Travis Seifman: CJS Fellowship Recipient

MA student Travis Seifman is the recipient of the Center for Japanese Studies Graduate Fellowship for the 2010 - 2011 academic year.

Alum Steve Coy returns to Honolulu as the final Orvis Artist in Residence of the year at the Honolulu Academy of Art

excerpted from the Honolulu Academy blog

Keep this in mind when you visit the Academy’s final Artist in Residence of the year. Steve Coy returns to Honolulu (the MFA Graduate of UHM made a name for himself in the local art scene while he was here) from Detroit, Michigan, where he and his wife Dorota reside and create art together. His move to Motown after finishing school was a strategic one. It is cheap, and “there’s a lot of blank canvases,” he says, referring to the city’s many empty, abandoned spaces. Sounds like an art center just waiting to happen.

Although his focus was in ceramics at university, Coy has moved onto installation and performance. He draws inspiration from corporate and pop culture, fashion, interior design, and architecture, and his recent work addresses real versus perceived and imagined spaces, technology, consumption, and elitism. His work is most definitely imagined, as the spaces he’s created during his young career are ones you won’t stumble upon in your daily life. They are very real though, and he started creating one last Saturday at the Academy. He’ll be here for five more weekends. So come and see ”creativity” in action. It will be something you haven’t seen before, just be prepared to look, digest, question, and answer. Click here for video footage of Urban Futurescape, Coy's installation at HAA.

AIR Steve Coy: Gallery 31 (under Banyan court), March 20-April 25, Saturdays 10am-4:30pm, Sundays 1-5pm. He will also be at work during ARTafterDARK this Friday, March 26, 6-9pm.

The Academy Artist in Residence program is funded by The Arthur and Mae Orvis Foundation Inc.

Laura Ruby Interviewed at Nancy Drew Convention

Laura Ruby was interviewed at a recent Nancy Drew Convention by HerInteractive, a company dedicated to creating games for 'girls of all ages.'

Professors and Alumni featured in: Out Of Hawai'i

Drawing and Painting program Chair, Debra Drexler, curated Out of Hawai'i, an exhibition that features the works of 15 prominent UH professors and alumni. Out of Hawai'i was part of the PooL Art Festival in New York City March 5, 6, and 7, 2010 and the exhibition remained on display at the Gershwin Hotel until April 3, 2010.
The featured artists in Out of Hawai'i were Mary Babcock, Gaye Chan, Peter Chamberlain, Charles Cohan, Peggy Cyphers, Liam Davis, Debra Drexler, Jodi Endicott, Scott Groeniger, Wendy Kawabata, Chae Ho Lee, Isaac Parker, Yida Wang, Suzanne Wolfe, and Michele Zalopany.
Out of Hawai'i was recently featured in HI Art Magazine, click here to read the review.

Collateral: 2010 BFA Graphic Design Portfolio Showcase

UHM Graphic Design Program presents Collateral: 2010 Senior BFA Graphic Design Student Portfolio Showcase at the Academy Art Center at Linekona -
May 6, 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. at 1111 Victoria Street Honolulu, HI. Free parking is available.

Collateral is defined as " belonging to the same ancestral stock but not in a direct line descent" and aptly describes the work presented in this presentation of design work. The process of design requires many trials, multiple iterations, and countless ideas in order to create a finished product. The work displayed within Collateral marks the culmination of not only a class experience but seven individual journeys.

The featured designers are : Michelle Ann Carino, Adine Close, John Cruz, Jennifer Garcia, Kelsey Ige, Hao In Kuan, and Yonghao Yan.

Yong Hao Yan

BFA Design student Yong Hao Yan received the Bronze Award for his book Chinatown at The Art Director's Club of New York, annual international competition. Yan was one of 84 medal winners internationally. His work will be published in the 2010 Art Directors Club Advertising and Design Annual as well as be shown in New York City and internationally.

Design Students Awarded at American Advertising Federation Pele Awards and more!

Kelli Ann Harada received two awards for her exhibition catalogue design: Writing with Thread
1- the Award of Excellence and for the best book designed in Hawai'i in 2009 from the American Advertising Federation Pele Awards
2- an Honorable Mention at the American Association of Museums 2010 Museum Publications Design Competition.

Congratulations to Kelli and the UH Art Gallery - adding to the success of the exhibition!



Michelle Saoit and Angelica Rabang received the Award of Excellence for the poster Boom, advertising the 2009 BFA Design portfolio exhibition from the American Advertising Federation Pele Awards.

Jacqueline Rush Lee

2000 MFA Alum Jacqueline Rush Lee has artwork featured in Open Book: An International Survey of Experimental Books at Ford Gallery, Eastern Michigan State University, April 15 - June 15, 2010.
Rush Lee is also a featured artist in PLAYING WITH BOOKS: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing & Re-Imagining the Book, by Jason Thompson.

Ryan Greenly MFA Thesis Exhibition

MFA Student Ryan Greenly has his MFA thesis exhibition, The Recluse, opening on April 18, 2010 at the UH Commons Gallery.
Greenly states " The work dwells in/on the relationship between artistic isolation, eccentric behaviors, neurotic lifestyles, and obsessive patterns. It investigates whether asceticism or escape is a productive way to meditate and transform contemporary civilization and technology..... The nostalgia of the classical cabin complete with blueprints, electricity, and readymade lumber acts as a pseudo-transcendentalist escape. The recluse/artist advocates uncivilized ways of life to achieve a feral existence through rewilding. He or she advocates a simpler lifestyle, even while beholden to certain aspects of mass consumer culture. The shed is ultimately a cultural illumination of the struggles between the artist as "truth" provider."
The Recluse will be on display from April 18 - 23, 2010. Opening reception is April 18 from 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. Commons Gallery hours are Monday - Friday 10:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Charles Cohan

MGP09.I-X, 46" x 40", collograph print, ed of 1 +1 AP,2010
Mt. Rainier, 38" x 28", screenprint, ed. 5/10, 2010

Graduate Program Chair and Printmaking Professor Charles Cohan has a solo show Circuits on display at Curator's Office in Washington D.C. Circuits, Cohan's second solo exhibition at Curator's Office, includes two bodies of work, Tracks and Peaks. In Tracks "Cohan continues his interest in typologies imposed by humans on the land. Researching aerial views of race tracks on Google Earth... the race track circuits are then layered according to a particular season of races. The resulting mysterious tangle of lines evokes a knot gone awry or a pile of unwound paperclips Cohan admits to a fascination with ' the graphic overlapping of specific typology of architectonic forms, the simultaneous mapping if distinct yet coordinate information systems, the optical confusion that occurs within the overlaying of images of a shared type, and the loss of the original amidst the repetition of the similar.'"

In Peaks Cohan references topographical maps to translate his relationship to the Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. According to essayist Jaimey Hamilton "The series represents Cohan's personal relationship to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest he has chosen to commemorate his traverse on these mountains in an interesting way... Each print is made of an accumulation of up to 24 incrementally smaller shapes of ink that each represent 80 ft. on a map... The exact measurements and contours of the topographical survey actually obscure the identity of the peaks."

Circuits which opened on April 3, 2010 will be on display until May 1, 2010.

MFA Students featured in BODY/MIND exhibition

MFA students Megan Bent, Chen Carmi, Roxanne Chasle, Elizabeth R. Curtis, Jessica Damsky, Dustin Hart, Shannon Leitch, Emily McIlory, Kumi Nakajima, Alyssa Olivier, Jessica Orfe, Jeannie Randall, J. Robert Reed, Jennifer Rubin, Boz Schurr, Katie Small, and Chad Steve will have new work featured in the group exhibition BODY/MIND presented by the Y Center, an new alternative art space in Honolulu, HI.
BODY/MIND will be on display from April 23rd - May 14th, 2010 at the Y Center [ 900 North Nimitz Hwy. Honolulu HI, 96817]. Y Center gallery hours are Tues. - Sat. 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
BODY/MIND opening reception is First Friday May 7th, 2010 from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.