Jean Miller, Associate Dean of Administrative Affairs at UNT

Jean MK Miller has been named the new associate dean of administrative affairs for the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design.

“This is an exciting time for faculty, students and arts professionals in visual art and design,” said Miller, who began the position in January. “The opportunities for research and cross-disciplinary, community and entrepreneurial partnerships are endless. I am thrilled to join Dean Robert Milnes and the College of Visual Arts and Design in exploring those possibilities and supporting the vision for the college and UNT.”

Most recently, Miller served as chair of art and design in the College of Fine Arts and Communication at Towson University in the greater Baltimore area.

She served as the 2008 president of the National Council of Art Administrators and was elected in February 2010 to the College Art Association (CAA) Board of Directors for a four-year term.

As task force chair on the College Art Association’s Professional Practices Committee since 2008, she has chaired the Standards and Guidelines committees to create an original document for Academic Art Administrators and the Master of Fine Arts degree revision guidelines.

Miller is also a member of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans (ICFAD), National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), Americans for the Arts, and the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.

In recent years, her paintings have been purchased by the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, exhibited throughout the United States and represented in numerous private and public collections.

Miller holds a master of fine arts degree in studio from California College of the Arts with additional graduate studies in arts administration and studio at Harvard University, New York University and Long Island University.

A-Maze Doll by Lia Cook, 2008

Faces and Mazes: Lia Cook
University of North Texas Gallery
Through December 12, 2009

California artist Lia Cook shows the rosy-cheeked faces of young girls in her artwork intricately woven into maze-like patterns using an electronic Jacquard loom.

Ten of Cook’s large-scale fiber works, along with smaller examples, will be on display Nov. 10 (Tuesday) – Dec. 12 (Saturday) in the exhibition, Faces and Mazes: Lia Cook, at the University of North Texas Art Gallery in the UNT Art Building, one block west of Mulberry and Welch streets. 

“The pieces are captivating in their scale and craftsmanship, and these qualities draw you in and encourage you to consider Cook’s imagery and its possible meanings,” said Tracee Robertson, director of the UNT Art Gallery.

Cook will deliver a lecture about her art at 7 p.m. Nov. 19 (Thursday) in the Eagle Student Services Center, Room 225, across from Willis Library with parking on Highland Street between avenues A and C. The traveling exhibition is organized by the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Cook is one of the first fiber artists to use the electronic Jacquard handloom as a fine art tool. Inspired by being in touch with childhood nostalgia, Cook’s juxtaposition of rose-cheeked flesh and glass countenances remarks on humanness and the texture of living, as well as the stereotype or expectation that young girls are doll-like.

Visit www.gallery.unt.edu for more information, including a link to a recorded lecture by Cook and additional info from the originating venue.

This catalogue and exhibition tour was made possible with the support of the Textiles, Clothing and Design Department, which is housed in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Friends of Fiber Art International have provided additional support, as have the host venues. The Friends of the Robert Hillstad Textiles Gallery provide ongoing support to the gallery for programming. At UNT, Faces & Mazes: Lia Cook is made possible in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and by contributions from the College of Visual Arts and Design Studio Department and the Fibers program.

About Lia Cook

Cook is a professor of art at the California College of Arts in Oakland, where she has dedicated herself as a teacher and colleague since 1976. As an undergraduate and graduate student she worked closely with Ed Rossbach at the University of California, Berkeley.

Cook has received numerous awards, including being named a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 1997 and a Gold Medal Award at the From Lausanne to Beijing: the 5th International Fiber Art Biennale exhibition in Beijing, China, in 2008, as well as the Excellence Award at the 1989 International Textile Competition in Kyoto, Japan. Her art work is also included in the Museum of Modern Art, the Renwick and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She actively exhibits her work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. For more information, visit www.liacook.com.

From left to right, Mandy Fason as Ursula Loyer, Cody Lucas as Vincent van Gogh and Jessica Severance as Eugenie Loyer in Vincent in Brixton. Photo credit: Amanda Breaz/UNT

Vincent in Brixton
University of North Texas Department of Dance and Theatre
Opens Friday, Nov. 6, 2009, at 8 p.m.

A young Vincent van Gogh arrives at a boarding house run by a widow in the London suburb of Brixton, where he falls in love with the landlady’s daughter.

Vincent in Brixton by award-winning playwright Nicholas Wright explores the early years of van Gogh’s life, as the artist-to-be works for a European art dealer and deals with his tormented feelings.

The University of North Texas Department of Dance and Theatre presents the theatrical portrait of the famed painter in a production directed by Marjorie Hayes, a UNT associate professor and a respected director around the world.

Wright’s play delves into the influence of the widow Ursula Loyer and her daughter, Eugenie, on van Gogh’s life as he pursues his love of art and begins a career that will make him one of the world’s most recognized painters after his death.

“Everyone knows van Gogh’s story of his later years — the manic-depressive episodes, the slicing of his ear, his lurid affairs, his suicide at 37,” Hayes said. “And who doesn’t recognize his paintings Sunflowers, Starry Night and Chair? But Vincent in Brixton is the story of a time before his painting possessed his life — a story about an aimless young man in whom no one saw potential except one woman. This relationship becomes the soulful, life-defining experience that catapults Vincent onto his path to become the world’s most iconographic image maker. The play asks us to recognize the potential genius of the young people around us.”

The production will take place at 8 p.m. Nov. 6-7 (Friday-Saturday), 2:30 p.m. Nov. 8 (Sunday) and 8 p.m. Nov. 11-14 (Wednesday – Saturday) in the Studio Theatre in the RTFP Building, corner of Welch and Chestnut streets. Tickets are $10 for the general public and $7.50 for students, UNT faculty and staff and seniors. Call the box office at 940-565-2428 or Metro 817-267-3731, ext. 2428. Box office hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Technical director Mario Tooch, a UNT theatre faculty member, is providing a fully operating 19th-century kitchen along with scenic designer Michael Sullivan, a guest artist.

“What’s been important for us in the scene shop in supporting Michael’s scenic design is the texture of the set — to build walls with real bead board and moldings, to make a brick hearth that feels like real brick and to add a lot of close details,” Tooch said. “We also had to take on the challenge of building what looks like a cast iron fireplace on which to cook a real dinner during the play. We rounded out the kitchen with the authentic hand-pumped water in the sink.”

The play — which earned the 2003 Olivier Award for Best New Play — premiered in London at the Royal National Theatre before moving to Broadway.

About Marjorie Hayes

Hayes, who has directed extensively in the United States and Europe, earned a U.S. Senior Fulbright Fellowship to Poland in 1998. The major Czech theatre journal “Divadelni Noviny” nominated her production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in Czech Republic as Best Theatre Production of 1999. Locally, her production of The Food Chain at the Circle Theatre in Fort Worth was named as one of the “Top Ten Productions of 2000″ by The Dallas Morning News. Hayes also received the Austin Circle of Critics Award for Best Director–Drama in 1995.

About Vincent in Brixton

What: Vincent in Brixton — Presented by the University of North Texas Department of Dance and Theatre. Written by Nicholas Wright. Directed by Marjorie Hayes, UNT associate professor.

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 6-7 (Friday-Saturday)
2:30 p.m. Nov. 8 (Sunday)
8 p.m. Nov. 11-14 (Wednesday – Saturday)

Where: Studio Theatre in the RTFP Building, corner of Welch and Chestnut streets

Cost: $10 for general public; $7.50 for students, UNT faculty/staff and seniors

Contact: 940-565-2428 or Metro 817-267-3731, ext. 2428. Box office hours are 1-5 p.m. Monday-Friday.

From left to right, Mandy Fason as Ursula Loyer, Cody Lucas as Vincent van Gogh and Jessica Severance as Eugenie Loyer in Vincent in Brixton. Photo credit: Amanda Breaz/UNT

I'm Ready For My Closeup by Nancy L. Stockdale, 2007

Instant Gratification: A Celebration of Polaroid
Union Gallery at University of North Texas

Instant Gratification: A Celebration of Polaroid exhibits forty photographs by Nancy L. Stockdale, photographer and Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of North Texas (UNT). Instant Gratification opens a the Union Gallery located on the third level of the University Union building on the UNT campus, Denton, Texas. The exhibit opens Monday, June 30, and runs through July 23, 2009. Artist reception is Monday, June 29, from 3 to 5 p.m.

Images by Stockdale are taken with Polaroid SX-70, Polaroid Spectra, Holgaroid 104, Polaroid Reporter and Daylab Pinhole cameras.

Artist’s Statement

In a world now saturated with the media of digital photography, many consider the Polaroid concept to be antiquated. However, the realization of instant gratification in photography via the Polaroid camera was one of the great artistic inventions of the 20th century. Created by the pioneering American scientist Edwin Land, Polaroid’s technology allowed millions of people around the world to experience the joys of instantly-developing photography for decades. In 2008, the Polaroid Corporation announced that it was discontinuing all of its instant films, a significant blow to thousands of Polaroid artists around the world as well as consumers who still enjoy the magic of actual photographs that develop in their hands. In celebration of the amazing media of Polaroid, Nancy Stockdale’s exhibit reveals the peerless way that Polaroid films capture at once beauty, elegance, and the vernacular with a single click of the camera’s shutter.

Companion Book and Etsy

Stockdale has compiled the exhibit into Instant Gratification: Polaroids by Nancy L. Stockdale. This is a fifty page book containing all images from the show. Stockdale also sells her photographs on Etsy, the place to buy and see all things handmade, under the name Futurowoman. Her Etsy store is at http://futurowoman.etsy.com.