News Release

Photo note: See end of story for image URLs.

By MARIA GLOEGGLER
Ackland Art Museum

CHAPEL HILL – The work of faculty artists from the art department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will be on display from Feb. 13 to March 27 at the Ackland Art Museum in the "UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Artists Biennial" exhibition.

In this exhibition presenting sculpture, portraits, video installation, paintings, prints and photography, UNC faculty artists explore human interactions with nature, religious imagery and symbols, the relationship between domestic life and creativity, and the interactions and intersections of personal and collective histories with the politics of race.

Jim Hirschfield’s carved wooden topiary form is reminiscent of clipped plant topiaries in French Renaissance gardens but is sleekly modern and creates a whimsical confrontation with the viewer.

Juan Logan presents a group of sculptures that celebrate anonymous laborers. Among the symbols presented in the sculpture is a heart-shaped sankofa. Logan explains that the sankofa is an Adinkra symbol from Ghana that means, "You can’t move forward without bringing the past with you so go back and fetch it." Logan suggests that Americans of all races, like his laborers, must not abandon the burden of their collective memories.

Michael Harris presents portraits of African-Americans, combining objects such as a carpenter’s tools, African and African-American symbols with digitally manipulated photographic portraits and collage to evoke a tradition of African-American storytelling.

Joyce Rudinsky, who holds a joint appointment in art and communications studies, suspends a machine with three small video screens into the gallery. The moving images become part of our "information space," creating an interaction between the viewer’s real space and the virtual spaces of the screens, as well as between the three video representations themselves.

In "Under My Skin," Rebekah Tolley uses a combination of video technology and animation to examine a pair of hands. She layers skin and surface with patterns found in nature, building up a compelling, undulating image that is projected onto a broad platform in the gallery.

Corey Drieth’s small paintings also provoke ideas about the painted surface as a screen, reflecting colored light. Working abstractly, his colors and moods come from his observations of nature, especially the effects of natural light on colors.

Photographer Jeff Whetstone’s curiosity is also inspired by the natural world, but more specifically by the relationship between people and their environment. His portraits of outdoorsmen celebrate their masculinity and their mastery of nature.

Kimowan McLain explores people in relationship to landscape very differently in images of his Native American relatives enjoying a dip in Cold Lake on the Cree Indian reservation in Western Canada. In contrast to Whetstone’s crisply detailed black and white photographs, McLain’s five-by-eight-foot color digital print has a soft-focus, dreamy quality — a reflection of the artist’s memories of home.

Pam Pecchio presents a series of C-print portraits of women in their late twenties and early thirties, shown just after showering with wet hair and no makeup. Entering their career-defining and childbearing years simultaneously, they often face conflicting choices. Pecchio asks us to "consider the beauty of the ordinary" in these young women undergoing what she defines as an often-overlooked "phase transition."

Domestic tensions provide starting points for the work of elin o’Hara slavick and Beth Grabowski. Like many professional women, Grabowski and slavick grapple with the conflicting demands of motherhood and career. In their collaborations for the Ackland, "Familial Letdown and Domestic Planets," they harness strong emotions that they find amid the everyday routines of domestic life.

Dennis Zaborowski’s tempera paintings on paper similarly explore family themes with mysterious and often urban narratives. For him, the figure of the woman/mother is often allegorical – a goddess, a statue of liberty, a masked Madonna.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events at the Ackland.

The exhibition opening is Feb. 13 at the Ackland. A member preview will take place at 1 p.m. and a public reception will be held from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

In conjunction with the exhibition there will be two Open Studio Evenings and a Gallery Talk:

Open Studio Evening I
Tuesday, February 22
Hanes Art Center – 115 S. Columbia Street
5:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Join faculty artists Pamela Pecchio, elin o’Hara slavick, and Jeff Whetstone in their studios at the Hanes Art Center.

Open Studio Evening II
Tuesday, March 1
UNC-Chapel Hill Art Lab – 108 Airport Rd.
5:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Tour UNC’s 17,686 square-foot Art Lab and the studios of Juan Logan and Kimowan McLain.

Gallery Talk
Wednesday, February 23
Ackland Art Museum
12:15 p.m.
Tour the exhibition with Assistant Curator Christine Huber and hear from the faculty artists about their works in the exhibition.

This exhibition is funded by the William Hayes Ackland Trust.

The Ackland is on South Columbia Street near Franklin Street. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 1-5 p.m. Sundays. Admission is free. For more information, call 919-843-1611 (recorded information), 919-966-5736 (museum office), 919-962-0837 (TTY) or visit the Web site, www.ackland.org. For program details call 919-843-3676.

Photo note:  To download photos go to:  http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/ackland/fac_2005/PR_image_captions_faculty.htm

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Ackland contact: Maria Gloeggler, 919-843-3675, maria_gloeggler@unc.edu