition encourages viewers to consider the concepts, processes, and contexts of clay in contemporary art. Each artist, from emerging to established, was selected due to his or her noteworthy contribution to the field of contemporary clay and ceramics.
Exhibiting artists include: Andy Brayman, A. Blair Clemo, Cristina Cordova, Paul Donnelly, Teri Frame, Amber Ginsburg and Aron Hughes, Del Harrow, Michael Helke, Beth Katleman, Paul Kotula, Roverto Lugo, Jeannine Marchand, Walter McConnell, Denise Pelletier, Jeanne Quinn, Anders Ruhwald, Thomas Schmidt, Kevin Snipes, Albion Stafford, and Colleen Toledano.

The Language of Weaving
September 12 - November 7, 2016
The Language of Weaving challenges what Western cultures traditionally consider literature. Through a lexicon of designs and patterns, Maya weavers provide rich narratives for the readers of their textiles. This exhibition examines the work of three distinct communities of Maya fiber artists in Mexico. Viewers will experience examples of the work of two female-led cooperatives of Maya fiber artists located in Chiapas state, Tsobol Anzetik in Chenalhó and Jalabil in Oxchuc, as well as the work of the Bonilla family in Santa Elena in Yucatan state. The Language of Weaving translates, for Spanish and English speaking audiences, the woven Maya tales of these communities.

Joel Morris: Artist and Friend
September 8 - September 16, 2016
A selection of work by the late Joel Morris, loaned from the collections of his devoted friends, who have endowed a scholarship in his honor for a student in the School of Art and Design.
Morris, a Ģ������Ƶalumnus, made an art career as a painter, producing both traditional canvases, as well as outdoor murals across the state of North Carolina. Here in Cullowhee, he immortalized the Townhouse restaurant, a legendary local hangout, with a drawing that he made into prints. The exhibition is a tribute to his memory and his unique creative spirit.

2016 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial Exhibition
August 22 - September 23, 2016
Outside of the classroom, faculty members in the School of Art & Design are active artists and scholars that make significant contributions to the arts. They regularly exhibit in venues across the globe, from New York to Los Angeles to Japan and speak at major conferences in their fields. Collectively, our faculty has received recognition and support from Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Endowment for the Arts. The School of Art & Design Faculty Biennial Exhibition provides students and the public an opportunity to view recent work created by theses distinguished faculty members whose primary research output is studio based.

Vision & Vistas: Great Smoky Mountains
April 18 - September 23, 2016
Great Smoky Mountains: Vision & Vistas is an exhibition of sixty original photographs and drawings made by photographers and artists, inspired by the grand vistas of the Great Smoky Mountains. Professional photographers include such notables as Jim Thompson, George Masa, and George Grant, as well as amateurs who hiked with the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club.
Herbert Pelton and Nace Brock created images used by Asheville promoters to advocate for a national park in the Appalachians. Working for the National Park Service, Hiram Wilburn and Charles Grossman documented mountain culture within park boundaries and the road construction projects that forever altered it. Irving Fromer, J.D. Chaffin, and Alan Youngblood, men enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, made pencil sketches of a wilderness previously unknown to them. Together, these artists focused on the grandeur of the landscape to lobby for a national park and promote conservation in the southern U.S. Without their vision, perhaps the Great Smoky Mountains National Park would not have come into being. Since its inception, the park has been a popular destination, setting visitation records topping 10 million annually.

Elemental: Conversations in Art and Poetry
June 13 - August 5, 2016
Elemental: Conversations in Art and Poetry is an exhibition exploring the relationship between the written word and visual art with a focus on the four classical earthly elements. This exhibition features objects from the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s collection that express the classical elements of earth, air, fire and water such as Robert Godfrey’s Rekindling Fire, Don Reitz’s Geode Form, and Shan Goshorn’s Pawnee Woman in a Field from the Earth Renewal Series. In an ekphrastic response to these objects, creative writers in residence for the Cullowhee Mountain Arts 2016 Summer Arts Series have created a rich literary experience for visitors to the exhibition. Their poems and short stories will be exhibited alongside the artwork that inspired them.

Color + Theory: Past + Present
February 18 - May 6, 2016
Although color theory principles first appeared in the early 15th century, major advances were made by the German Bauhaus by artists like Josef Albers. Visitors to the exhibition will see an original 1963 edition of Albers’ Interaction of Color, considered a masterwork of art education, along with its 150 silkscreen color plates. Exhibition goers will have the opportunity to interact with the 150 color plates digitally in the 50th anniversary digital edition of Interaction of Color.
Color + Theory: Past + Present celebrates modern and contemporary artist who explore meaning and the use of color in art. This exhibition includes prints by Josef Albers, major works by renown color field painter and Asheville native Kenneth Noland, and new work by Odili Donald Odita, an abstract painter whose work explores color both in the figurative art historical context and in the sociopolitical sense. The exhibition and public programming are sponsored in part by the Ascent Partnership between WCU and Harris Regional and Swain Community hospitals.

Next Wave: MFA Candidacy Exhibition
April 18 - April 29, 2016
Exhibiting artists include: Brendan Best, Ali Burnette, Javier Fox, G. Vincent Gaulin, Martha Neaves, Zach Rogers, Don Sawyer, Charlotte White

48th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition
April 4 - April 29, 2016
This exhibition features new works by Ģ������Ƶundergraduate students and includes ceramics, drawing, graphic design, new media, painting, printmaking, photography, and sculpture. This year’s juror is J. Richard Gruber, PhD, former director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, LA.
Exhibiting artists include: William McCoy, Ashley Zawila, David Johnson, Katana Lemelin, Tyann Stubbs, Lauren Larue Joyner, Sarah Cook, Trevor Rusher, Courtney Rittle, Eddie Maiale, Emily Ashton, Sarah Carpenter, Haylie Boone, Caroline Drew, Denise Calhoun, Margaret Elliot, Mollee McKinney, Jazlyn Briggs, Justin Warren, Kelly Wheeler, Lauren A. Medford, Kimberly Fansler, Victoria Simmons, and Hannah Sidner.

MFA Thesis Exhibition 2016: Tonya Anderson
March 31 - April 8, 2016
The Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum is proud to partner with the Ģ������ƵSchool of Arts & Design in the presentation of new work by Tonya Dee Anderson, candidate in the Master of Fine Arts program. In this highly anticipated exhibition titled ' - - - - - - ', the work challenges material, form, and space, exemplifying the power of metaphor and semiotics in art.
“Exemplifying the symbolic relationship of materials, form, and space, the works of the exhibition reveal metaphorical signifiers of racial and gender focused binaries while utilizing combinations of traditional and contemporary practice. Understanding the connection between the psychological aspect of making and the object reflects extensive research into the history of origins of semiotics. This practice challenges the physical and poetic boundaries of medium, technique, and material by investigating the relationship of head to hand processes and how this is displayed through the objects. Combining a mixture of printmaking processes and sculptural objects, the work in the exhibition juxtaposes traditional making and contemporary thinking.”

Solitude and Mystery: John Julius Wilnoty
January 25 - March 25, 2016
John Julius Wilnoty has been described as a “legendary” figure. A member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, as an artist, he was driven to produce. A self-taught sculptor, he created hundreds of stone pieces, each with its own mysterious iconography. Wilnoty’s carvings are often complex, with multiple figures entwined together. As early as 1970, Rodney L. Leftwich, author of Arts and Crafts of the Cherokee, noted that Wilnoty derived “great pleasure in ‘hiding’ smaller designs of birds and other animals within the figures of larger ones.” Wilnoty had not been carving very long when he gained the attention of the public. He quickly and quietly became famous with his work in high demand. Writer John Parris labeled him the Cherokee’s “Michelangelo”.

Architecture of Survival: Pedro Lobo & Jarod Charzewski
January 25 - March 18, 2016
Jarod Charzewski’s site-specific installation uses the idea of land as a capsule for history. A section of exposed earth, also known as an escarpment, reveals sedimentary layers of rock and earth containing natural geological artifacts. These layers, are in essence, the history of our planet. This project is about fabricating history with our own synthetic and fleeting artifacts as the medium. In his series of photographs, Brazillian-born photographer Pedro Lobo, documents the favelas or shantytowns in Rio de Janeiro. The favelas in Rio are the longest-lived squatter settlements in the world. There are about one billion squatters worldwide, one million of which are in Rio de Janeiro. Lobo’s photographic landscapes hint at the organized chaos as homes scale the hills. The photographs capture the hardening of these urban spaces as people put down roots and community develops. These beautifully composed images do not shy away from the sprawl, or the hardships of the favelas, yet they are filled with optimism necessary for life in these marginalized urban neighborhoods. These images attempt to show the human dignity of the “favela” dwellers, in spite of all the difficulties faced by those who have no other choice but to live in these excluded communities.

Jonathan “Pogu” Ogburn: Dreams Of Home, Northeastern Nigeria Through the Memories of a Missionary Kid
January 25 - February 29, 2016
“Nigeria and I grew up together. I went at three months of age to a country -independent for only 6 years. I was present for the growing pains of a young restless nation, the coups d’etats, the Biafran war and the postwar oil boom. My parents worked for EYN or Ekklesiya Yan’uwa Nijeriyya ( Church of the Brethren in Nigeria) where we were posted in a number of small villages and towns in northeastern Nigeria. Over the next 18 years I learned to love Nigeria through bike rides in the savannah/sahel, swimming in the Yedzeram and Hawal rivers, hiking in the Mandara Mountains and playing with village friends. I was also witness to the great partnership between EYN and local people to further education, healthcare and water access.
Most Americans know of Africa for 2 reasons: the incredible wildlife, and for bad news. The news from northeastern Nigeria has been bad due to the savage attacks of Boko Haram terrorists. Whole villages and towns are burned, the occupants fled, dead or kidnapped by the terrorists. Hundreds of schools have been destroyed, the teachers and kids kidnapped or in hiding. Almost all of the Boko Haram attacks have occurred within a hundred mile radius of our old home and every village and town we lived in has been attacked several times. I seek to show the Nigeria I knew and loved, its beautiful people. The medium is ink pen and Prismacolor markers on paper.”

Connections: Diane Fox & Beauvais Lyons
October 12, 2015 - January 15, 2016
Photography by Diane Fox, Hokes Archive by Beauvais Lyons.
Lyon's mock-documentary project, The Association for Creative Zoology, presents a tongue-in- cheek response to the ongoing controversy of Darwin's theory of evolution. Through prints, photographs, video, models, and other support materials, the installation posits how new animal species collaged together by the hand of God. In confusing the imaginary and real, Lyons challenges the ways that our beliefs about the world are formed.

MFA Thesis Exhibitions 2015:
The Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum is proud to partner with the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design in the presentation of new work by candidates in the Master of Fine Arts program. In this highly anticipated exhibition debut, four master artists introduce their work to the campus, community, and the world.

• Mary Cozens: \ˈgär-dən\  Playful Re-imaginings of the Natural Environment Cultivated Through Exploratory Mark Making
  November 30 - December 14, 2015
  Through a series of exploratory and layered mark-making, I create abstract images depicting a “re-imagining” of new spaces which relate to the natural environment and man-made boundaries, such as gardens.  This imagining includes both my physical and psychological reactions to place as well as the matrixes and designs humans impose upon nature. In these bodies of works, I play with several opposing elements simultaneously. These dualities manifest themselves through my process, subject matter, use of color and presentation (automatic, expressive drawing vs. structured grids, neon synthetics vs. natural dyes, and microcosmic vs macrocosmic components). The images that result are visual documentations or “blueprints” of my personal journey in the attempt to balance and fuse these contrasting components into a unified whole.
• Leigh Ann Parrish: It’s teatime
  November 5 – November 25, 2015
  My thesis show is an interactive art installation that explores collective memory inactive engagement versus virtual connectedness during tea parties, and the impermanence of memories through the deterioration of tea bags. I am creating two contrasting cycles of remembrance—one where people participate in a tea party then metaphorically leave their mark by staining the walls with teabags after the tea party in the museum; the other where people watching the tea party live on the Internet can leave comments on a live web feed as their way of marking our time together. 
• Hannah Rebecca McBride: Artforher
  October 26 - November 13, 2015
  The work addresses the complexities of being a female artist in a gendered world and comments on the structures of power outside and within the male-dominated canon of art. Fueled by statistics and studies on the inequalities within the press, galleries, art markets, and educational institutions, appropriated imagery from major newspapers, mass publications and more specifically Artforum magazine inspires soft-sculpture and intricate machine-embroidered thread drawings. The tangled, messy webs of thread that hang from these works reflect lamentations on vulnerability and strength - an idea further visited through the inclusion of the medium’s handicraft past and its connection to women’s work. Like feminist artists since the late 1960’s, my embroidery work is meant to challenge the boundaries that divide art from craft, public from domestic, and masculine from feminine (Auricchio 27). A feminist agenda is continued in order to subvert male authority and reveal inequalities, hypocrisies and avenues traditionally restricted from women. Through the conventionally feminine practice of sewing, the work consumes and replaces the more masculine imagery, devouring it for power.
• Renee M. Roberson: Transpose
  October 26 - November 13, 2015
  My thesis study explores a variety of themes voicing several binary oppositions, creating abstract forms transposed from industrial or craft-based materials. These themes include relationships between conventionally “masculine” and “feminine” roles; work versus home; dependence versus independence; and freedom and constraint. These themes are investigated through an exploration of materiality (metal, glass and fibers) process (welding, weaving, embroidery, glassblowing) and arrangement.
• Kimberly Gattozzi | October 19 – November 2, 2015
• Brendan Best | October 19 – November 2, 2015
• Laura Sellers: The projected landscape
  October 5 – October 16, 2015
  Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, representations of the landscape have adapted to reflect changing western ideas of the separation between human culture and the natural world. The photographs, projection and paintings in the Projected Landscape exhibition continue to reflect this change in the present through a focus on the new technologies of image making as they relate to representations of place. The work uses traditional studio methods as well as newly emerged technologies. The results are composite forms of painting, photo and video which utilize optical illusions, fractured compositions and reframed locations to continue the trajectory of landscape painting into the digital era, as well as create a space for personal contemplation.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2015
November 23 - December 4, 2015

This exhibition features the studio art production from graduating seniors in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the School of Art and Design. Following a comprehensive course of research and studio production, students present a group portfolio exhibition as a debut to their careers as professional artists. Exhibiting artists include: Logan Brashar, Jazlyn Briggs, Kimberly Fansler, Lauren A. Medford, Byron Tenesaca, Kelley Wheeler, Ashley Zawila

Artwork by David Holt
November 2 - November 24, 2015
“These paintings are made by creating a series of layers. Photo transfers, paint and limestone clay are added multiple times, sanding and scraping and coloring between each layer. I am after a rich, deep, funky feeling that has the character of an old wall in a lost city.   Every painting reveals itself as I work on it. The technique has a life of its own. It is impossible for me to duplicate a piece.”  - David Holt

Tomb to Taller: Contemporary Maya Artist Books
September 17 - November 1, 2015

Inspired by the pre-hispanic tradition of painted codices, contemporary Mayan book artists produce extraordinary works significant to the field of book arts. This exhibition features artist books from a community of Maya printmakers, papermaker, and book artists, Taller Leñateros, the Woodlanders Workshop in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
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Somewhere Between Here and There: Cathryn Griffin
August 3 - September 25, 2015
This visual anthology brings to light the liminal moments in time, the regular stuff of life that one neglects to remember. Griffins captures these moments in photographs that command us to stop and consider the power of these quiet moments.

YeeHaw Press 
July 1 - September 4, 2015 
This exhibition features works printed at Yee-Haw Industries by founders Julie Belcher and Kevin Bradley. Yee-Haw’s acclaimed rough-cut, honky-tonk style caught the eye of cultural icons like Lucinda Williams, Cormac McCarthy and Ralph Lauren, who commissioned work from Belcher and Bradley. During its time as a working press studio, Yee-Haw held the largest collection of letterpress type east of the Mississippi. 

Cullowhee Mountain Arts: Source Material 
June 15 - July 24, 2015 
Cullowhee Mountain Arts: Source Material features the work of 21 contemporary artists working throughout the United States, bringing a broad range of contemporary expressions to the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum.
Exhibiting artists include: Alice Austin, Alice Ballard, Hayne Bayless, Charles Basham, Rebecca Crowell, Julie Friedman, Debra Fritts, Lorraine Glessner, Jeff Hirst, Catherine Kehoe, Ken Kewley, Susan Lichtman, Dean Nimmer, Jane Allen Nodine, Randi Parkhurst, Lisa Pressman, Kate Rivers, Stuart Shils, Janice Mason Steeves, Sue Tirrell, and Laura Wait 

2015 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial 
April 9 - May 29, 2015 
Outside of the classroom, faculty members in the School of Art & Design are active artists and scholars that make significant contributions to the arts. They regularly exhibition in venues across the globe, from New York to Los Angeles to Japan and speak at major conferences in their fields. Collectively, our faculty have received recognition and support from Fulbright National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Endowment for the Arts. The School of Art & Design Faculty Biennial Exhibition provides students and the public an opportunity to view recent work created by these distinguished faculty members whose primary research output is studio-based. 

47th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
April 23 - May 8, 2015 
The Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition is an independently juried exhibition featuring the best of new and innovative creative expression in a variety of media by undergraduate students at Ģ������Ƶ. 
Exhibiting artists include: Emily Ashton, Katana Lemelin, Jazlyn Briggs, David Johnson, Sydney Stines, Leslie Barnes, Erin Hubbard, Gabrielle Moody, Madion Pressley, Justin Warren, Michael Laney, Emilio Jeffries, Cali Hitt, Kaitlyn Stafford, Cole Johnson, Meredith Sweitzer, Sharon Ogle Pace, Trevor Rusher, Suzanne Rose, Jonathan Byrd, Ashley Zawila, Tiffany Thai, Amana Janes, Olivia Collina, Logan Brashar, Rose Gard, Jake Orr, and Ann Suggs. 

MFA Thesis Exhibitions 
March 23 - April 10, 2015 
The Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum is proud to partner with the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art & Design in the presentation of new work by candidates in the Master of Fine Arts program. In this highly anticipated exhibition debut, four master artists introduce their work to the campus, community, and the world. 

• Amy M. Anderson: My titles are always in pencil: projects in the absurd 
  The Absurd, in terms of existentialist philosophy, is born out of the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the inability to find any (Absurdism). Through my work, I examine the conflict of the individual’s role and search for the state of freedom in which Absurdism leaves us. This is not to question the necessity or aim of society for the common good but examines the social roles that are imposed on individuals within a given society. Absurdism describes how we, as humans, desire order, purpose and meaning in life. As a result, we are left unsatisfied by what Camus calls the “silence of the world (Camus 20),” and its unwillingness to unquestionably provide us with such answers. With no meaning to our lives, there seems no point in living. Yet, suicide is also meaningless. This brings us to a position of existence where we are left living our lives with no meaning. An acceptance of this meaningless state of being alive is supposed to leave us living in total freedom. (Camus 20) In our social positions, the stage is set for us to play a perceived intended role. In the universal pursuit of meaning and happiness, we find ourselves together on this stage in which we must ask ourselves if we can find truth in the role we are playing. According to Jacque Rancière in The Emancipated Spectator, the stage desires to be a “magnifying mirror where spectators see the virtues and vices of their fellow human beings in fictional form” and its purpose is “to prompt specific changes in their minds” by producing “the dual effect of intellectual recognition and appropriate emotion.” The critique of this goal manifesting through the stage lies within the passivity of spectators versus the role of actors who are knowingly performing. Rancière poses the alternative and better solution is a pensive (“full of thoughts”) image. An image exists as such when it refuses to give a finite answer because it never ceases to pose relevant questions thus always inhabiting a contemporary conversation. (Rancière 62 – 132) By observing and investigating common social scenarios, my work induces conversations about social conditions and promotes change within the individual. By shedding light on the absurdity of social roles, viewers are prompted to ask themselves whether the role they play in life is merely an act or if there is some truth in who they are and the potential of whom they can become. 
• Kevin McNiff: Perpetual deliberation 
  Perpetual Deliberation consists of three resonating chambers aligned along a linear axis. Two of the three forms (the clay bell and the sui kin kutsu) are ceramic, while the second bell is metal. The idea for the work began around giving form to the push and pull between the traditional modes of making that have influenced me, and modern methods of fabrication that blur the boundaries between authorship and collective production. The installation’s linear design emphasizes the polarity between these modes and the need to find balance between these extremes. Its axial orientation draws the participant from the impersonality of the steel bell’s industrial fabrication, to the continuous sounds of the water harp, to the warmth of the ceramic bell with its wooden support (Figure 1). The continuous sound from the water harp always centers the viewer, even with the perpetual ringing of the bells at the extremities of the work. The work places the participant in an environment that promotes reflection on finding and holding onto a sense of balance within everyday life. 

Tracking Time: Anna Jensen and Karen Ann Myers 
January 22 - March 27, 2015 
Anna Jensen plays an intended, focused game of hide and seek, pushing and pulling, teasing us, and pointing fingers while, at the same time, asking for forgiveness. Her paintings are self-possessed confessions full of emotional underpinnings, littered with pop and art historical references that tend to ground her efforts, keeping them in this world. She refers to her work as 'psychological landscapes' that are more intimately revelatory than therapeutic or settled. Stylistically adventurous, she mixes the beautiful with the grotesque, the personal with the arcane, throwing her world out for us to decipher, forcing us to deal with them. Provocative, un-nerving, calculated, and fragile. 
Karen Ann Myers creates naturalistic, intimate portraits of women that she knows or who act as stand-ins for the artist herself. From a view peering in from above, she places each person in an imagined bedroom setting, ripe with patterning fabrics, sparse modern furniture and accessories, an almost fashion layout but much more unsettling, almost dream-like. "I think of all of my paintings as psychological self-portraits, whether I am painting myself or someone else", says the artist. "These portraits are my version of a written diary. Each painting marks a specific time in my life and documents the objects of importance at that time. They are short-stories, mini-narratives, influenced by my intimate experiences with friends, family, and lovers." 

Vadim Bora: Portraits 
January 29 - March 6, 2015 
This exhibition offers a selected group of portraits from the late Vadim Bora, who immigrated from Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia in Russia to Ashville, where he kept an active studio and gallery for over ten years. Besides being a painter, he was a sculptor, philosopher, teacher, and an active creator of satirical political cartoons. Classically trained, his drawings and paintings tend to shift stylistically as he worked more from the subconscious than from the use if models or any kinds of technology. He said of his work, “I consciously fight being a slave to a particular style, always leaving room to play an unrecognizable role.” He trained at the Vladikavkaz College of Art and the noted St. Petersburg Academy of Art. In addition to the Bora works will be Portraits: from the FAM Collection, a selection of works by distinguished international artists in the collection.  

David Raymond & Eric Oglander 
October 30, 2014 - January 9, 2015 
An internationally renowned artist, filmmaker, art collector and arts supporter, David Raymond presents a select sampling of his re-contextualized (and now) artful 'found' photographs that he has been carefully collecting in the US, South America and Europe for the past ten years. 

Visiting flea markets, thrift stores and searching on the Net, Raymond has amassed a growing collection of several thousand images. When viewed singularly or in 'curated' groupings, these seemingly cast-away and forlorn pictures take on new meaning and in a sense, are brought back to life. Eric Orlander has been collecting images of mirrors for sale on Craigslist for several years and more than 500 lo-res images will be featured that shed light on many aspects of this American life. Opening portals to other worlds, together these two shows merge the everyday and the overlooked with the highest aspirations of what 'art', found or intended, can offer. 

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2014 
November 17 - December 5, 2014 
The best of our senior's semester work, in all kinds of media, finds its way into the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. Exhibiting artists include: William Buddenberg, Alexander Brown, Leslie Barnes, Andrew Hagler, Emily Ashton, Kristen Mears, Allan Griffiths, Sydney Stines, Amanda Janes, Jacqueline Phillips, Cole Johnson, Jarrett Leone, Jesse Allard, Dennis Calloway, Tiffany Thai, Gina Ricciardelli, David Krenek, Jazlyn Briggs, Michael Laney, Sharon Ogle Pace, Margaret Gordon, Ashley Zawila, Lauren Birchfield, Melena Reid, and Scott Sokley. 

Rebecca Ringquist 
August 21 - November 7, 2014 
Switching between the slow, gentle rhythm of hand embroidery to the more aggressive speed of the machine stitching, Ringquist creates unique personal and universal narratives informed by modern life and infected by a Feminist sensibility. Snippets of text in varying styles, riots of textured color, almost stream of consciousness image-making and laying, crowd these misshapen and upstretched fabrics. According to the artist, "I tell love stories and create veiled fractured narratives full of double entendre. My work has been inspired of late by the fictional relocation story of the Swiss Family Robinson and my own cross-country move to Brooklyn. My work is at times careful, contrasted with moments of fast machine-stitched frenzy, expressing implicit and explicit intensities, and alternating between innocence and recklessness." 

Teetering on the Edge of the Uncanny 
September 5 - November 7, 2014
It’s virtually impossible to visit any urban area anywhere in the world without finding examples of street art, both sanctioned and 'illegal'. Websites such as the long-standing Wooster Collective and the recent Google Street Art Project serve as roadmaps for accessing some of the more noted examples. For Teetering on the Edge of the Uncanny, we invited four regionally-based artists to descend on the Ģ������Ƶcampus for several days to create live action paintings on four of FAM's huge four-sided walls, using spray paint and brushes, mixing working plans with improvisation. Exhibiting artists include: Gus Cutty, Hannah Dansie, Ian Wilkinson, and Alli Good. 

Gary Kachadourian: Forest/City 
August 21 - October 17, 2014 
Gary Kachadourian's home-brewed batch of 'absurd realism' takes a new route in this full room-size installation titled Forest/City that engulfs the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s entire main gallery and a portion of the museum lobby. The artist is creating a processed version of the great outdoors that started with a series of pain-staking, detail-oriented, scaled-down pencil drawings and a gallery mock-up that is then scaled-up, re-produced, and mechanically printed to a huge, life-size proportion and installed on the gallery's walls and floor, engulfing the visitor and exaggerating marks, line-work, and distortions caused by the printing process. 

FLORA 
May 19 - August 1, 2014 
Vitreography is a printmaking technique that uses glass matrix instead of the traditional metal, wood or stone. The artists who pioneered this method, alongside the internationally-renown artist Harvey K. Littleton, experimented with a variety of printmaking methods using the glass plate. Tucked away in the mountains of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, Littleton Studios has inspired many artists-in-residence to explore the concepts and aesthetics of the natural world that surrounded them. This exhibition explores a variety of these styles and was selected from the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum’s collection. 

North Carolina Art Educators Exhibition 
May 29 - July 18, 2014 
This biennial juried exhibition features the work of art educators throughout North Carolina and is hosted every two years by different visual art organizations across the state. On exhibition at the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum at Ģ������Ƶ this year, the exhibition celebrates the artwork of those artists who ultimately link children with the wonderful and engaging world of art making. Exhibiting artists include: Jenny Schultz, Vijay Govender, Kathleen Bennett, Megan Bostic, Madison Crawley, and others. 

Cullowhee Mountain Arts Summer Faculty Exhibition 
June 19 - July 25, 2014 
The 2014 Cullowhee Mountain Arts faculty invitational features the work of 23 contemporary artists working throughout the United States, bringing a broad range of contemporary expressions to the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum. Expect an invigorating compilation of art in the following disciplines: book arts, ceramics, mixed media, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. 
Exhibiting artists include: Alice Austin, Jeff Oestreich, Pat Burns, Rebecca Crowell, Jan Mason Steeves, and others. 

Remote Sites of War 
April 10 - May 30, 2014 
Ongoing armed conflicts involving the United States in some place in the world seem to have little effect on us- unless, of course, we either have participated in them or know friends and family-members who have. Generally speaking, the embodiment of war, what really happens on the battlegrounds or the behind-the-scenes activities, are generally hidden from view. Artists Todd Drake, Skip Rohde, and Christopher Sims, all veterans in their own right, present a worldview of war that is quietly revealing and poses as many questions for us to consider as it does answers. The artists don't take sides. Instead, they share their forthright observations from what they have experienced, were privy to, or have aimed to interject, each in different ways. 

Joan Byrd & George Rector: Ceramics from the Collection of  
February 17 - May 9, 2014 
The WCU Fine Art Museum is proud to present a special exhibition featuring a selection of works from the ceramic collection of Joan Byrd and George Rector. The much celebrated WCU professor and influential educator Joan Byrd has taught and inspired many students for the past forty-three years, and is set to retire at end of this school year. Some of the artists whose works will be on view (besides pieces by Joan and George) include Lanier Meaders, Burlon Craig, Tatsuzo Shimaoka, and Sandy Simon. 

46th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
April 10 - May 9, 2014 
An independently juried exhibition featuring the best of new and innovative creative expression in a variety of media by undergraduates of the School of Art and Design. 
Exhibiting artists include: Jesse Allard, Emily Ashton, Leslie Barnes, Lauren Birchfield, Jazlyn Briggs, Alexander Brown, William Buddenberg, Dennis Calloway, Margaret Gordon, Allan Griffiths, Andrew Hagler, Amanda Janes, Emilio Jeffries, Cole Johnson, David Johnson, David Krenek, Michael Laney, Jarrett Leone, Kristin Mears, Sharon Ogle Pace, Jacqueline Phillips, Melena Reid, Gina Ricciardelli, Suzanne Rose, Sydney Stines, Tiffany Thai, Ashley Zawila 

Touch in Real Time: Holly Hanessian 
January 27 - April 4, 2014 
Hanessian collects handshakes from across the country. Each handshake contains a wet piece of clay, imprinting each participant's hand with the artist's. They hold each other for 15-20 seconds, the time it takes for the bonding hormone, oxytocin, to be released into our bodies. Hanessian studied the effect of the handshake alongside Dr. Greg Siegle at the University of Pittsburgh TREND (The Transdisciplinary Research in Emotion, Neuroscience, and Development). The results of Hanessian's ongoing exploration into the intersection of art, emotion, and neuroscience culminate in a series of exhibitions that serve as much of a sensory experience as the handshake itself. Her installation, Touch in Real Time, incorporates dozens of handshakes from across the country, artifacts of the moment that leave the viewer in a constellation of shared experience. 

Edward J Bisese: Good Thoughts Better 
January 16th - March 31, 2014 
Celebrating beauty, the grotesque, altered realities, and real events, Ed Bisese visits us with his oddly vibrant paintings, drawings, and assorted objects. Here you'll find Hawaiian Kings and Hula Dancers, Bunnymen, three-armed migrant workers, dream sequences, and acutely-observed portraiture. Bisese paints and draws on unstrectched canvas, wood panels of various shapes, paper, vinyl records, and postcards. On occasion, these images will assume a three-dimensional form, full of exaggerated scale, dream-like expression, and unique sensibilities. 

MFA Thesis Exhibition 2014 
February 10 - March 14, 2014 
Featuring creative research by MFA degree candidates at WCU, the solo exhibitions in a variety of media reveal advanced critical analysis of each artist's creative process and personal passion as emerging art studio professionals. Exhibiting artists include: Carrie Croom and Amanda Gaebel. 

Profile: Edith Neff 
September 30, 2013 - January 31, 2014 
Edith Neff's figurative paintings successfully capture moments from mythological stories that are repurposed with contemporary settings and attire. By modernizing mythological tales, the audience is able to relate to these more readily as an ordinary occurrence, rather than as fiction. This exhibition features a selection of Neff's works from the Permanent Collections of the Asheville Art Museum and WCU Fine Art Museum. 

Ellen Lupton: Design Your Life 
September 24 - November 29, 2013 
Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, and designer. Her exhibition presents a selection of books, paintings, and prints that comment on the evolution of the design profession and the role of design in everyday life. Artifacts on view include paintings of imaginary books, prints from Lupton's book Design Your Life, illustrations of ordinary things gone awry, and a makeshift work table constructed from a library of Lupton's collected publications. 

Iron Maidens: Women of Contemporary Cast Iron 
August 19 - November 22, 2013 
Iron Maidens: Women of Contemporary Cast Iron celebrates the contributions women have made in the field of cast iron in an exhibition of sculpture and drawings by British and American female sculptors. This exhibition features 14 women artists from the United State and the United Kingdom including Simone Bizzell-Browning, Sarah Clover, Felicia Glidden, Cynthia Handel, Kate Hobby, Dilys Jackson, Justine Johnson, Deborah LaGrasse, Coral Lambert, Alison Lochhead, Carrie Phoenix, Tamsie Ringler, Theresa Smith and Julie Ward. This exhibition and supporting programs are funded in part by a generous grant from the North Carolina Arts Council. 

Credo: Documentary Photographs of Signs Following Believers 
May 28 - September 6, 2013 
Photographer Rick Cary practices what he terms “photo-ethnography". Cary’s work as a documentary photographer is rooted in his academic training in both photography and in the psychology of art. His primary interest is in making images that convey the lived experiences of real people, in real time, in a real place, doing real things that are meaningful to them. Rick Cary presents the exhibition Credo after twelve years of research with the Reverend Jimmy Morrow at the Church of God in Jesus’ Name Only in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Dr. Rick Cary is a Professor of Art, Chair of the Division of Professional Programs at Mars Hill College. 

Concepts of the Book 
May 28 - September 13, 2013 
This exhibition presents a variety of conceptual artists' books from the permanent collection of the WCU Fine Art Museum. These books were selected in collaboration with Professor Seth McCormick and his Fall 2012 Contemporary Art class and includes books from artists John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Barbara Kruger, Sol Lewitt, George F. Maciunas, N. E. Thing Co. (Iain and Ingrid Baxter), Dieter Roth, Ed Ruscha, Michael Snow, and Lawrence Weiner. 
Cullowhee Mountain Arts Faculty Invitational 
May 28 - July 26, 2013 
This exhibition features nineteen contemporary artists from across the United States and Canada representing a broad range of contemporary expression in painting, photography, mixed media, printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture. Throughout the summer of 2013 these artists will visit the campus of Ģ������Ƶ to lead artist workshops for Cullowhee Mountain Arts, an intensive summer studio workshop series at WCU. 
Exhibiting artists include: Hayne Bayless, Charles Basham, Rebecca Crowell, Julie Friedman, Catherine Kehoe, Kenn Kotara, Martha Madigan, Greg Newington, Jeff Oestreich, Lisa Pressman, Judy Richardson, Stuart Shils, Gertrude Graham Smith, Linda Soberman, Janice Mason Steeves, Randall Stoltsfus, Kerry Vander Meer 

45th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
April 8 - May 3, 2013 
An independently juried exhibition featuring the best of new and innovative creative expression in a variety of media by undergraduates of the School of Art and Design.
Exhibiting artists include: Mason Adams, Stuart Black, Daniel Brooks, William Buddenberg, Sarah Byerly, Javier Camacho, Carla Carballo, Gabriela Evans, Jacob Evers, Kimberly Fansler, John Finnerty, Rogen Gardner, Kimberly Gasaway, Allan Griffiths, Andrew Hagler, Meghan Hall, Amelia Holmes, Jason Inman, Amanda Janes, Emilio Jeffries, Jessica Kovacs, Devin Lancaster, Dakota Ling, Sarah Lowder, Lisa Maddox, Evan McCurry, Kristin Mears, Elizabeth Mosher, Annaliese Pane, Kirby Phillips, Jimmy Raines, Melena Reid, Gina Ricciardelli, Ashley Robichaux, Meredith Rorer, Nicole Salzmann, Kirsten Simkiss, Meighan Smith, Ann Suggs, Danielle Verela, Evan Voss, Celeste Wourms-Williams, and Courtney Wyatt. 

Testify: Beyond Place  
March 21 - May 10, 2013 
Featuring an installation by Marie Cochran, former faculty member of the Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design and founding curator of the Affrilachian Artist Project, "Testify" celebrates the presence of the African American community in Western North Carolina, dating from the 18th century. The installation pays homage to the 120th anniversary of the Mt. Zion AME Zion Church in Cullowhee, NC, which once stood on the grounds of what was to become Ģ������Ƶ. Public Reception to be held on Thursday, April 25, 2013. 

Critology: Considering the Art of the Critic/Curator 
February 21 - May 10, 2013 
“Critology: Considering the Art of the Critic/Curator” will run through May 10 and features the work of nine artists who also work as art writers, critics and curators. 

By analyzing their own creative fields, the artists featured in “Critology” elevate “their personal vision and the creative potential within their own work”, said Ron Laboray, the exhibition’s curator and Ģ������Ƶassistant professor of painting and drawing. In addition to Pomonis and Presneill, the exhibition comprises painting, drawing, collage and photography by Buzz Spector, Eve Wood, Annie Buckley, Dawson Weber, Mel Watkins, Michelle Grabner and Hamlett Dobbins. 

MFA Thesis Exhibition 2013 

February 7 - April 19, 2013 

• Amanda E. Stephens 
  February 7 - February 15, 2013 
  Amanda E. Stephens' MFA exhibition Faux/Real opens to faculty, students, and the general public at the WCU Fine Art Museum on February 7 and runs until February 15, 2013. This interactive installation invites the viewer into this sensory experience that resonates with the wonder of investigation. Stephens states : “Consciousness begins when an experience with the physical world initiates a perception and response feedback cycle as one acts, absorbs, reacts, processes and rationalizes information”.  
• Brad Wines: Slack and tension: a journey of the spirit 
  The work for this exhibit is focused on the physical and psychological concepts of slack and tension. When there is tension, in body or mind, there follows a time of slack or rest. This exhibit includes the following sculptural materials: wood, cotton thread, copper rods, and my own blood, suspended in acrylic medium. The exhibition comprises four works, three of which include drawings executed directly on the wall in blood. Each wall piece will use both copper rods and strips of charred wood bound together with cotton thread, creating linear constructions, parallel to the wall surface, that function as graphic overlays of the wall drawings. Each of these three pieces measures about 7 feet by 7 feet. The fourth work features a 2 foot wide by 8 foot long track of imprinted footprints in charcoal, executed on the floor. The exhibition is meant to offer a personal reflection on spirituality, human experience and the resolution of physical and psychological tension. Artists of reference include Robert Irwin, Richard Long and Eva Hesse. 
• John Seefeldt: Primary objects 
  We construct our environments and experiences through a continuous acquisition and collection of objects. However these objects make their way into our lives, we adapt in relation to them. There are objects and environments that we interact with more often than others, because they serve functions integral to our lives. My thesis focuses on an examination of the relationships we form and experiences we have with and in relation to these objects and environments. 
• Kara Bender: Standard deviations 
  February 21 - March 21, 2013 
  The show Standard Deviations is composed of fifty-six relief prints based off of the combination and reorganization of two hundred and fifty linocuts. Within my work I am attempting to create a narrative space that uses a combination of object representations to form a single environment. The images produced by these composites relay narratives through image and viewer relationships. Standard Deviations deals with the altered perception, degradation, and rehabilitation of human and material components. It notes narrative and ethnographical values through image distortion, resulting in an exploration of mankind’s self-integration with objects of pseudo-natural landscapes. The depictions used within the final compositions redefine and reshape the purposes and definitions behind the original human and inanimate objects for the sake of finding meaningful mythology within the everyday. Individual images of works included. 

Torqued & Twisted: Bentwood Today 
January 14 - March 22, 2013 
This exhibition explores the work of nine furniture makers and sculptors who use the technique of bending wood in innovative, unusual and eloquent ways. Bentwood came to symbolize the modern movement in furniture design, but it still offers a tempting territory for a range of aesthetic and formal explorations. The artists/designers in this exhibition push the limits of wood-bending to create extraordinary functional and sculptural works of art that are conceptually challenging and expand our understanding and expectations of wood as a material. 

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2012 
November 26 - December 14, 2012 
The exhibition features the studio art production from graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students. Following a comprehensive course of research and studio production, students present a group portfolio exhibition as a preface to their forthcoming careers as professional studio artists. 

North Carolina Glass 2012
October 28, 2012 - February 1, 2013 
Ģ������Ƶ has documented the development of the state's glass community in the series of invitational "North Carolina Glass" exhibitions initiated in 1974. The most recent North Carolina Glass exhibition titled "The Next Generation" took place in 1995 in the Belk Gallery at WCU. The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the development of studio art glass in America. To celebrate this milestone, the Ģ������ƵFine Art Museum is launching the largest and most comprehensive of the North Carolina Glass series exhibits to date. Cocurated by Joan Falconer Byrd and Denise Drury, this exhibition will highlight the work of 29 artists, occupy three of the museum's four galleries and bring a series of glass demonstrations, workshops and lectures to Jackson County. 
Exhibiting artists: Rick Beck, Valerie Beck, Gary Beecham, Billy Bernstein Katherine Bernstein, Alex Bernstein, Ken Carder, Richard Eckerd, Shane Fero, Robert Gardner, Judson Guerard, Jon Kuhn, Kate Vogel & John Littleton, Robert Levin, Joe Nielander, John Nygren, Roger Parramore, Mark Peiser, Kenny Pieper, Richard Ritter, Jan Williams, Sally Rogers, and Tadashi Torii. 

WNC Art Educators Exhibition 
June 7 - August 3, 2012 
Every two years the WCU Fine Art Museum celebrates the work of those artists who teach our children in K-12 schools across Western North Carolina. The artists for this exhibition have been selected by juror Mary Stewart, an artist, educator and author of “Launching the Imagination: A Comprehensive Guide to Basic Design,” a text that helps to build foundations for young and aspiring artists across the nation. This year’s theme for the exhibition is native flora and fauna of the southeast. 

RE+constructed 
June 7 - August 3, 2012 
“RE+constructed” brings together the artwork of Heidi Field-Alvarez, Jen Swearington, Carolyn Nelson and Jeana Eve Klein, four artists who explore the connection between cloth, history and narrative. Their works technically are quilts; sandwiched layers of fabric and filling bound with stitches; but break from traditional notions of quilting. The works in this exhibition represent a variety of materials and process including recycled fabric, paint, dye, digital printing, screen printing, and hand-andmachine-stitching to name a few. A common thread that runs through the exhibition is the way in which these artists use fabric to tell a story. Whether a childhood memory, a legend, a dream or a tall tale, it is told through the manipulation of cloth.

Lasting Impressions: Print Portfolio 
May 17 - August 3, 2012 
In 2005, the WCU Fine Art Museum acquired a portfolio of prints by contemporary Native American artists titled “Lasting Impressions.” This collection was printed in limited edition of 35 and printed by master printer Jack Lemon at Arizona State University Press. Included in the exhibition are 10 renowned Native American artists from across the country: Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne/Arapaho), Joe Feddersen (Colville), G. Peter Jemison (Cattaraugus Seneca), Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Duane Slick (Ho-Chunk/Mesquakie), Mario Martinez (Yaqui), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Flathead), Kay Walkingstick (Cherokee), Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo), and Melanie Yazzie (Navajo). 

John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal 
May 17 - September 7, 2012 
“John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal” marks the rediscovery of a remarkable and largely unknown body of work by an eminent American artist. An extraordinarily accomplished draftsman, John Heliker (1909-2000) developed a highly personal and expressive approach to drawing during the WPA years. In the postwar years, Heliker earned critical acclaim for his bold experimentations with biomorphic and architectonic abstraction. 

Pat Passlof: Selections 1948 - 2011 
January 26 - May 25, 2012 
In partnership with the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, the WCU Fine Art Museum presents: “Pat Passlof: Selections 1948-2011”, honoring the work of painter and accomplished Black Mountain College alumna, Pat Passlof. The show will feature a selection of paintings by Passlof, representing over 60 years of her career, from her time at Black Mountain College to her most contemporary work as a central, though under-recognized, figure in the development of Abstract Expressionism. 

44th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
April 12 - April 27, 2012 
Guest juror: Mr. Stephen Wicks, head curator of the Knoxville Art Museum. 
Exhibiting artists include: Stuart Black, Tanya Britton, Daniel Brooks, Chad Caldwell, Catharina Calubaquib, Cristen Cameron, Mary Cozens, Andrew Crawley, Courtney Crigger, Kelly Douyotas, Kimberly Fansler, Lane Fayssoux, Beck Fitts, Eva Fuller, Andrew Hagler, Caroline Harkins, Melissa Harper, Grace Hazen, Elizabeth Heider, Alexis Hilton, Paige Hogan, Shakita Holloway, Amelia Holmes, Amanda Humes, Jessica Kovacs, Dakota Ling, Jonathan Moore, Jessica Muse, Tom Pazderka, Emily A Phillips, Melena Reid, Jessica Ritchie, Ashley Robichaux, Meighan Smith, Myriah Strivelli, Ann Suggs, Anthony Suggs, Carla Juliana Saquicela Villa, and Ian Ward. 

2012 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial 
August 23 - October 5, 2012 
The Fine Art Museum is pleased to present the School of Art & Design Biennial Faculty Exhibition which is featured every two years to reveal the creative research and exploration of faculty teaching artists. This year we recognize the creative excellence of seventeen art and design faculty members who are currently creating works in a wide range of media including ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, book arts, photography, graphic design, and digital media. The exhibit is intended to demonstrate not only the diversity of the School of Art & Design, but also the creative innovation and conviction of its faculty members, who teach and exhibit their work nationally and internationally. 
Exhibiting artists include: Jon Jicha, Joan Byrd, George Rector, Frank Brannon, Ron Laboray, Erin Tapley, Cathy Griffin, Greg Mcpherson, Richard Tichich, Mary Anna LaFratta, Phyllis Jarvinen, Susan Alta Martin, and Kevin Kirkpatrick. 

p(art) of the whole: Selections from the Collection of Rob and Leigh Anne Young 
October 20 - December 16, 2011 
Featuring lithographs from the Tamarind Institute and contemporary Latin American works. The exhibition also includes a children’s section with a Latin-American theme. 

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 
November 17 - December 9, 2011 
The exhibition features artwork by ten Bachelor of Fine Arts degree candidates in drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, and photography. The annual exhibition is noted for its innovative and experimental creative expression by BFA degree graduating seniors in the School of Art & Design.  

Understory: An Exhibition of Work by Alice Sebrell 
August 21 - October 28, 2011 
The Ģ������Ƶexhibition includes selections from several recent bodies of work (including two- dimensional and three-dimensional), all of which reveal a curiosity about – and appreciation for z– the secrets of the world. The work prompts questions, without attempting to provide answers, about the story behind the narrative: the “understory.” 

WNC Art Educators Exhibition 
June 7 - August 3, 2012 
Every two years the WCU Fine Art Museum celebrates the work of those artists who teach our children in K-12 schools across Western North Carolina. The artists for this exhibition have been selected by juror Mary Stewart, an artist, educator and author of “Launching the Imagination: A Comprehensive Guide to Basic Design,” a text that helps to build foundations for young and aspiring artists across the nation. This year’s theme for the exhibition is native flora and fauna of the southeast. 

RE+constructed 
June 7 - August 3, 2012 
“RE+constructed” brings together the artwork of Heidi Field-Alvarez, Jen Swearington, Carolyn Nelson and Jeana Eve Klein, four artists who explore the connection between cloth, history and narrative. Their works technically are quilts; sandwiched layers of fabric and filling bound with stitches; but break from traditional notions of quilting. The works in this exhibition represent a variety of materials and process including recycled fabric, paint, dye, digital printing, screen printing, and hand-andmachine-stitching to name a few. A common thread that runs through the exhibition is the way in which these artists use fabric to tell a story. Whether a childhood memory, a legend, a dream or a tall tale, it is told through the manipulation of cloth. 

Lasting Impressions: Print Portfolio 
May 17 - August 3, 2012 
In 2005, the WCU Fine Art Museum acquired a portfolio of prints by contemporary Native American artists titled “Lasting Impressions.” This collection was printed in limited edition of 35 and printed by master printer Jack Lemon at Arizona State University Press.
Included in the exhibition are 10 renowned Native American artists from across the country: Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne/Arapaho), Joe Feddersen (Colville), G. Peter Jemison (Cattaraugus Seneca), Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Duane Slick (Ho-Chunk/Mesquakie), Mario Martinez (Yaqui), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Flathead), Kay Walkingstick (Cherokee), Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo), and Melanie Yazzie (Navajo). 

John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal 
May 17 - September 7, 2012 
“John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal” marks the rediscovery of a remarkable and largely unknown body of work by an eminent American artist. An extraordinarily accomplished draftsman, John Heliker (1909-2000) developed a highly personal and expressive approach to drawing during the WPA years. In the postwar years, Heliker earned critical acclaim for his bold experimentations with biomorphic and architectonic abstraction. 

Pat Passlof: Selections 1948 - 2011 
January 26 - May 25, 2012 
In partnership with the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, the WCU Fine Art Museum presents: “Pat Passlof: Selections 1948-2011”, honoring the work of painter and accomplished Black Mountain College alumna, Pat Passlof. The show will feature a selection of paintings by Passlof, representing over 60 years of her career, from her time at Black Mountain College to her most contemporary work as a central, though under-recognized, figure in the development of Abstract Expressionism. 

44th Annual Juried Undergraduate Exhibition 
April 12 - April 27, 2012
Guest juror: Mr. Stephen Wicks, head curator of the Knoxville Art Museum. 
Exhibiting artists include: Stuart Black, Tanya Britton, Daniel Brooks, Chad Caldwell, Catharina Calubaquib, Cristen Cameron, Mary Cozens, Andrew Crawley, Courtney Crigger, Kelly Douyotas, Kimberly Fansler, Lane Fayssoux, Beck Fitts, Eva Fuller, Andrew Hagler, Caroline Harkins, Melissa Harper, Grace Hazen, Elizabeth Heider, Alexis Hilton, Paige Hogan, Shakita Holloway, Amelia Holmes, Amanda Humes, Jessica Kovacs, Dakota Ling, Jonathan Moore, Jessica Muse, Tom Pazderka, Emily A Phillips, Melena Reid, Jessica Ritchie, Ashley Robichaux, Meighan Smith, Myriah Strivelli, Ann Suggs, Anthony Suggs, Carla Juliana Saquicela Villa, and Ian Ward. 
2012 School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial 
August 23 - October 5, 2012 
The Fine Art Museum is pleased to present the School of Art & Design Biennial Faculty Exhibition which is featured every two years to reveal the creative research and exploration of faculty teaching artists. This year we recognize the creative excellence of seventeen art and design faculty members who are currently creating works in a wide range of media including ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, book arts, photography, graphic design, and digital media. The exhibit is intended to demonstrate not only the diversity of the School of Art & Design, but also the creative innovation and conviction of its faculty members, who teach and exhibit their work nationally and internationally. 
Exhibiting artists include: Jon Jicha, Joan Byrd, George Rector, Frank Brannon, Ron Laboray, Erin Tapley, Cathy Griffin, Greg McPherson, Richard Tichich, Mary Anna LaFratta, Phyllis Jarvinen, Susan Alta Martin, and Kevin Kirkpatrick. 

p(art) of the whole: Selections from the Collection of Rob and Leigh Anne Young 
October 20 - December 16, 2011 
Featuring lithographs from the Tamarind Institute and contemporary Latin American works. The exhibition also includes a children’s section with a Latin-American theme. 

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 
November 17 - December 9, 2011 
The exhibition features artwork by ten Bachelor of Fine Arts degree candidates in drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, and photography. The annual exhibition is noted for its innovative and experimental creative expression by BFA degree graduating seniors in the School of Art & Design.  

Understory: An Exhibition of Work by Alice Sebrell 
August 21 - October 28, 2011 
The Ģ������Ƶexhibition includes selections from several recent bodies of work (including two- dimensional and three-dimensional), all of which reveal a curiosity about – and appreciation for – the secrets of the world. The work prompts questions, without attempting to provide answers, about the story behind the narrative: the “understory.” 

Richard Ritter: 40 Years in Glass 
January 24 - March 13, 2010 
Ritter has enjoyed 20- and 30-year retrospectives, his work has been featured on the cover of American Craft magazine, and he is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in public and private collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Museum of Arts and Design, the White House permanent craft collection, the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 

Systems & Structure: School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial 
March 24 - May 8, 2010 
The WCU Fine Art Museum is pleased to present the School of Art & Design Faculty Biennial Exhibition which is featured every two years to reveal the creative research and exploration of School of Art & Design faculty. This year we recognize the creative excellence of seventeen art and design faculty members who are currently creating works in a wide range of media including ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, book arts, photography, graphic design, and digital media. The exhibition is intended to demonstrate not only the diversity of the School of Art & Design, but also the creative innovation and conviction of its faculty members, who teach and exhibit their work nationally and internationally. 
Exhibiting artists include: Patricia Bailey, Joan Byrd, William Clements, Martin DeWitt, Fitzallen Eldridge, Cathryn Griffin, Jon Jicha, Kevin Kirkpatrick, Mary Anna LaFratta, Matt Liddle, Greg McPherson, Susan Martin, Kelly Popoff, George Rector, Marya Roland, Erin Tapley, Richard Tichich, and Clare van der Plas. 

George Masa (1881-1933): Vision of the Mountains 
August 1 - September 18, 2009 
The mountain flora photos in this exhibition were selected from the special collections at Western Carolina University’s Hunter library. Special collections director George Frizzell worked with Ģ������ƵSchool of Art and Design exhibition management students Britney Carroll, Meredith Harbin, Janine Paris, Mike Polomick and Meredith Shafer to select the Masa photographs and bring the exhibition’s design and presentation together.  

Dean and Nancy Cramer Lettenstrom: Delicate Balance – Painting + Drawing 
August 1 - September 18, 2009 
The Lettenstroms, with long artistic careers, recently relocated from the Midwest to Asheville, North Carolina. Painter Dean Lettenstrom’s imagery – simple yet provocative – offers a visual statement about the fragility of the human condition. Nancy Lettenstrom’s mixed media drawings, on handmade paper, often depict animals as representations of the natural world. 

New Gifts: Selections from the Collection of Professor Emeritus Perry Kelly 
August 1 - September 18, 2009 
Perry Kelly, formerly of the School of Art and Design, gifted the WCU Fine Art Museum 50 works from his personal collection. The exhibition features a selection of that work, in a variety of media, by former School of Art & Design faculty and students, as well as visiting artists.

Saved: Jody Servon 
January 27 - March 7, 2009 
Servon’s work includes photographs, sculptures, drawings, video, and installations. A previous show collected more than 120 “art pieces” that Servon bought on the internet auction site “eBay” for $10 or less. She has logged solo and group exhibitions and screenings throughout the United States and Canada and has received numerous prizes, including two from the North Carolina Arts Council. Her work is in collections including the Library of Congress in Washington and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. 

Lewis Buck: Beyond the Surface – Life Works in Painting and Assemblage 
September 6 - December 15, 2008 
A vibrant color palette, multiple textures, and the presence of found objects mark Buck’s often large-scale works of painting, collage, and assemblage. He names two artists from the early- to mid-20th century as his primary inspiration; realist Edward Hopper and abstract expressionist Richard Diebenkorn. The retrospective’s pieces, spanning 60 years and comprising 50 works, came from Buck’s own collection and the collections of his family, friends and patrons. 
Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2008, Nine Lives: Zombies for Art 
November 10 - November 25, 2008 
Participating WCU students (studio art majors receiving their Bachelor of Fine Arts), all seniors, and their concentrations are Jeremy Aversa, graphic design; Jessica Capps, ceramics (her piece is shown); Susan Cloer, sculpture; Christine Elder, painting; Emily Gingrass, graphic design and graphic art; Meredith Harbin, painting; Kristen Meredith Poston, printmaking; Misty Norris, drawing; and Jennifer Toledo, painting. 

2008 School of Art and Design Biennial Faculty Exhibition 
January 23 - March 15, 2008 
Faculty members represented in the exhibition are Patricia Bailey, Joan Byrd, William Clements, Marie T. Cochran, Martin DeWitt, Karen Dunn, Cathryn Griffin, Jon Jicha, Kevin Kirkpatrick, Matt Liddle, Susan Martin, Katya Moorman, Greg McPherson, Barbara Nussdorfer-Eblen, Kelly Popoff, William Price, George Rector, Marya Roland, Norma Smith, Erin Tapley and Richard Tichich, director of the School of Art and Design. 

To Rise and Begin Again 
November 1 - December 1, 2007 
The 20 drawings and collages in the exhibition are the work of Luzene Hill, a senior in the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the School of Art & Design at WCU. Hill also is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and has displayed her artwork across the United States. 

Faces of Change: Migrant Workers in Western North Carolina – A Photo Journal 
October 18 - December 1, 2007 
“Faces of Change: Migrant Workers in Western North Carolina – A Photo Journal” contains candid photographs of adults and children who serve the agriculture and construction industries of the mountain region. 

Bachelor of Fine Arts Portfolio Exhibition 2007, The Sublime Nine 
October 18 - December 1, 2007 
Exhibiting WCU students (studio art majors receiving their Bachelor of Fine Arts) are Julie Boisseau, ceramics, from Whittier, NC; Samuel Bintz, painting, from Dade City, FL.; Tara Jones, sculpture, from Mocksville, NC; Leah McCreary, painting, from Asheville, NC; Dusty Mitchell, painting, from Lenoir, NC; Jennifer Schrank, painting, from Greensboro, NC; Brendan Siegl, sculpture, from Apex, NC; Preston Tolbert, ceramics, from Troutman, NC; and Michelle Walker, painting, from Maggie Valley, NC. 

Cleveland Rocks – The Birthplace of Rock and Roll 
April 27 - May 12, 2007 
Curated by Jon Jicha, the WCU Fine Art Museum organized the exhibition of 48 photographs from Shuba’s collection of more than 6,500 negatives of rock ‘n’ roll events and performers in Cleveland, the first or second stop on the musicians’ national tours. 

Albert Kresch: Painting the Synthesis of Structure and Freedom 
January 23 - March 3, 2007 
The WCU Fine Art Museum will host an exhibition featuring the work of acclaimed New York painter Albert Kresch, whose small-scale oil paintings were unavailable to the general public until six years ago. 

Harvey K. Littleton and Friends: A Legacy of Transforming Object, Image and Idea 
November 19, 2006 - March 3, 2007 
Harvey K. Littleton is a renowned artist and master teacher who works out of Spruce Pine, NC. He is widely considered the father of the contemporary studio glass movement in the United States and Europe, as well as the inventor of a versatile and unique print-making process; vitreography. 

The Kimmel Collection – Art that Works: A Celebration of Design 
September 23 - October 21, 2006 
Included in the exhibition will be American, European and Scandinavian fine art and design spanning from 1885 to 1985 created by artists and designers such as Milton Avery, Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, Erté, Sam Francis, Frank Gehry, Rene Lalique, Le Corbusier, Eero Saarinen, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Camille Pissarro, Pablo Picasso, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselman. 

Hazel Larsen Archer: Black Mountain College Photographer 
August 22 - September 23, 2006 
The college and people who lived and created in the experimental arts community in the late 1940s and 1950s come alive in this collection of photographs, which will be on display from Tuesday, August 22, through Saturday, September 23. The exhibition, organized by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, celebrates Archer’s achievement in creating a strikingly beautiful and historically important collection of images of the cross-disciplinary college. 

Worldviews: Selections from the Collection and New Acquisitions
October 23 - September 16, 2005 
The “Worldviews” exhibition includes art by Kenneth Noland of Asheville, NC, Esteban Vicente, Louis Finkelstein and Herman Goustin; a developing Women’s Study Collection, including works by Rosemarie Beck, Quita Brodhead, Mary Parker, Janie McWhirter and Edith Neff; new acquisitions by local, regional and national artists such as Joyce Blunk, Luzene Hill, Harvey K. Littleton, Gregory Masurovsky, Jeff Oestreich, Martin Puryear, William T. Wiley, Joel Queen and Rick Urban; and recent gifts from area and regional collectors such as the Heliker-LaHotan 
Foundation of New York, which donated a major work by painter John Heliker, and an important print portfolio that includes work of Guillermo Silva of Colombia and Cuban artist Emilio Sanchez.

Joel Philip Myers: Studio Glass Installations 
October 23 - September 16, 2005 
Joel Philip Myers, a major figure in the contemporary studio glass movement, will be represented by two important bodies of work – his “Black and White Installations,” which reflect on the pain and suffering of war, and the “Dialogue Series,” which offers an optimistic and amusing focus on human discourse and personal relationships. 

Contemporary Native American Artist Series 
October 23 - September 16, 2005 
The museum will inaugurate a “Contemporary Native American Artist Series” with two exhibitions – “Luzene Hill: The Pilgrimage Ribbon,” a mixed media installation by renowned Atlanta, GA, artist Luzene Hill that explores her interest in the 16th-century Aztec codices in relation to her Cherokee heritage, in newly created book forms, drawings, and sculpture; and “Lasting Impressions,” a limited edition print portfolio created by 10 prominent Native American artists from across the nation, supported by a grant from the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. 

Strange Beauty: New Perspectives by Western Art Alumni 
October 23 - September 16, 2005 
The first three featured alumni artists are Connie Bostic of Fairview, NC, who earned her Master’s degree in 1990; Mary Charles Griffin of Asheville, NC, a 2002 graduate of Western; and Tim Jacobs of Cullowhee, NC, who earned his Master’s degree in 1999.