FAU Announces the University Galleries 2022-23 Season

Image: Installation image from Why Shouldn’t We Talk About These Things At The Table?: a community based conversation with South Florida artists exhibition at the Schmidt Center Gallery featuring Todd Lim (foreground) and Marielle Plaisir (background).

The University Galleries in Florida Atlantic University’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters has announced its 2022-23 exhibition schedule. All exhibitions are presented in the Schmidt Center Gallery and/or Ritter Art Gallery, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton campus. Each season, the University Galleries presents a variety of public programs including traveling exhibitions, lectures, panel discussions, film series and performances, bringing the community opportunities to explore and interact with the visual arts. The 2022-23 season continues this tradition with another engaging lineup of programs that are free and open to the public. For more information, visit fau.edu/galleries.

This fall the following three exhibitions feature three retirement related exhibitions acknowledging and celebrating the careers of Professor Carol Prusa; Associate Professor Tammy Knipp; and University Galleries Director Rod Faulds, who each served FAU for more than 20 years. These exhibitions will have a shared opening reception on Thursday, Sept. 29 at 6:30 p.m.

The season begins with “Porous Boundaries: Carol Prusa” which opens on Friday, Sept.16 and will remain on view in the Schmidt Center Gallery through Friday, Dec. 16. Prusa creates symbolically charged work responding to liminal locations, using graphite pours and silverpoint drawing in a dance between the known and unknown to create erotically charged portals to new possibilities. Unknowing (between day and night) articulates emergent forms, offering insight into the mystery of our existence while embracing the magnitude of the universe with the lawlessness of imagination to distill the sacred.

Coinciding with Prusa’s exhibition will be “To Be Continued: Tammy Knipp” which will open on Friday, Sept. 16 and will remain on view in the Schmidt Center Gallery through Friday, Dec. 16. As global waste continues to be generated, Knipp’s art investigates the concept of bioremediation, a biological degradation process that is a method of reducing pollution. In this exhibition, she reconfigures sculptural forms from found objects that conjure fragments of decay. These forms capture traces of aesthetic properties that are arranged to suggest decomposition with an ecological vision. The exhibition, “To Be Continued,” references the notion of transformation in relation to microbial reactions. Her artwork explores the growing concerns of waste management, while emphasizing the advancement of bioremediation.

The third exhibition this fall is “Surplus Reiterations: Letty Bassart, Rod Faulds, Tom Scicluna,” which opens on Friday, Sept. 30 and will remain on view through Saturday, Nov. 5 in the Ritter Art Gallery. This is a collaborative site-specific installation and performance space project initiated by Faulds in collaboration with visual artist Tom Scicluna and dancer/choreographer Letty Bassart, both Miami-based artists. The project engages objects sourced from the University’s "Surplus" operation, where furniture and many other objects go to die, or find other users. Faulds’ career-long collaboration with artists, his emergence as a visual artist and an ongoing dialogue with Scicluna, whose practice often brings common objects into the realm of art, eventually resulted in an invitation to Bassart who is committed to presenting dance/performance in non-traditional spaces. After collaboratively “designing” the gallery spaces, including how the spaces might function for movement-based performance, Bassart is inviting FAU student dancers and area professional dancers to perform in one or more pieces she designed and choreographed in response to the unique spaces. Among many other themes, the project obliquely mines and questions: art/design; trash/refuse/surplus, etc.; and display/performance space.

“southXeast: contemporary southeastern art” is on view at the Schmidt Center Gallery beginning on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023 through Saturday, March 11, 2023 and at the Ritter Art Gallery from Friday, Jan. 20, 2023 through Saturday, March 4, 2023. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023 at 6:30 pm. This exhibition is a unique contribution to South Florida’s visual arts offerings as it complements and expands upon the region’s Miami-centered contemporary art scene. “southXeast” presents emerging and under-represented artists and is the only curated exhibition regularly presented in Florida to collectively present artists of the southeast region. Devoid of thematic ballast, the exhibition has the simple aim that our student audiences might benefit by seeing high quality artwork not commonly or ever seen in South Florida and/or Miami, a growing international center of contemporary art activity. The exhibition also seeks to present a myriad of approaches to contemporary art making while also representing specific studio art disciples that are taught in FAU’s Department of Visual Arts and Art History.

“As It Was: the show that never happened” will be on view in the Schmidt Center Gallery from Friday, April 21, 2023 through Saturday, May 20, 2023 and by appointment only from Tuesday May 23, 2023 through Thursday, July 1, 2023. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. The exhibition will include a juried selection of artworks from students who received their BA, BFA, or MFA between the Spring 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters, during which they were unable to have an in-person graduate exhibition due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Students continued to make exceptional art throughout this time which was only viewed through online exhibitions. These programs are dedicated to preparing practicing studio artists for advanced study and a career in art, which includes the chance to install and showcase their work. The exhibition, curated by BFA graduates Natalie Luong and Paris Valladares, will include work from areas of printmaking, ceramics, photography, painting and mixed media.

 

The 2022-2023 University Galleries, FAU Season also includes:

• “Fall Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition”, Ritter Art Gallery, opening reception on Thursday, December 1 at 6:30 pm, runs through Friday, Dec. 16, 2022.
• “Fall AMPlified Exhibition” Schmidt Center Gallery Public Space, opens Thursday, Dec. 1, and will remain on view through Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.
• “Spring AMPlified Exhibition” will open in the Schmidt Center Gallery Public Space on Thursday, May 18, 2023 and will run through Thursday, June 29, 2023.
• Four free “Family Art Days,” Schmidt Center Gallery and Ritter Art Gallery: Saturday, October 1, 10:30 a.m. - 4:00 pm; Saturday, Dec. 3, 10:30 am – 4 pm, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, 10:30 am – 4 pm, and Saturday, April 22, 2023, 10:30 am – 4 pm. Children and families can participate in fun and interactive tours of exhibitions to experience art and create their very own works of art.
• “The Boys & Girls Club of Palm Beach County: Annual ImageMakers Exhibition,” Schmidt Center Gallery Public Space, Friday, March 17, 2023 – Thursday, May 4, 2023.
• “Annual Juried Student Exhibition,” Ritter Art Gallery, opening reception on Thursday, March 23, 2023 at 6:30 pm, runs through Saturday, April 8, 2023.
• “Spring Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition,” Ritter Art Gallery, opening reception on Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 6:30 pm, runs through Friday, May 5, 2023.

FAU’s University Galleries are open Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 4 p.m and Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. School and group tours can be scheduled by appointment by contacting Helen Edmunds at UGMuseumEd@fau.edu. The Schmidt Center Gallery is located in the Performing Arts building (building #51), near the Living Room Theaters. Daytime visitors must obtain a temporary one-day parking pass online for $5 at http://parking.fau.edu to park in Parking Garage 2 for Schmidt Center Gallery. There are also Parkmobile mobile app meters in the parking lot just north of the entrance to Parking Garage 2 that only accept credit or debit card payment.

The 2022-23 University Galleries Exhibitions and Programs are supported by the Isadore and Kelly Friedman University Galleries Fund; and sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County. Museum Education Programs are made possible by the Kaye Arts Integration Endowment.  For more information, call 561-297-2661, email autley2018@fau.edu or visit www.fau.edu/galleries.