Through Sept. 19: TAMU-CC Art and Design Faculty Featured at Archipelago 15° 7′ 2″ S Exhibition
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The evocative and thought-provoking creations of 15 Texas A&M-University Department of Art + Design faculty members are on full display at the Art Museum of South Texas, a university affiliate located in Downtown Corpus Christi. The seventh annual Biennial Exhibition, “Archipelago 15° 7’ 2” S,” which opened in April and runs through Sept. 19, is at times provocative, other times whimsical, and often deeply revealing.
The exhibition’s title conveys the “flow” that occurs at various levels of the creative process, says AMST Director Sara Sells Morgan. Within each area, the artist, designer, and art historians engage in the art of their discipline and in the education of their students. This flow of knowledge and variety of experiences exist in the work that each creates.
The numbers help to define this particular exhibition: 15 refers to the number of professors who are featured in the exhibition, 7 is the number of TAMU-CC faculty exhibitions that have been displayed at AMST, and the number 2 represents the biennial nature of the show.
Among the exhibits are “Fashion Crimes and Happy Times,” a series of heart-shaped oil paintings by Dr. Laura Petican, TAMU-CC Associate Professor of Art; and an acrylic and charcoal on panel work titled “Backyard Reliquary No. 5” by Joe Pena, TAMU-CC Associate Professor of Art, which was inspired by items in his father’s backyard.
I think one of the best aspects about being an educator is the ability to work and grow alongside students. Being able to exhibit at the museum is just one great examples of the positive aspects of that relationship.
Joshua Duttweiler, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art
Art Department Chair Louis Katz’s exhibit, “Prototype W-1,” was a 3-D-printed lamp controlled by an Arduino microcontroller, a single-purpose minicomputer using a program Katz wrote himself. The basic idea was that electrical resistors were interesting to look at, which then became the question of how to make a design that makes them visible.
“I started to work on similar ideas in December 2019. The light was finished a month before the due date for the exhibition, but in some ways, it began in an electronics class and a computer programming class I took in high school half a century ago,” Katz said, who learned computer programming decades ago and now occasionally teaches the course “Electronics Toolkit for the Visual Artist” at the Island University.
As Nancy Miller, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art, pointed out, the faculty exhibition provides students the opportunity to see their professors not only as instructors, but as practicing artists and designers.
“The collective or individual work can inspire students to find their own creative voice and interests through a variety of disciplines and modes of expression,” she said.
Miller’s exhibits, “Underworld” and “Outworld,” are two vivid, 3-D worlds that invite the viewer to use their cellphone to scan a QR code in the exhibit’s digital prints’ respective corners. Doing so gives the viewer access to an augmented reality showcasing an underwater and cosmic world.
Another interactive exhibit featured is “Northside Bingo” by Joshua Duttweiler, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art. The exhibit utilizes individually printed, interactive bingo cards for visitors to take. The black ink printed on top of them, when heated by viewers’ hands, becomes transparent, revealing information underneath. The bingo squares are structured in the shape of the Northside streets in Corpus Christi, even featuring street names along the lines.
“Northside Bingo” is a statement outlining the systemic racism that those living in the Northside neighborhoods of Corpus Christi, namely predominantly Black and Latino communities, have had to contend with since the early ’60s, said Duttweiler, and was primarily inspired by his move to Corpus Christi and subsequential interest in local history.
Like Miller, Duttweiler expressed the importance of the faculty exhibition as a way to inspire student success.
“I think one of the best aspects about being an educator is the ability to work and grow alongside students,” Duttweiler said. “Being able to exhibit at the museum is just one great example of the positive aspects of that relationship.”
Art + Design Faculty Members in Exhibition:
Meg Aubrey, TAMU-CC Associate Professor of Art
Leticia Bajuyo, TAMU-CC Associate Professor of Art
Alexandria Canchola, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art
Joshua Duttweiler, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art
Jennifer Garza-Cuen, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art
Andrea Hempstead, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art
David Hill, TAMU-CC Professional Assistant Professor of Art
Richard James, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art
Louis Katz, TAMU-CC Professor of Art, Department Chair of Art + Design
Nancy Miller, TAMU-CC Assistant Professor of Art, Graphic Design Program Coordinator
Ryan O’Malley, TAMU-CC Professor of Art, Graduate Coordinator
Joe Peña, TAMU-CC Associate Professor of Art, Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Dr. Laura Petican, TAMU-CC Associate Professor of Art, Galleries Director
Lars Roeder, TAMU-CC Visiting Associate Professor of Art
Dr. Carey Rote, TAMU-CC Professor of Art
