s u m m e r 2 0 1 0

Message from the Director

Art at UGA: A Brief History

Perpetual Instantaneous:

Visiting Artist Michael Fried

What is an Art School?

Legacy Legacy: Ron Arnholm

Speaks the Language of Type

Faculty Roundup

The Circle of Giving

The Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries

i n s i d e

Legacy

abcdeRo na l d a R n h o l m

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n e W S F R o M T H e l a m a r d o d d s c h o o l o f a rtugau n i v e r s i t y o f g e o r g i a

A R T . U G A . e D U

Also of note, improvements to Sculpture, Jewelry and Metals,

and Interior Design facilities will start this summer. Still there is

much to do to ensure quality programming and state of the art

facilities for the entire School of Art on the Athens campus as well

as the campus in Cortona, Italy. In the midst

of much excitement about the new ceramics

building, the School of Art remains committed

to the value of community that quality facilities

provide. The academic breadth of the School of

Art is a defining strength of Lamar Dodd. The

capacity to work together in close proximity will

ensure creative and intellectual synergy inherent

in our diverse programming.

The 09–10 academic year began with an

impressive solo exhibition by Professor Scott

Belville. Many emerging as well as established

artists and scholars visited campus to give lec-

tures, seminars, workshops and critiques. One

notable visiting scholar was Dave Hickey,

MacArthur Fellow, contemporary critic and cul-

tural gadfly. Hickey gave a provocative critique to

the 2010 MFA students, discussing their diverse

work in the spring MFA show with gritty banter

and humor. Stuart Horodner, artistic director of the Atlanta

Contemporary Art Center, also counseled students this academic

year, offering valuable professional guidance and mentoring to

the School’s emerging artists. We said farewell to Dodd Professor

Paul Kos in December who built an artistic community and an

enclave of petanque enthusiasts that embraced civic engage-

ment. Hallways, stairwells, ceilings, bathrooms, vending machine

niches, and windows were filled or covered with work by students

who also exhibited in the School of Art galleries

along with established contemporary artists such

as West Coast artist, Arthur Gonzalez.

The closing celebration of the 40th anniver-

sary of the Cortona Study Abroad Program was

staged in Atlanta at the Chastain Arts Center with

an exhibition of work by School of Art faculty

who taught the Cortona Program. Active alumni

mounted an exhibition that was greeted by an

enthusiastic crowd of more than two hundred sup-

porters that drove through harsh winter weather

to celebrate one of the nation’s best study abroad

programs. Alumni in Atlanta are to be recognized

and commended again for the tremendous work

that they did for special events this year.

Julian Cox, photography curator at the High

Museum in Atlanta, juried the first School of

Art student exhibition. Being the first “Salon de

Refuse” the exhibition generated a response with

attitude from energized students who participated.

Three of our distinguished faculty members will retire in

2010 with a combined record of more than 100 years of commit-

ted service to the Lamar Dodd School of Art and the University

Soon we will be celebrating a new ceramics facility planted less than a five-minute walk north

of the main art building on River Road. Construction on the $2 million building to house

undergraduate and graduate ceramics is underway with an opening date of fall 2010.

message

from

the

director

ALUMni in

ATLAnTA ARe TO Be

ReCOGniZed And

COMMended FOR

THeiR TReMendOUs

WORK THAT THeY did

FOR sPeCiAL eVenTs

THis YeAR.

n e W S F R o M T H e L A M A R D o D D S C H o o L o F A R T A T U G Ap

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michael f. adamsPresident University of Georgia

garnett s. stokesDean Franklin College of Arts and Sciences

georgia strangeDirector Lamar Dodd School of Art

chris hockingAssociate Director Lamar Dodd School of Art

asen KirinAssociate Director Lamar Dodd School of Art

thom houserAssociate Director Lamar Dodd School of Art

alan flurryNewsletter Editor Franklin College of Arts and Sciences

suzi Wong Director of Development for the Fine and Performing ArtsFranklin College of Artsand Sciences

Julie spiveyDesigner and Assistant Professor Lamar Dodd School of Art

sara Kay alreadBFA ’09 Graphic DesignDesign Assistant

lamar dodd

school of art

university of georgia

270 river road

athens, georgia

30602

7 0 6 .54 2.15 1 1

art.uga.edu

uga

TOP: LAyoUT DRAWInG AnDABOVe : ARCHITeCTURAL RenDeRInGoF THe neW CeRAMICS BUILDInG

of Georgia. Director of the Cortona Program, Rick Johnson,

Professor Judy McWillie, and Professor Frances Van Keuren will

transition into new opportunities with much deserved ven-

eration for their myriad accomplishments in teaching as well as

research and creative activity. They have served this institution

with integrity and generosity and improved the lives of countless

students over four decades. Please consider a personal note thank-

ing them for their tireless contributions.

The second School of Art graduation ceremony this May fea-

tured Atlanta’s distinguished visionary arts leader, Fay Gold, as

the commencement speaker. Since 1980, Fay Gold has run one of

the most prestigious contemporary art spaces in Atlanta. By con-

vincing such artists as George Segal, Robert Rauschenberg, Irving

Penn, Cindy Sherman, Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe

to exhibit at her gallery, she succeeded in putting Atlanta on the

national radar. The major driving force behind a multitude of

private and corporate art collections, Fay Gold continues to wield

great influence on behalf of emerging regional talent. We wel-

come her as an inspiration for our newest graduates.

With great excitement and anticipation, I draw attention to

a new initiative spearheaded by Dr. Asen Kirin, the Georgia Gaze

Project. Kirin has shepherded the School’s response to the uni-

versity’s mandate as a land grant university to serve the state of

Georgia. Building on successful visits to the School of Art by high

school students and civic leaders from small towns in Georgia,

Kirin is now facilitating the Georgia Gaze Project. The project is

a collaborative effort between the School of Art and the Archway

Partnership, a division of the Office of the Vice President for

Public Service and Outreach. In its initial phase School of Art

faculty member Michael Marshall and his students will photo-

graph people and places in the following counties in Georgia:

Colquitt, Washington, Glynn, Clayton, Hart, Sumter, Pulaski,

and Whitfield. One of Kirin’s goals is to have the High Museum

showcase our students’ work to delight the eye and the mind of

thousands of visitors from Georgia and elsewhere.

Alumni and friends of the School of Art are critical to our

national leadership in preparing future artists, designers and

scholars. Your active engagement in shared stewardship of the

School will make a difference in a student’s educational experi-

ence and future opportunities. Consider becoming an active

partner of the School of Art in some capacity such as the Take a

Seat campaign when choosing to make a gift to the School. One

can honor the accomplishment of earning a degree, recognize an

important teacher, remember a friend, thank a family member or

highlight a favorite artist. Recently, Bernini, Eva Hesse and our

own Richard “Ole” Olson joined many other greats in our large

auditorium. Working together we can ensure that the School of

Art will continue to nurture creativity and critical thinking in

a community of future artists, designers, scholars, teachers and

architects of new career paths and pursuits as innovative life-

long learners.

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Art at the University of Georgia A Brief History

The systematic study of the fine visual arts at the University arrived in the academic year 1925–26, when the catalog listings for Home economics listed several classes in the ‘Related Art and Clothing Group’, including a two-hour credit class in “Drawing and Designing” and a companion two-hour class in “Advanced Design”. These offerings would be joined in the 1928–29 catalog by classes in “Water Color Painting”, “Applied Design”, “Pottery”, and “History and Appreciation of Arts”, the last course encompassing three terms, and taking up, in turn: Prehistoric, Ancient, and Classical Art; early Christian and Medieval Art, including Italian Renaissance; and the art of northern europe and America.

A PL A C e O F FO CU s A n d i n T e L L e C T UA L i n Q U i RY, A PL A C e O F sYn T H e s i s A n d O U T R e A C H ,

A n d U LT i M AT e LY A PL A C e W H e R e A RT i sT i C e X P R e ss i O n C A n F i n d n U RT U R e A n d G RO W T H .

A November 1927 issue of the Georgia Alumni Record (Vol. iii,

No. 2) presented an article noting the creation of a “Chair of Art.”

The article reported that the initial placement of the chair of fine

and applied arts was in the State College of Agriculture, rather

than “the University proper.” Both were in Athens at the time,

though the “University proper” lacked the funds to get the new

program up and running, while the College of Agriculture, with

its ability to draw on federal dollars, had the extra funds to begin

the program.

The program was officially transferred to the University

following the reorganization of 1932. Over the next several years,

classes in art were added to the curriculum, but a fundamental

change arrived in the 1935–36 school year, when the degree pro-

grams were modified to include Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees with

Majors in both Art and Music. The major in art required eight

courses, and an additional four art elective classes.

This was the academic framework found by

Lamar Dodd when he became first head of the Art

Department in academic year 1936–37. University

President Harmon W. Caldwell made a commit-

ment to bring Dodd to the University of Georgia

first as artist-in-residence because he recognized

that it was necessary for the university to offer first-

rate programs in the fine arts if Georgia was ever

going to move to the top tier of national universi-

ties. Caldwell’s point man in bringing Dodd from

Alabama to Georgia was Hugh Hodgson, the man responsible for

a parallel (if slightly earlier) growth of the Music Department at

the University.

Dodd brought great passion to the job of leading the

University’s art program into the creative and scholastic fore-

front. Under his guidance, a robust program of guest lecturers

began in the late 1930s, as did a program of obtaining a collection

of contemporary art, including representative works from the

students involved in the department. All of this was undertaken

to enlighten the people of Georgia and the Southeast as to the

importance of art and its practice and appreciation in the lives of

the citizenry.

The first few years of Dodd’s tenure saw the expansion of the

curricular offerings, supplementing the continued fine work in

decorative arts by Annie Holliday and Mildred Ledford through

the hiring of Alan Kuzmicki and Earl McCutcheon in the 1941–42

school year. That same year the emergence of strong programs

in printmaking and ceramics (McCutcheon in particular would

energize the ceramics program well into the mid-1970s). Those

early years also brought renowned muralist Jean Charlot to

Georgia. He served not only as an artist-in-residence but also an

author and director of a series of murals that graced both the

School of Commerce and The Fine Arts Building.

This new program needed a home. The original home for art

classes at the Chancellor’s House (which once stood on the site

of the present-day Main Library) gave way in the early 1940s to

the University’s Fine Arts building, designed as a space for Music,

Theater, and the Visual Arts. This would be home to classes, and

also a place for exhibits and shows, all designed to raise the profile

of the fine arts in and around Athens. At a cost of $450,000 (in

that moment, the costliest building ever built at the University),

it was dedicated on May 31, 1941.

As the program grew in the early 1940s so did the organiza-

tions and institutions that surrounded the arts. The honorary fra-

ternity for art major, Kappa Pi, was founded and the Art Student’s

League experienced rapid growth. Also the Art School introduced

an annual auction of work by both student and faculty that was

designed to raise fund and the consciousness of Georgians to the

importance of an appreciation of art as a fundamental compo-

nent of a quality liberal arts education.

BY G i L B e RT H e A d, M . A . ‘ 10

d O d d B RO U G H T G R e AT

PA ss i O n TO T H e j O B O F

L e A d i n G T H e U n i V e R s iT Y ’ s

A RT P RO G R A M i n TO

T H e C R e AT i V e A n d

s C H O L A sT i C FO R e F RO n T.

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Late in the 1940s, under the sponsorship and oversight of

Alfred Heber Holbrook, the first Georgia Museum of Art would

emerge to share space in the old Library building (today, the

Office of the President). The building would be home to the

Georgia Museum of Art from 1948–1996.

The 1950s would be a time of growth for the program, and

also an era of controversy as some forms of modern art found

slow acceptance at uga. Perhaps the most contentious piece of all

was the Iron Horse, created by uga sculptor Abbott Pattison. After

several defacements, the sculpture was removed from public view

at Reed Hall and placed in a field overlooking Georgia Route 15 in

Oconee County.

The clash with the “modern” was not over, nor was the growth

of the program. The Art School was so successful that by the late

1950s, the department was again in need of a new home. By 1960,

work had begun by the Atlanta firm of Toombs, Amisano, and

Wells on a new $900,000 home for the visual arts programs. The

design was revolutionary. The building was opened to natural

light, had large areas dedicated to formal and informal exhibition

spaces, and studio design was a dominant feature. Formally dedi-

cated on January 21, 1963 with a speech by John W. Gardner, the

building variously branded ‘the ice plant’, ‘that monstrosity on

Jackson Street’, and ‘Dodd’s Folly’ was home to 800 students a day,

and was for a while one of the most visited buildings on the UGA

campus. Indeed, the edifice so reflected the spirit of Dodd that it

would be renamed in 1995 as the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

As the 1960s drew to a conclusion, not only was the art depart-

ment in Athens flourishing, but UGA was moving into more inter-

national environs with the commencement of the Studies Abroad

program in Cortona, Italy, in 1970. This would be only the first of

a number of UGA foreign residence programs that over the last 40

years have become central to the teaching, research and outreach

missions of the University.

Even as continued robust growth of the holdings at the

Georgia Museum of Art would lead to their taking up a new East

Campus residence in 1996, by the early 2000s it was obvious that

the dispersed programs of the Lamar Dodd School of Art (housed

in seven separate locations) also needed a new home in which the

shared synergistic space could propel the various programs of the

school into the future. Work was begun on the East Campus struc-

ture in 2006, and by 2008, over 1,200 students, staff and faculty

had a new $39 million home. Though not all programs joined in

the move from the Jackson St. facility, the East Campus structure

reunited many of the formerly isolated areas of study. It serves

today as the central space for the creative energies of the ldsoa,

a place of focus and intellectual inquiry, a place of synthesis and

outreach, and ultimately a place where artistic expression can find

nurture and growth.

Lamar Dodd’s observation in 1946 that “One’s study is never

finished” certainly guided his leadership of the art program of

Georgia and has also been absorbed as a guiding philosophy by

the faculty, staff, and students of the Lamar Dodd School of Art

ever since. g

ABOVe : CHAnCeLLoR’S HoUSe , on THe PReSenT SITe oF THe MAIn LIBRARy on noRTH CAMPUS.FAR LeF T: VISUAL ARTS BUILDInG, WITH JACkSon STReeT CeMeTeRy In FoReGRoUnD.neAR LeF T: F Ine ARTS BUILDInG.

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In October, the Lamar Dodd School of Art welcomed art historian,

critic, and poet Michael Fried as part of its Visiting Artist and

Scholar series. I joined the School of Art’s faculty in Art History

last spring, and among the most exciting and impressive aspects

of my new artistic and intellectual community at the Dodd is the

year-long program of critical encounters with remarkable thinkers

and makers of art. My colleagues in art history gave me a generous

welcome when they put forward my nomination of Fried for this

year’s art scholar talk. Michael Fried is Professor of Art History and

Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

From my first studies in art history his ideas and

methods have been both model and challenge for me

as I research and write across the fields of Modern art,

film and dance. I hoped that his career-long breadth

not only as an art historian, but also as a contemporary

art critic, and creative poet would generate both the

excitement and opposition for which he has come to

be known. I knew that our art history program would

benefit from his presence, and that I, myself, would

relish the time with him, but with the manifesto-like

title of his most recent book, Why Photography Matters

as Art as Never Before (Yale, 2008), I knew we could

surely count on a certain other area’s notice too! As it

turned out, there was full attention during his three-

day visit. From his afternoon seminar, to his individual

critiques with MFA students, to the full house at his

evening lecture, I witnessed with delight the engaged

and demanding student body of the School of Art.

Michael Fried first began publishing his ideas on art

in 1961; and it is no exaggeration to say that conversa-

tions, which he initiated in his earliest writings, are still

vibrantly under discussion nearly a half-century later. His first

years as a critic were encouraged and shaped by an early appren-

ticeship with Clement Greenberg, that giant of mid-century

art criticism, whose evaluative and formal method of criticism

Fried has shared. But Fried also developed his ideas in the 1960s

through close relationships with some of the most important art-

ists of the 20th century, including Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland

and Anthony Caro.

It was in the sphere of these artists that he wrote perhaps

his most well known piece of art criticism. His 1967 essay, “Art

and Objecthood,” was written in response to the emergence of

Minimalism as a dominant strategy alongside Modernist painting.

Fried sensed that Minimalist art’s emphatic presence in space, its

shifting temporality, and its critical position to remain an object,

created a real-time, contingent and individual experience for the

viewer that outweighed any meaning inherent in the work itself.

As interesting as this might be, as committed as Minimalism’s

practitioners might be, for Fried, this wasn’t working in the realm

of art. Art for him should, like his Modernist paintings, need no

viewer to fulfill its significance, should continuously regenerate

itself complete so as to keep the viewer in a state of presentness.

Fried assigned to Minimalism the non-art status of being literal-

ist and theatrical, and from there, battle lines were drawn. His

argument is of course complex and nuanced and therefore as

often misread or misunderstood as not—certainly it’s been

oversimplified, as it must be here. But to this day in my courses

and in scholarly debate, this 1967 essay retains incredible potency.

It is an essay that really must be attended to in any discussion of

painting and sculpture of the 1960s; and its judgments against

literalism and theatricality continue to underlie and to check any

endorsement or critique of the relation between art and beholder

in Modern art.

As a professor of art history and humanities, Fried has worked

in the dialectical role of art historian and critic. Though these

are two quite separate endeavors in his experience, we can none-

theless follow the convictions Fried articulated about art and

beholder in the critical context of 1960s into his career-long

historical scrutiny of beholding in art since the Enlightenment.

His first major book in art history Absorption and Theatricality:

Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Chicago, 1980), was

the first book I remember reading after determining to follow a

career in art history—this was my first conscious model for art

historical scholarship, and remains for me a lasting example of

how to look, research and argue. As it turns out, any student who

studies Modern and Contemporary Art at Georgia can’t help but

be indirectly influenced by him as well. Dr. Isabelle Wallace and

I were each directed in our doctoral studies by two of Michael

Fried’s first students. I guess this makes our students generation

three who will learn from and to battle with his legacy.

Perpetual InSTAnTAneoUSneSS

STILL IMAGe FRoM AnRI SALA’S “LonG SoRRoW ”, 2005. SUPeR 16MM HDV. CoURTeSy MARIAn GooDMAn GALLeRy, neW yoRk .

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BY n e L L A n d R eW

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Perpetual InSTAnTAneoUSneSSsummer 2010

William itter and Philip ayers

gallery 307

opening reception June 4, 6–8pm

artist’s talk in the gallery

in coordination with thinK tanK

fall 2010 eXhiBition season

Drawing: Contemporary Approaches

Kathleen mcshane & Barb Bondy

gallery 307

on view: august 16–september 14, 2010

reception: august 20, 2010 7–9pm

The Other Side of the Mask

thom houser: installation & Photography

gallery 101

on view: august 16–september 14, 2010

reception: august 20, 2010 7–9pm

Aaron Wilson and Tim Dooley: Installation & Printmaking

gallery 101

on view: september 20–october 19, 2010

reception: september 24, 2010 7–9pm

Ceramic Faculty Exhibition

gallery 307

reception: september 24, 2010 7–9pm

Student Juried Exhibition

gallery 307 + orbit galleries

on view october 25–november 9, 2010

Bfa eXhiBition season

BFA I: Drawing and Painting + Ceramics

gallery 307

on view: november 12–29, 2010

reception: friday, november 12 7–9pm

BFA I: Art X + Sculpture

gallery 101 + lobby gallery

on view: november 12 – 29, 2010

reception: friday, november 12 7–9pm

BFA II: Photography + Printmaking/Book Arts + Fabric + Jewelry/Metals +Graphic Design

gallery 101, 307 + orbit galleries

Plaza gallery + Bridge gallery

on view: december 3–13

reception: friday, december 3 7–9pm

december 17 commencement

sPring 2011 eXhiBition season

Photography by Jim Fiscus

gallery 101

on view: January 14–february 9, 2011

reception: January 14, 2011 7–9pm

Cortona Faculty Exhibition

gallery 307

on view: January 14–January 28, 2011

reception: January 28, 2011 7–9pm

Dodd Chair Exhibition

gallery 307

on view february 4–february 24, 2011

reception: february 4, 2011 7–9pm

Photography Fellow Exhibition: June Yong Lee

gallery 101

on view: february 18–march 9, 2011

reception: february 18, 2011 7–9pm

BFA Scientific Illustration

gallery 307

on view february 28–march 11, 2011

reception: tBa

MFA Exhibition

gallery 101, 307, orbit galleries

on view: march 21–april 12, 2011

reception: friday, march 21st, 6–9pm

BFA I: Graphic Design, Jewelry/Metals,Photography, Printmaking

gallery 101, 307, orbit galleries

on view: april 15–april 22, 2011

reception: friday, april 15 7–9pm

BFA II: Art Education, Sculpture,Drawing/Painting

gallery 101, 307, orbit galleries

on view: april 21–april 29, 2011

reception: friday, april 22 7–9pm

BFA III: Interior Design, Fabric Design

gallery 101, 307, orbit galleries

on view: april 30 – may 6, 2011

reception: friday, april 30, 7–9pm

may 14th graduation

visiting artists and scholars2010–2011

Nick Coveseptember 19–23, 2010

Donald Lipskioctober 10–14, 2010

Lola Brooksnovember 7–10, 2010

Claudy JongstraJanuary 2011

Janet Koplos, Criticmarch 28–30, 2011

Jas Elsner, Art Historianapril 7–10, 2011

Folkert de Jongapril 10–14, 2011

Exhibition Schedule2010–2011

Two books followed Absorption and Theatricality—Courbet’s

Realism, (Chicago, 1990) and Manet’s Modernism, or the Face of

Painting in the 1860s, (Chicago, 1996)—to form a trilogy that

traces the development of a particularly modern struggle in paint-

ing, one which I might crudely summarize as a struggle to get

around the fact that even the most genuine paintings are made

by someone with the knowledge that they will be seen by others.

Fried’s books demonstrate that at best, the self-consciousness of

this fact can interfere between creator and beholder, and thereby

distract from the ideal of an authentic expression and reception.

At worst, it may encourage in art a kind of pandering to the viewer

in an empty theatrical way.

The trilogy traces this concern from the 18th through the

19th centuries in France, but Fried’s oeuvre also include stud-

ies of 19th-century painting in Germany and America with

books on Adolf Menzel and Thomas

Eakins. He has published three

books of poems, most recently in

2004. Add to that scores of essays—

and frequent appearances in jour-

nals such as Art Forum and Critical

Inquiry—on topics that range from

Caravaggio to Jeff Wall.

This range of intellectual inter-

est explains the topic of his book,

Why Photography Matters as Art as

Never Before, which turns attention

to yet a new medium and a new cen-

tury, but it shows the characteristic

integrity with which he attends to

and carefully labors to communicate

the endeavor of art making. Fried is

a thinker and writer whose investi-

gations and arguments begin and

end with his convictions in front of

works of art. At the School of Art, his

lecture on artist Anri Sala’s “Long

Sorrow,” a 13-mintue video work that includes disorienting and

vertiginous perspectives of jazz-artist Jemeel Moondoc playing

his saxophone from a building ledge high above Berlin. Fried

screened the 13-minute video work and then carefully described

the entirety of the video loop through an exquisitely detailed,

even poetic account of what he had seen. We were then asked

to hold the weight of the work’s presentness as he endeavored

to come to terms with the artist’s statement that in this piece he

wanted to capture “the intention to make music.”

For those studying today, in an era of shifting virtual person-

alities, up-to-the-second status updates, and play-by-play narra-

tion of even our most trivial daily experiences via mobile phone,

Fried’s method is a reminder what rewards are to be won by a

sustained involvement in a single work of art, by asking what it is

we should want from the experience of art, and by demanding to

know how and why good art strikes us as such. g

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WHAT IS An Art School?BY A L A n F LU R RY

Early in the summer of 1952, the designer George Nelson received

a call from a painter with a connection to a school in Georgia,

Lamar Dodd. Nelson, one of the leading forces in the advent of

American Modernism, had heard of Dodd but initially resisted his

invitation to come down to Athens for a day or two of talk, “with

no particular assignment.”

Lamar Dodd, head of the Department of Fine Arts at the

University of Georgia had recently received a grant from the

Rockefeller Foundation, funds he could dispatch as he pleased,

without administration approval. He wanted to use the grant to

import someone who would stimulate, if not provoke, his depart-

ment. What transpired is a little-known episode in UGA history,

one that had wide ramifications at the time and continues to

reverberate today. Bringing in some of the nation’s foremost

leaders in mid-century design opens up many questions. Among

them: were mass design and manufacturing techniques transfer-

able to education?

The Department of Fine Arts at UGA in the 1950’s was a

large department, arguably one of the strongest in the country.

Although the department was very popular with students, very

few of them pursued art careers after graduation. Nelson:

and like similar departments at other universities its functions are

widely varied. The majority of the student group consists of under-

graduates taking art as a major, not as a rule with any intention of

making it a career, but simply because they like it. Many of them are

girls who believe it will help them as future homemakers, presum-

ably by improving their taste in decoration. Each year a sizable group

comes in from the department of home economics, no doubt for the

same reason. A small percentage of the students, particularly those

in textiles and ceramics, go onto establish careers in these fields. But

essentially the department is one which turns out laymen interested

in the arts rather than professionals.

So Nelson agreed to come to Athens to spend a couple of days

in the department and give a lecture. Not without classroom

experience, having taught architecture at Yale and Columbia, the

teaching of painting and sculpture were yet new to Nelson:

As a necessary part of the discussions I was to have with the faculty,

a tour through the various classes was arranged. Everything I saw was

familiar: courses in theory, classes in drawing and painting, classes in

design, craft workshops for weaving, screen painting, ceramics and

so on. At this point several uneasy thoughts came to mind. Here was

a place functioning exactly like any art school, but it was supposed to

turn out nonprofessionals. All art schools, obviously, turn out one or

the other, but what seemed a little odd was the lack of visible differ-

ences between the two kinds of instruction. To the outside observer, it

seemed that there was possibly a confusion in both methods and objec-

tives. Does it make sense for a girl whose main ambition is to become

a homemaker to pretend for four years that she is aiming for a career

in sculpture or painting? Perhaps it does, but isn’t the real problem to

foster understanding and creative capacity so that these qualities could

be employed in any situation? And if this were the real problem, how

would a school go about meeting it? Is intensive instruction in drawing

and modeling the best way? Or is this method used simply because it has

always been the art school method?

Discussions followed and difficult questions were broached

directly with the faculty. Nelson reports that the responses were

“quick and intelligent” and that a sentiment developed for

re-examining these objectives and concocting some experi-

ments in educational techniques, an attempt to expand the

evaluation though without any idea what these techniques might

be. Undeterred, Nelson agreed to come back in the fall. Dodd

suggested the formation of a small advisory committee; Nelson

asked him to invite the noted American designer Charles Eames.

At the Fall meeting, Eames and Nelson repeated the earlier

routine of visiting classes and asking questions:

Now that we had asked the basic questions, it was perfectly clear

that much time was being wasted through methods originally devel-

oped for other purposes. For example, one class was finishing a two-

week exercise demonstrating that a given color is not a fixed quan-

tity to the eye but appears to change according to the colors around

it. In a physics class such a point would have been made in about five

minutes with a simple apparatus, and just as effectively. We cited

this example in an effort to establish a principle by which teaching

effectiveness could be evaluated. We suggested that if a school knew

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continued on page 10

Editor’s Note: Details of this

story are taken from a report

by George Nelson, “Problems of

Design” Whitney Publishing, 1957,

and “George Nelson: The Design

of Modern Design” by Stanley

Abercrombie, MIT Press, 1995.

The Art X experiment, the 1950’s, the first-ever multimedia project, Lamar Dodd, George nelson, Charles eames, and UGA

fairly precisely what it wanted to communicate, a yardstick could be

used for checking its methods. The yardstick was a clock. In other

words, given the intention of communicating something specific,

the shortest time taken to do this-without loss of comprehension or

retention-represented the best method.

At this point storm warnings began to go up. Were we propos-

ing to apply time–motion studies in the painting studio? Maybe, we

retorted, such schools as this had no business teaching painting. The

discussion became an argument, then a free-for-all.

That night, Nelson and Eames discussed the turmoil that had

arisen based on what they considered to be rather innocuous

proposals. The designers’ intuition here to widen their thinking

cannot be overstated; instead of getting defensive, rejecting or

countering the faculty’s confusion and uncertainty,they embraced

it as their own. They saw through the confusion to what they

perceived as the essence of the subject — communication. There

had been a breakdown, but instead of an end they perceived this as

a beginning. Communication itself was the key, and the medium,

to what they were trying to say. The next day, the two proposed to

make a presentation, of a specific example of their thinking, in

the form of a sample lesson for an imaginary course, promptly

labeled “Art X.”

Eames and Nelson requested a third member of their commit-

tee, the textile designer Alexander Girard, for the preparation of

the lesson. Eames and Nelson left Athens with the idea to develop

high-speed techniques for exposing the relationships between

seemingly unrelated phenomena.

No small number disciplines in academia are presently wres-

tling with the multifarious impacts of complexity upon their

subject matter, its study and dissemination. Holism and complex

systems are buzzwords across academia. Recognizing the impor-

tance of a holistic approach is an acknowledgement of the many

complex interrelationships that envelope any systematic study

or intellectual pursuit. Whether it is economics, engineering,

or art education, any one subject has an inherent connection to

history, biology, language and a dozen other disciplines of which

a general familiarity must be gained as a point of entry to special-

ization. These relation-

ships are the skeleton for

our body of knowledge.

So the integrated,

holistic approach that

began as the definition

of modern ecology—

also at UGA, by the way —

has become an essential

part of the way we assimi-

late and transmit knowl-

edge between teacher

and student, practice and

practitioner. These inter-

relationships are at what

Eames and Nelson were

hinting at these interrela-

tionships. Being the inno-

vative thinkers they were,

they just invented a differ-

ent way to show it.

With their charge to

develop high-speed tech-

niques for exposing rela-

tionships between unrelated phenomena, their tools would be

films, slides, sound, and narration. With the subject of the

imaginary lesson to be ‘communication’ Eames, Nelson and now

Girard divided up the task into the packages that could be devel-

oped separately. That art itself serves as a kind of communication

was not lost on the group, searching for opportunities among the

broadest possible subject.

Five months later the “Art X” company met in Athens, burdened

with as much equipment as a traveling medicine show. There was

a 16-mm. projector handling both film and magnetic sound. There

were several tape recorders. There were three slide projectors, three

screens which filled the end of the auditorium, cans of film, boxes

of slides, and reels of magnetic tape. Girard’s exhibit arrived in a

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THAT ART iTseLF

seRVes As A Kind

OF COMMUniCATiOn

WAs nOT LOsT On THe

GROUP, seARCHinG

FOR OPPORTUniTies

AMOnG THe BROAdesT

POssiBLe sUBjeCT.

series of mammoth packing cases and he also brought a collection

of bottles of synthetic smells, to be introduced into the room via the

air conditioning system at various points in the show. Seventy-two

hours later when we had staggered through the first creaky perfor-

mance, we found that it took eight people to run it.

What had happened during the months of work was that our ideas

had outstripped technical resources. As an example, while running

off some slide sequences, it occurred to us that two slides run at

once could illustrate certain contrasts. We liked the simultaneous

projection so much that we tried three slides and found ourselves

with a kind of poor-man’s Cinerama on our hands. But to carry out

this simple notion required three projectors, three screens and a

magnetic tape playback.

What was the show about? Any multi-media project that is

more than a series of stills and sounds cannot be described but in

its own terms. Take for example the short section relating to the

idea of ‘abstraction’:

A slide goes on the screen, showing a still life by Picasso. A narra-

tor’s voice identifies it, adds that it is a type of painting known as

“abstract,” which is correct in the dictionary sense of the word,

since the painter abstracted from the data in front of him only

what he wanted and arranged it as he saw fit. The next slide shows

a section of London. The dry voice identifies this as an abstrac-

tion too, since of all possible data about this area, only the street

pattern was selected. Then follow other maps of the same area,

but each presents different data-routes of subways, location of

garages, etc. The voice observes that each time the information is

changed, the picture changes. The camera closes in on the maps

until only a few bright color patches show; the communication

is now useless to the geographer, but there is something new in

the residue of colors and shapes. Then a shift to a distant view of

Notre Dame, followed by a series “which takes you closer and closer.

The narrator cites the cathedral as an abstraction-the result of a

filtering-out process which has gone on for centuries. The single

slide sequence becomes a triple-slide projection. Simultaneous

exterior views change to interior views. Organ music crashes in as

the narration stops. The interior becomes a close-up of a stained

glass window. Incense drifts into the auditorium. The entire space

dissolves into sound, space and color.

Nelson related that though this portion took perhaps only four

minutes, a very complex communication had been completed.

Pre-existing biases, swift adjustments, unexpected juxtapositions

were all brought to focus on the concept, in a way that may have a

required a lecturer an hour to explain. It is important to note that

these were not employed in making art or teaching of the making

of art but in teaching art.

The students in the equation are the primary constituents.

And what do we know about them? They mostly do not become or

intend to become artists. So what should they be taught?

The Nelson-Eames-Girard experiment was no doubt based in

the optimism of the era — an outlook that infused so many of

their designs, with a confidence that students could be at once

dazzled, entertained and cultured with educationally-oriented

technology. The idea seems certainly naïve, if not intentionally

so, in the internet age.

But the project is more than a remnant, as the number of

students streaming into Art X classes in ldsoa each term, with

nary an idea about George Nelson, surely attests. They are making

things, even if part of what they make is questioning whether it

is necessarily art. They are cross-purposing ideas with objects and

artifice in ways that traverse mediums — whether it is blogs or

films or photos or iPhone apps. While not engaged in exactly the

same activites the trio outlined fifty-plus years ago, the boundar-

ies and relationships plus the constraints they place on an art

school have kept us all asking what might still be the essential

question that Lamar Dodd himself brought them down to ask:

What is an art school?

For George Nelson, the last word:

Art X said its piece in an industrial vernacular because industry has

given us more and better ways to say things than we had before. The

pictures, which flickered across the multiple screens were made by

machines, developed by machines and projected by machines. The

voices, music and sounds were electronically recorded, amplified

and played back. But it was people who said the words, wrote the

music, and made the final statement. This is why there is no need to

be afraid of our tools-even in education. The teacher may become

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MICHAEL OLIVERI, CHAIR

Q: Are you teaching students to become artists?Oliveri: Not always. Some of our art students become professional artists, but they were going to do that anyway. ArtX is about visual communication and thinking creatively. The goal is to inspire students to see the creative potential in many disciplines once they leave the BFA program. They pursue a range of professions in architecture, medicine, product design, and digital media at some of the best graduate programs across the country. One of our student got into the very prestigious industrial design school at Stanford. And still many go on to pursue their MFA while others after the ArtX BFA program go straight to work in media related profes-sions. Our students leave with strong art and design knowledge, but mostly they leave with the ability to problem solve using a broad vernacular.

Q: So, they’re not becoming digital media specialistsor installation artists?Oliveri: Maybe, but that’s a small percentage of the students that pass through. For most of the students they take what they learn in this unique program and apply it to whatever they choose to do. My question is; what can we do to increase and expand their approach to life? How can we better prepare them for what the world needs and what it’s becoming. We live in a world where the problems are not being solved by specialists but by collectives of many disci-plines. We are increasingly seeing industry seeking the unusual suspect for employment.

Q: So we should have a degree program where we do this?Oliveri: Yes. Absolutely. Our program is a great compliment to the many other programs we have at Lamar Dodd. It provides a place for the creative students who do not define themselves by the medium but by ideas.

Q: Are those other disciplines still important for an art school?Oliveri: Yes, very. The art department provides a strong foundation where students develop a work ethic, skill sets and historical context. ArtX focuses on the evolution of ideas into form through conceptual direction and skill development.

Q: Communicating an idea like that sounds a lot like what Nelson and Eames were up to all those years ago. Is that he best way for us to connect the two eras?Oliveri: Time has made the connection. We currently live in a world full of visual commu-nication. What our predecessors did was combine Art and Engineering giving us a stylized process. It’s why Apple grows stronger every day and the PC workhorse falls behind. We desire beauty whether it’s in a mathematical equation, computer code, sculpture, painting, or household product. We are only continuing what they started and expanding our idea about how and to whom we are teaching art. There will always be those who continue on to be fine artists. It’s those other students, the majority, who are committed to their creativity but want to apply it outside the art world and into the world at large. That’s why we as an institution should be concerned with them. I think what Nelson, Eames and Girard did enhanced the potential of the artist, and awakened the world to the power of visual communication. They turned up the visual volume on conversation, and we hope to turn it up more.

2010. ART X: EXPANDED FORMS LAMAR DoDD SCHooL oF ART

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Ron ARnHoLM SPeAkS THe LAnGUAGe oF TyPe, VISUAL STRUCTURe AnD SUBTLeTyIn the present era, far more than ever before [where typing on

computers is the standard operating procedure for practically all

formal communication and most design tasks], most everyone

has become familiar with fonts and the choices available to us

to help, hinder, strengthen or emphasize what it is we’re trying

to say. But for some, maybe a relative few, fonts have long been a

primary concern. For an even smaller number, they have been a

preoccupation. For Ron Arnholm, they have been a passion and

a calling. Through them he has been able to do what so many wish

for and so few are able: to build a legacy. Legacy Serif, Sans

Serif and Square Serif, that is. The ITC® Legacy® family was

designed for the International Typeface Corporation, part of

Monotype Imaging. Introduced sequentially

beginning with the first two in 1992, with the

Square Serif and Serif Condensed in 2009,

Arnholm’s Legacy family of fonts has won plau-

dits and accolades the world over. Most recently,

the Legacy Square Serif was among the winners

of the TDC 2010, the thirteenth annual type-

face design competition sponsored by the New

York Type Director’s Club. Only 16 entries out of

176 submitted from 29 countries were selected.

Arnholm’s entry, selected as a “Judges Choice,”

will appear at the front of the TDC 2010 section

of the annual showcase Typography 31. He will

receive a certificate of Excellence in Type Design

this summer, when the TDC Awards Exhibition

opens in New York, to travel the United States, Canada, England

France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Russia and Spain. Arholm’s

discussion of his entry reads, in part:

Rounding out my ITC Legacy family is the square serif version,

begun as pencil sketches on tracing vellum. I worked alternately

over specimens of the serif and sans, with the square serif concept

being my hypothetical interpolation between the two styles.

Final sketches, scanned and brought into Photoshop for editing,

allowed me to work in a manner similar to that of pre-computer

days, before moving to Fontographer.

As an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design

in the late 1950’s, Arnholm came of age at the height of post-

war design innovation. The energy of automation and mass

production, though still a function of the human hand, was fresh

upon the minds of young artists. As a youngster he was enthralled

as he watched his brother Charlie letter signs and trucks, making

a perfect O in one stroke, or hand stripe a fire engine or antique

car, making perfectly straight lines with a long dagger brush. He

worked as a sign painter during his high school years and became

initially interested in type through the industry publication Signs

of the Times, which featured an article each month about the

analysis of a typeface.

While still an undergraduate, Arnholm had his first typeface—

of over 100 to date—accepted by Photo-Lettering, Inc., a mainstay

of the advertising and design industry in New York since the 30’s.

The man who bought the type, Ed Rondthaler, went on to become

one of the founders of ITC (International Typeface Corporation).

In 1980, Arnholm was commissioned to re-design the head-

lines for the new design format of the Los Angeles Times, and in

1985 to re-design their classified type, the world’s largest classified

advertising section. “It took two years to complete, but they were

able to get the paper out a lot quicker with the new font in place

instead of the many they were using previously,” he recalls. All the

while, he was putting together ideas for what would become his

legacy—the designs for the first Legacy Sans and Serif in the 1990’s

that today are a family of 35 fonts.

“The new typefaces add up to what I would call a typographic

tour de force,” writes Monotype Imaging Director of Words and

Letters Allan Haley in the introductory press releases formally

adding the Legacy Square Condensed families to the company’s

ITC collection. “The designs are not only extremely handsome

but also highly versatile for a broad spectrum of creative projects.”

Arnholm went to graduate school at Yale, where he studied

with Paul Rand, the graphic designer known for his corporate

lettermark for IBM as well as the original UPS logo. During this

time he was putting together a kind of unified theory of visual

structure, an ongoing project that helps him and his students

begin to envision, understand and communicate about design. His

syllabus for the last six years has included a handout that Arnholm

hopes to expand into a book: Envisioning Vision: A Vocabulary and

Syntax for Visual Structure and Subtlety.

And therein lies a clue to other passion of Ron Arholm—

a student of visual information and as a professor in the ldsoa,

a conveyor of his insights and passion to generations of students.

legacyLEGACY

T H RO U G H T H e M

H e H A s B e e n

A B L e TO d O W H AT

sO M A nY W i s H

FO R A n d sO F e W

A R e A B L e : TO

BU i L d A L eG A CY.

“It’s so readable, that’s the beauty part of it.”

BY A L A n F LU R RY

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“Everybody knows about using fonts now, and they know that

you can condense them, but are unaware of the subtleties of spac-

ing between letters, words and lines of type,” Arnholm says. “The

problem today is that in today’s world everything visual is happen-

ing at the same time and often at warp speed—and as an educator

I have to slow everything down and point out the subtleties. A

seventy-second of an inch, which is a point, is important in typog-

raphy. Graphic design—and typography in particular—is really all

about nuances. I must get the students to see.”

Arnholm briefly introduces his students to the vocabulary,

which he believes is the key to design: understanding visual struc-

ture. The eight-word lexicon encompasses all of the content that

can be seen—the components of visual reality: space, threshold,

mass, color, semblance, contrast, transition and affect. The lack

of neutrality connoted in the last term is also important, and

Arnholm notes that almost all perceptions have some sort of affec-

tive or emotional tone.

Most of the elements are also given qualifying states, e.g., mass

can have size, shape, texture and density; semblances are objective

or non-objective. When the elements are combined, a syntactic

structure starts to come into view: for instance, “an objective sem-

blance would be a similarity of images of Elvis, or apples; a non-

objective semblance would be a similarity between colors, shapes

or textures,” Arnholm explains. “As well there are different kinds of

transition; a scanned transition, in which it is the eye that moves,

rather than what we are seeing—as in reading—or a serial transi-

tion, as with a photograph or drawing of a row of dominoes as they

begin to fall sequentially.”

And while devising methods to talk about design benefits the

teacher and the students, Arnholm is also convinced on the point

of working by hand to get a feel for what you are making. “I don’t

start on a computer,” Arnholm says of sketching out a new type-

face. “For me the most important tool for conceptualizing isn’t a

computer, but paper, pencil and eraser. I have to feel the letter in

my hands, and have instant feedback to what is happening visu-

ally,” he says. Working on existing specimens of the sans and serif,

he sketched the essential components of the square serif over five

days on vacation in 2005.

Listening to Arnholm talk about his type can sound like poetry,

as he describes seeing nuances in the fifteenth century type of

Nicholas Jenson, on which the roman is based, and how it influ-

enced the design of the square serif version:

I decided to go in this direction,

having no idea that it would result

in a final design that in text sizes

looks more like the original Jenson

model than the Legacy Serif itself

does. All serifs are unrounded and

asymmetrical. The lowercase foot

serifs are much longer on the right,

with minimal bracketing; the left foot serif is slightly tapered,

much shorter and with much greater bracketing. This serif treat-

ment, while it resembles that of the Jenson model, is actually

crisper, since my serifs are unrounded, becoming slightly softened

when reduced to text size.

At a microscopic level, the infinite number of serif corners

in a sentence or paragraph, help to create a very strong edge

definition for the baseline, x-height and cap height, to an

extent even greater than the Jenson model itself. This, plus the

serif asymmetry, the humanist stress which creates interlacing

between letters, the two degrees of bracketing and the subtle

tapering of some serifs, produce a forward momentum and

a feeling of warmth and humanity. And all of this prevents the

font from being too crisp. The sentences are like braided rope

or cable, other square serif examples more like a chain; the square

serif is like music, and other styles more like the mere repetition

of sounds.

After 46 years at UGA, Arnholm remains energized about

design. He teaches his students by theory and example, and that,

in the age of the computer, some of the most important and subtle

parts of the equation are often formed by hand. g

T H e P RO B L e M

i s T H AT i n

TO d AY’s W O R L d

eV e RY T H i n G

V i s UA L i s

H A P Pe n i n G AT

T H e s A M e T i M e

A n d O F T e n AT

W A R P s Pe e d.

aBove : Ron ARnHoLM.far lef t: ARnHoLM’S DeSIGn FoR BRoWn THRASHeR BookS IMPRInT, UGA PReSS. near lef t: ARnHoLM’S LoGo FoR AMeRICAn TUBe AnD ConTRoLS.

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Associate professor of Art Education Tracie Costantino is the

recipient of a 2010 Richard B. Russell Undergraduate Teaching

Award at the University of Georgia. Three Russell Awards are made

each year to recognize excellence in undergraduation instruc-

tion by faculty members early in their careers. Awardees receive a

$5,000 cash award from the Richard B. Russell Foundation.

Isabelle Wallace and Nora Wendl were recipients of the

secac 2009 Award for Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of

Historical Materials.

Wallace received a Center for Humanities and Arts Subvention

Grant from the Wilson Center to subvene the cost of publish-

ing the anthology she is co-editing with Jennie Hirsh, Assistant

Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, MICA: Contemporary

Art and Classical Myth, forthcoming Ashgate, 2010.

Visiting Artist and Assistant Professor, Didi Dunphy exhib-

ited variations on her “Playscape” installation works including

see saws, skateboards, rockers and vinyl graphic designs this

past fall at the Roy C. Moore Gallery at Gainseville State College

and this Spring at the Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College

in Atlanta. “Limitless” at the

Dalton Gallery will include new

works created with the technol-

ogy of laser etch and cut acrylic.

Didi is a panelist this Spring at

gmoa, which includes a screen-

ing of new film, “Who Does

She Think She Is?” and Emory’s

Art Criticism Conference. The

new Professional Practices class

is hosting a dozen guests from

various creative fields such as

intellectual property law, textile

design, public art policy, web

branding, grant writing and

many others.

Professor James Barsness

had a solo exhibit of five elabo-

rate and large scale paintings at

Catherine Clark Gallery in San

Francisco this past April entitled “Dharma Bums” Barsness will

have a solo exhibit at the George Adams Gallery in New York City

this coming October.

Two ldsoa faculty members have been awarded Fulbright

Scholar grants for fall 2010. Professor Diane Edison, chair of

drawing and painting, has been selected as a Fulbright Scholar

grantee to Bulgaria. The title of her grant is “Portraiture Re-defined:

Interdisciplinary Influences on Teaching Beginning Courses.”

Edison will work alongside colleagues in the Fine Arts Department

of New Bulgarian University in Sofia and conduct research on the

Bulgarian artist Vladimir Dimitrov and the fresco portrait images

found in the monasteries of Bulgaria.

Associate professor and co-chair of Art Education Richard

Siegesmund has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar Award to

teach at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland,

during the 2010 fall semester.

Siegesmund’s work in Dublin will include a course based on

his book, Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice;

a second course based on community arts. The first of two public

lectures will focus on his work with the national art and design

curriculum, ThinkTank; and a second public lecture based on the

aesthetic thought of John Dewey and its foundation to arts-based

research methods in the social sciences.

Assistant Professor Julie Spivey’s design for the 2008 and

2009 issues of the School of Art newsletter has won various

design awards including most recently a 2009 case iii Special

Merit Award from the Council for the Advancement of Education.

Spivey and Associate Professor Alex Murawski’s collaborative

work on a promotional poster for the annual Blind Willie McTell

Blues Festival in Thomson, Georgia was recently published in

Print magazine’s Regional Design Annual and was exhibited in

Illustrators 51, the annual exhibition of Society of Illustrators in

New York.

In November, three pieces designed by Spivey’s students,

including an original project design, were published in The New

Graphic Design School by Quarto Press, London.

Professor Stephen Scheer has been accepted into the Artists

& Scholars Residency Program at the American Academy in Rome

for July 2010. Scheer will serve as visiting artist, shooting photog-

raphy on location of historic architectural sites and monuments

in a contemporary context.

Eight images by Scheer have been selected for featured article

on his involvment with “Street Photography” for the London-

based magazine Publication in May 2010.

Scheer is also contracted for a three-picture feature in the

upcoming book Horizontal New York by Maria Hamburg

Kennedy, designed by Richard Padisco, to be published by Rizzoli

International in spring 2011.

Associate professor Tad Gloeckler has been selected as

the Spring 2011 Artist in Residence in the Interdisciplinary Arts

Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arts

Institute in Madison, WI. Responsibilities during the residency

include teaching an interdisciplinary arts studio class culminating

in a presentation/performance of student work, a presentation of

his own work at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art with

an associated public workshop, and participating in an artist’s

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FACULTy Roundup

ASSoCIATe PRoFeSSoRoF ART eDUCATIonTRACIe CoSTAnTIno

Who can resist the allure of the circle?

Circles are perfect: 360 degrees of precisely

equal angles that manifest radiant beauty in

the guise of geometry.

Circles evoke balance, harmony, con-

nectedness, closure. They symbolize full-

ness, and paradoxically, emptiness. A circle

has no beginning and no end.

As a fundraiser at the University of

Georgia, I often hear “circle” as a metaphor

in conversations with donors. They allude

to it in relation to their charitable impulses,

“Suzi, I’m so excited. In making this gift,

I feel as if I’m coming full circle.” Or “I’m

writing this check because I want to com-

plete the circle.” Or “I wouldn’t be where I

am today, if it hadn’t been for uga. Can you

help me circle back to honor my teachers?”

Alumni use these very words to indi-

cate that their gift is a way of “giving

back.” In giving back to their alma mater,

they are actually giving thanks. Thanks

for courses that provided knowledge and

skills to launch successful careers. Thanks

to professors whose dedication provided

memorable teaching, and whose eccentrici-

ties and character provided unforgettable

role-modeling. Thanks to classmates and

roommates, whose friendship enriched the

college years with interpersonal learning

and emotional warmth.

Often, the alumni who give most

ardently are the ones who have benefited

from scholarships, themselves. They

appreciate how their life was transformed

through education and how their dreams

were realized through the help of a gift. I

love listening to donors’ stories about how

remarkable, unexpected acts of generosity

opened doors to otherwise-unattainable,

life-changing learning experiences.

Rick Johnson, now Associate Professor

of Art and Director of the Cortona Program,

went to Cortona for the very first time as a

student. This spring he received the Richard

F. Reiff Internationalization Award in re-

cognition for his lifelong work at and for

the Cortona Program. At the presentation,

he talked about his initiation to Italy and

recounted a conversation with his teacher

and then-department head, Lamar Dodd:

LD: You should study in Cortona.

You’d learn a lot there.

RJ: Sir, I’d like to go, but I can’t afford it.

It costs $750.00 (…a lot in the 1970s)

LD: Well, how much do you have?

RJ: I think I can scrape together $250.00.

LD: All right. Let’s see if this will help.

Dodd took out his check book and

handed Rick Johnson $500.00, and THAT

has made all the difference, not only for

this student turned artist turned profes-

sor turned director, but for the Cortona

Program and all the faculty and students

who have been there under his leadership.

Travel scholarships continue to make

a huge difference and are needed more

than ever. In the global society, today’s

art students must have access to interna-

tional education to acquire the linguistic

and cultural sophistication of their peers

in other disciplines. Anyone who has lived

abroad knows that the experience radically

changes us; it affects our understanding

not only of the world and that “foreign”

country, but also of ourselves, our sense of

identity. Recently, an alumnus called to ask,

“How much is a plane ticket to Costa Rica?

I’ve heard that the ldsoa is starting a new

Maymester program there. I want to help

give someone that opportunity because

studying in another country changed my

life!”

Testimonials like this richly illustrate

the arc or path of the “circle of giving.”

And here’s how to travel the circle of

giving: keeping in mind that there is no

end and no beginning, let’s begin at the top

of the circle (or 12 o’clock). We see that the

spirit of generosity prompts the donor to act

or make a gift. The gift, itself, produces an

amazing opportunity for someone or some

group. That opportunity enriches the life

of the beneficiary, creating a deep sense of

appreciation or gratitude. And that gratitude

generates the spirit of generosity, again.

No matter where you start on the circle

of giving, you take part in something that

never ends. As you give back, you give to

the future. What you give as a remem-

brance of things past becomes your legacy…

and someone else’s bright beginnings. The

circle of giving keeps giving. g

how to participate in the arts with a gift to the lamar dodd school of art

the circLeoF GiVinG:A MEDITATION

ON GENEROSITY

G e n e r o s i t Y

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1 Send a check to make a tax-deductible gift any time through the year. Make

check out to the Arch Foundation or UGA Foundation, LDSOA.

LDSOA General Fund

Art Building and Equipment Fund

Purpose or Area (i.e. scholarships, ceramics, visiting artists)

2 Visit our website: www.art.uga.edu and click on “Make a Gift” to see a

menu of options of ways to benefit the school; then, follow the links to

make a secure, on-line gift

3 “Take a Seat” in the auditorium; your name (plus class year, business, etc.)

will be engraved on a pewter name-plaque to be installed on the arm of

the seats in the LDSOA’s state of the art lecture space. Seats may also be

named in honor of or in memory of a friend, mentor, or loved one. Some

of our seats have been named in honor of donors’ favorite artist. When you

visit www.art.uga.edu, check the “Take a Seat” option under “Make a Gift.”

New name plaques are installed at graduation each year.

4 Contact Suzi Wong, Director of Development for the Fine and Performing

Arts, to ask about making gifts of stock transfers, insurance policies, pledges,

estate plans, etc. If you would like to discuss the possibility of making a

major gift (such as a scholarship or professorship or naming a gallery),

please contact Suzi: (706) 542-9867 or swong@uga.edu

5 If and when you are called by UGA fundraisers during its annual phone

campaign, exercise your option to designate your gift to the Lamar Dodd

School of Art.

s u m m e r 2 0 1 0p

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In my second year as Gallery Director I was thrilled to see attendance expand

and diversify, as each art reception became an event for visual dialogue and a

gathering for the exchange of ideas. No less impressive were the string of student

exhibitions, particularly the BFA Exit Shows and a stellar MFA Exhibition in the

spring. Our inaugural Juried Student Exhibition was a huge success with a large

student participation in both submissions and the organization of the show.

The juror was Julian Cox, Curator of Photography at the High Museum and

featured over 100 works representing every studio practice. The resulting show

was well attended, well-received and reminded me of the thriving community

that we inhabit at River Road.

The Fall 2010 Exhibition Season opens with Drawing: Contemporary

Approaches, a showcase of artists who push the boundaries of conventional

mark making. Michigan-based artist Kathleen McShane stretches tradition with

physically unexpected works conveyed with an intrepid and witty attitude,

while Canadian Barb Bondy’s work is informed by the intersection of science,

art, and philosophy as a graphical dialogue with the human mind and brain.

Running concurrently in Gallery 101, Thom Houser’s site-specific installation

The Other Side of The Mask explores contradiction and self-deception. He

employs still and video images, built environments, sound and original poetry.

During October, the dynamic printmaking duo of Aaron Wilson and Tim

Dooley will bring their “Printstallation” and collaborative spirit to Athens.

Widely exhibited and celebrated printmakers, they are known for their

THe LAMAR DoDD SCHooL oF ART

GalleriesRevolving exhibitions of interactive media, large-scale

painting, and magical ceramic sculpture were some of

the many highlights of the 2009–10 Gallery Season.

PHILIP AyeRS Now ThaT we are here , 2007 oIL on CAnVAS, 48 X 36In.

BY j e F F R eY W H iT T L e

sculptural and experi-

mental approach and

an ongoing dialogue

with contemporary

culture. In celebration

of the opening of our

new ceramics facilities

on River Road this fall,

we will be showcasing

the work of ceramic fac-

ulty past and present.

And later in the fall we

are pleased to have the

second annual Juried Student Exhibition, juried by Stuart Horodner, Artistic

Director at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

In Spring 2011 The Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries are proud to host

the photographic works of Jim Fiscus. Fiscus is an award-winning photographer

and pioneer in digital imaging. Voted International Photographer of the Year

for 2006, Jim Fiscus has had work featured on two communication arts covers

and was named #1 on Campaigns 2008 list of top photographers in the United

Kingdom.

The ldsoa Galleries always seek to showcase technical mastery, provocative

investigation, and art that speaks to our time. Our Galleries strive to create a

direct discourse between innovative contemporary artists and the University

and Athens audiences, especially with our students as they make their own

contributions to this ongoing dialogue. g

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