FacultyStaff Show 2015 - Art Exhibition

This exhibition showcases the work of studio faculty in the departments of Art & Visual Communication and Electronic Media Communications at University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. The work included represents a wide range of media, stylistic approaches, and creative research interests. Participating faculty members made their own selections of work for inclusion, with the disciplines of painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video, sound recording, and other forms of work represented. The range and scope of the exhibit helps demonstrate the technical skills, aesthetic understanding, and creative interests that faculty at UC Blue Ash bring to students in the classroom and studio. The exhibition was edited and organized by John Wolfer, H. Michael Sanders, Andy Marko and Stefanie Bethuy. Participating faculty include:

Adjunct Instructor, Electronic Media Communications
The Mummy, photograph (2005), $250

Other Works in Exhibition

Phoenix, photograph (2011), $250
Just Legs, photograph (2011), $250

Artist's Statement

The three images chosen for this exhibition have nothing in common except that they were all created to please the photographer. The mummy was taken as part of a personal project involving Halloween. The burn survivor was photographed at the World Burn Congress in 2011. I came away from that event inspired by individuals who have risen above extreme challenges in life. "Just Legs" was taken while sitting on a bus in Switzerland. It is the happy accident that street photographers live for. In each case, I felt as if I received a gift from my subject.

Associate Professor of Communication Design
Silk Strata 2, hand-dyed silk (2014), $100

Other Works in Exhibition

Silk Strata 1, hand-dyed silk (2014), $100
Silk Strata 3, hand-dyed silk (2014), $1000

Artist's Statement

My art has always been inspired by the abstract interplay of color, form and texture. Hand-dyed silk allows me to make intentional decisions about these elements in a two-dimensional space while the sheer quality of silk gauze and organza produces unexpected moments in the layered compositions. The artwork is designed to allow viewers to investigate the interplay between layers of silk and the shifts that occur in the composition when viewed from different angles and distances.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Electronic Media Communications
Playful Lory, photograph (2014), $100

Other Works in Exhibition

Perch Hunter, photograph (2014), $100
Tired Iguana, photograph (2012), $100

Artist's Statement

At its essence, what is represented here is nature through my eyes.  A candid moment as an animal is behaving or misbehaving in a manner when they feel no one is watching.  The best response to my work, is any unexpected feeling, even one as simple as a smile.

Assistant Professor, Electronic Media Communications
Nessus the Centaur, 3D powder print (2013), $300

Other Works in Exhibition

Standing Wave in Ink, ink on watercolor paper (1994), $200
Standing Waves in Motion (Dyptich), photographic print (2014), $400

Artist's Statement

This work represents research interests that span years of visual experimentation. These interests include using the camera to capture phenomena that give hints to deeper truths found in nature and the human condition. “Standing Wave in Ink” is a record of a method that I discovered in graduate school for capturing the action of phenomena referred to as standing waves. A vibrating source is applied to a tray with water and ink. Under the correct conditions a disturbance builds and shifts to an equilibrium that creates a series of waves that are in constant motion but always standing still. The result of the action is frozen after several hours and can be seen as a “photograph” of the process. Years later rediscovered and documented this phenomenon in a series of actual photographs. “Standing Waves in Motion” is a diptych that comprises 2 shots of a small area on the beach where the tide moves out to the sea and carves tiny cuts in the sand. Irregularities in the flow set up a dynamic in which forces push and pull to create a harmonized stasis. The result is a ribbon of waves that stand in one spot but are constant motion. As with the “Standing Wave in Ink”, this collective action is a record of standing waves but in this case, captured in the ‘wild’.

I’m also interested in using the computer to visualize things that could never be seen in any other fashion via simulation, animation and modeling. Paired with this is the exploration of 3-dimensional printing technology. “Nessus the Centaur” was printed using additive powder printing and served as a model-making demos for students, displayed here for its aesthetic potential and function as a pedagogical tool for enrichment of the modern hands-on classroom.

Adjunct Instructor, Electronic Media Communications
Luci de Nara, photograph (2002), $100

Other Works in Exhibition

El Santuario de Chimayo (1), Chimayo, New Mexico, photograph (2007), $100
El Santuario de Chimayo (2), Chimayo, New Mexico, photograph (2007), $100

Artist's Statement

The image of a child reaching up to touch the hollow face of the beautiful sculpture "Luci di Nara" by Igor Mitoraj speaks to me of the desire to engage with art as a path to self-knowledge, and brings to mind a concept that we teach in the class Media Aesthetics -- that art is a way in which we express an understanding of our own humanity. In creative work, I find myself on a pilgrimage motivated by the same desire, to get to the essence of what touches me and to connect with others through the expression of our common engagement with life and our place in the natural world.

Santuario de Chimayo is the historic church in the village of Chimayo, a tiny town in the high desert between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. Built in 1816, the sanctuary is known far and wide as a healing place. Pilgrims enjoy the quiet that emanates from its humble adobe and log interior adorned with colorful retablos of Jesus and the saints. Most of all, people come to visit a tiny room off the main sanctuary where they fill containers with "holy dirt" believed to provide miracles. Santuario de Chimayo speaks to me as another expression of the link between people, spirituality, art, and the earth -- an intersection that continues to fascinate me and provide ever-evolving subject matter for my creative work.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Electronic Media Communications
Ukrainian Time: Poltava Small Fears, photograph (2010), $150

Other Works in Exhibition

Ukrainian Time: Buimerovka, photograph (1990), $150
Ukrainian Time: Poltava Gateway, photograph (2008), $150
Ukrainian Time: Kharkov, photograph (2013), $150

Artist's Statement

We all seem destined to contrive and reinvent the place where we were born and raised. For me, however, Eastern Europe in general and Ukraine in particular is more than just the spiritual playground of my youth. Today these are the lands where human nerve endings come close to the surface as nowhere else. History and circumstance have made this part of the world a colossal testing ground for human endurance and endeavor. This ground is inhabited by my heroes, whom I see sometimes as proud and earnest, and sometimes as eccentric and confused. In this respect Ukrainian Time is an exploration of the little known and elusive soul of an evolving people. The people and their culture seem to exist in a suspended state between antiquity and modernity, with modernity often eagerly giving way to the ever-present tradition. The old and the new live together with their boundaries overlapping and tangled in a way only straight documentary photography can capture.

Professor Maslov’s photographic book, Ukrainian Time: One Hundred Findings in the Borderland (2013), is available through Amazon.com.

Chinese Water Torture, video (7:45), bamboo chair with leather restraints and electric light on metal stand (2014), $500

Other Works in Exhibition

1. Chinese Water Torture No. 1, video, 3:00
2. Chinese Water Torture No. 2, video, 4:45

Artist's Statement

This video piece (with installation elements) plays upon the viewer’s sense of expectation, with subtle variations in the visual tempo and speed apparent amid the repetition of falling droplets or streams of viscous liquid. The sound design is an extremely important element of the work with a weirdly musical quality of alternating tones accompanied by subtly shifting attack and decay, timbre and duration evident among the individual “notes” sequenced (particularly in Chinese Water Torture No. 2). The video footage used in the construction of this piece was produced during an artist’s residency at the Experimental Television Center, Owego, New York in April 2011. The Office of the Dean, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College provided travel funds for the ETC residency. Postproduction and sound design were completed in the studios of Electronic Media Communications at UC Blue Ash College in 2014.

Associate Professor of Communication Design
Union Terminal, Cincinnati, OH, photograph (gicleé print from 8”x10” film negative) (2014), $500

Artist's Statement

I often look for obscure or out-of-the-way vantage points when pursuing an image; while the Cincinnati Union Terminal is the subject of the composition, the camera’s extreme depth-of-field creates an atmosphere allowing all of the information in the frame to be in-focus. The view from West McMicken Avenue leading down to the Brighton neighborhood has always been an interesting vantage point. What was once a thriving neighborhood overlooking the Miami-Erie Canal, the predecessor to the railroad, establishes the environment. The architecturally historic [former] train terminal is juxtaposed in an industrial setting that has long forgotten the glory days of commuter train travel, sitting by the expressway. Both have become monuments to the city’s past.

Adjunct Instructor, Electronic Media Communications
Wayne Shorter (Weather Report), silver gelatin photograph (1973), $75

Other Works in Exhibition

Mike Love, silver gelatin photograph (1974), $75
Roger McGuinn, silver gelatin photograph (1973), $75
Miroslav Vitous (Weather Report), silver gelatin photograph (1973), $75

Artist's Statement

These prints were selected from conveniently-at-hand examples of my teenage and college-age obsession with fully capturing every concert that I attended. This was long before camcorders became common, let alone cell phones; yet much like some modern cell phone users, I often paid more attention to capturing the event, rather than experiencing it in the moment. I usually snuck in a portable, as well as my father’s 35mm Nikon camera with its extreme zoom lens (as well as being a professional musician, ne was also an avid photographer). I shot mostly Tri-X film, then developed it myself (pushing the exposure to at least 800 ASA) and then did my own printing. Often, the photos accompanied concern reviews that I wrote for local publications. More recently sharing my photos on fan website has given them new life: two of them were used for the expanded CD reissue of an album by the English folk-rock group Fairport Convention.

Adjunct Assistant Professor
Paris Lookout, oil over acrylic on canvas, 45”x60” (2002), $4000

Artist's Statement

Using iridescent, interference and metallic acrylics under oils, with many paint layers and a large canvas, I try to create a dreamlike atmosphere. The setting could be a formal room interior, exterior or garden, a stage of sorts. In this shifting environment I have a central character, and around him or her I have transparent flying horses, dogs and other animals and shadowy images. The viewer is invited into this space for a few moments to escape reality and experience another dimension.

Adjunct Instructor, Electronic Media Communications
Lincoln Portrait, audio recording on video with music score, 15:00 (2013), NFS

Artist's Statement

Lincoln Portrait was recorded live in Cincinnati’s Music Hall, on the weekend of November 8, 2013, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Dr. Maya Angelou under the direction of Louis Langreé. The recording is accompanied by two commissioned pieces on the album Hallowed Ground: “Pleasure Ground” by Nico Muhly and “Mountain” by David Lang. Live recording presents numerous challenges, including the audience, acoustical differences apparent on occasions of individual performances, and orchestral performance changes such as tempo and intonation.  The final master was comprised of recording from three evening performances and a supplemental “patch” session. Dr. Angelou was recorded during post-production at Ovation Sound Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was a joy and pleasure to work with such talented musicians and project producer, Elaine Lee Martone.

The Cincinnati Symphony CD release Hallowed Ground, recorded by Chelsea VandeDrink, is available on Amazon.com.

Assistant Professor of Communication Design
Ad Series of Risk Factors (4 pieces), inkjet print (2014), NFS

Other Works in Exhibition

Teaching & Learning Center Wordmark and Identifier, inkjet print (2014), NFS

Artist's Statement

Ad Series of Risk Factors
These ads are the first set in a series of information graphics meant to simplify the complex medical information typically provided to breast cancer patients. By incorporating anecdotal experiences, I hope to provide context and understanding for other patients and those potentially at-risk. This work was peer-reviewed in a Faculty Learning Community and will continue to be explored in future applications.

Wordmark and Indentifier
The visual wordmark and graphic identifier were created for the UCBA Learning + Teaching Center. The word mark, in the form of an equation with the key words in bold, has been approved and is currently being used in written communications. The graphic identifier, meant to be a simple yet memorable representation of the cyclical nature of learning and teaching, has been submitted as a draft to the UCBA Communications Department and is currently under review.

Assistant Professor, Electronic Media Communications
Five Musical Détournements Involving Gender and the Media: No. 3- Airbrushed, video, 5:10 (2012-2013), NFS

Other Works in Exhibition

No. 1- Bionic Guānyīn, video, 5:49 (2012), NFS
No. 2- Face, video 5:42 (2012), NFS
No. 4- Burst, video, 3:43 (2013), NFS
No. 5- Hair Club for Men, video, 4:08 (2013), NFS

Artist's Statement

Five Musical Détournements Involving Gender and the Media is a series of five “found footage” social media video works I created as criticism of the media’s role in constructing societal gender expectations. Borrowing terminology and technique from Guy Debord, the Letterist International, and Situationist movements of the late 1950s through early 1970s, I refer to the works as détournements. These pieces attempt to turn commercial media representations of gender back on themselves, in a critique of the consumer capitalist culture that produced the images.

Adjunct Instructor
Untitled, photograph (archival inkjet print), $650

Artist's Statement

Life’s surprises and unexpected moments intrigue me. I’m a curious person by nature and a lover of surprises. These traits, combined with my fascination for the human condition and character, have shaped my work. I focus on topics that explore, with humor, the ironies of life along with the inherent social, ethnic, and economic implications and contradictions. I look to life’s big and little moments to find meaning while I present unusual juxtapositions to cause pause, question, surprise and maybe, a smile. Other bodies of work examine qualities that speak of courage, compassion, & the resilient nature within us. My goal is to express a timeless, carefree joy, a slice in time, where the magic of the moment is captured forever.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Fine Arts
View of Mt. Fuji, mixed media, 20”x25” (2014), $550

Other Works in Exhibition

Time Out, pastel, 24”x32” (2015), $1800,
Wonder, mixed media, 14”x18” (2014), $250

Artist's Statement

Currently my work is somewhere between illustration and tempered realism. Making certain images allows me to project myself into the world through them as in the two illustrations with the pink inner tube and the little girl. Imagery with contrasting themes is interesting to me as well and I use it to create tension in the picture plane between the figure and ground.

Adjunct Instructor
Acoustic Painting, cast primer paint and latex (2014), NFS

Artist's Statement

A ceiling tile is a fairly silent object. It is meant to go unnoticed, to obscure piping and duct work above it. It’s material nature and formal qualities soften and suppress sound and visually sink into a peripheral. A highly functional and effective negative hallucination, rather than seeing what is not there, one fails to notice and acknowledge the presence of these tiles.

Acoustic Painting works to invert these qualities, physically as a sculptural negative image and intellectually as a nonfunctional aesthetic object. Cast as a mixture of latex and primer paint (another material typically meant to conceal rather than reveal), the stalagmites and pebbles protruding from the surface of the painting give form to a previously silent space. In the surface of this monochrome field, quietness gains voice.

Associate Professor, Electronic Media Communications
Heartfelt, needle-felted wool (2014), $4000

Other Works in Exhibition

Ancient Makes a Rare Appearance Motivating a Pneumatic Actuator to Demagnetize the Current Between Son and His Destiny, digital print on fabric (2014), $500

Artist's Statement

A casual observer of my work in this show might think that it by two different artists, because of the two different media exhibited: needle felted wool, and vector-based painting. Working in several different media at the same time is very typical of my art making. I get ideas all the time, and when I develop them the media chosen for each work is integral to the message. The concepts that seem to be universal throughout all of my art making is a certain ‘surreal humor’. I am greatly influenced by the cartoons that I watched growing up and the underground comics that I read as a young man. The Dada and Surrealist movements that I studied in art school have been another big influence on my ideation. These influences have tempered this ‘surreal humor’ that permeates all of my artwork. You can see more of my work on my website.

Adjunct Assistant Professor
Beach Toys, oil on canvas (2008), $3600

Other Works in Exhibition

Soap Dish and Candle Fish, oil on canvas (2008), $630

Artist's Statement

Presently, using a somewhat whimsical subject matter, I am interested in working colorfully with the illusion of space both in front of and behind the picture plane, using a strong contrast in values and textures to that end.

Adjunct Associate Professor of Fine Art
Pilgrimage, varnished watercolor on panel (2014), $1000

Other Works in Exhibition

Colorful Leaves, varnished watercolor on panel (2013), $1000

Artist's Statement

These watercolor paintings are part of a recent series that celebrates the complexity and beauty of the ordinary botanical lives that surround us.

Adjunct Associate Professor, Electronic Media Communications
Mr. Audio Podcast Reel, video, 15:17 min (2011-2014) NFS

Artist's Statement

This reel is a sampling from over 300 one-to-three minute video podcast episodes produced to illuminate and clarify aspects audio. Episodes discuss audio history and significant technical developments by figures such as Edison, Bell, and Doppler; examine audio concepts such as waveforms, timbre, harmonics, phasing and Haas effect; and describe how various musical instruments produce sound or how technical innovations have helped people enjoy sound. A new episode is published each Wednesday morning on YouTube. 

Professor, Electronic Media Communications
Unhappy Readymade Redux, geometry book and video, 8:16 (2009-2014), $2500

Artist's Statement

This conceptual process-piece is my reimagining and recreation of the ephemeral 1919 work by Marcel Duchamp entitled Unhappy Readymade. As a wedding gift, Marcel Duchamp sent tidings to his newlywed sister, Suzanne and her second husband, Dada painter Jean Crotti in the form of instructions for the couple to purchase a geometry book and hang it by strings from the balcony of their Paris apartment, abandoned to the ravages of the weather. Duchamp never actually laid eyes on the work, nor did he check the gift registry.

I approached my reenactment or performance of Unhappy Readymade Redux in the true spirit of a readymade: a found set of preexisting general instructions for undertaking an indeterminate process. It was an experimental activity that amused and interested me on several levels, including the fact that it was a book-oriented work, that it was a process piece that focused on both time and unpredictable forces, and reflected a very Taoist notion concerning operating directly in the manner of nature and through nature.

I consider my version of the work a performance based upon a previously written “score,” much like a musical score guiding a performer’s free interpretation of a standard jazz composition. I much more carefully and thoroughly documented my version, and sustained the performance for 816 consecutive days (2 years and 3 months) until suspended on December 31, 2011. The work began on October 7, 2009 as a mass-produced book (one example of many) that became singular art object through the gentle violence of its slow destruction. It also reflects a shift away from permanent, static sculpture to ephemeral and transitory forms.

Nude Descending a Straircase, video, 6:30 (2007), $250
Nude Descending Variation No. 3, video 1:30 (2007)
Nude Descending Variation No. 4, video 1:30 (2007)

Artist's Statement

Nude Descending a Staircase was inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 painting of the same name. Duchamp sought to depict motion in static, two-dimensional art and thrust the classic nude of fine art tradition into everyday life, upsetting the rarified aesthetic isolation of “high art.” In updating Duchamp, we explore the visual fracturing of space and time, while suggesting that nude figures are strictly “regulated.” When the nude escapes its academic fine art context does it simply become profanely naked? This video views the nude figure as consciously and defiantly stripped bare, fully aware of the gaze precipitated, and subversively comfortable despite cultural taboos.

Conceived, produced and directed by H. Michael Sanders; edited by William Boyle; produced and art directed by David Hartz; production management by Lou Olenick.
Nude Descending Variation No. 3 produced by H. Michael Sanders and Todd Uttley.
Nude Descending Variation No. 4 produced by H. Michael Sanders and William Boyle.

Assistant Professor of Communication Design
Greatness is Within, photograph (2014), $100

Other Works in Exhibition

As It Stands, photograph (2014), $100
Big Sky, photograph (2015), $100

Artist's Statement

What motivates me in my creative activity is a strong interest in stories and the idea that everything and everyone has a story to tell. My longtime interest in the intersection of graphic design and photography was further developed when I was exposed to film and motion graphics during my graduate study. This experience made me see photography differently— as motion, paused. I have become fascinated with the idea that, in photographs, the presence of motion exists because of our awareness of its absence. Motion remains a factor, only implied, like the phenomenon of closure— minimal information is presented leaving the mind to fill in the rest. I interpret motion as, not simply movement, but also as a story that is unfolding. 

In my work, I am searching for these paused moments, requiring closure, and the untold story. It is hard to experience any situation without being aware that I am constantly looking through a lens. Elements of color, form and the division of two-dimensional space are used to isolate key frames that hints at a larger context. The results are a bridge of my strong influence of foundational design principals and the photographic medium.

Professor of Art
Double Negative, nylon, steel and wood (2007), $1200

Other Works in Exhibition

Soothe, fiberglas insulation (2007), $2000

Artist's Statement

Five Musical Détournements Involving Gender and the Media is a series of five “found footage” social media video works I created as criticism of the media’s role in constructing societal gender expectations. Borrowing terminology and technique from Guy Debord, the Letterist International, and Situationist movements of the late 1950s through early 1970s, I refer to the works as détournements. These pieces attempt to turn commercial media representations of gender back on themselves, in a critique of the consumer capitalist culture that produced the images.