Works by two UAB Department of Art and Art History faculty, Doug Barrett, M.F.A., and Christopher Lowther, M.F.A., are in “Art of the State,” a juried show featuring pieces by 27 full- and part-time studio-art faculty from two- and four-year Alabama colleges and universities.
The “Art of the State” exhibition will be on show at the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art through March 2, 2012. The body of work will then travel to museums in Troy and Gadsden.
“This exhibition celebrates contemporary visual art and displays the experimental and creative work of studio artists who teach at Alabama’s colleges and universities,” said Stephanie Qualls, curator of education and exhibits at the museum.
Barrett is an assistant professor of graphic design at UAB. With more than 20 years of professional graphic design experience, his award-winning work has been featured in many design publications, including the LogoLounge Master Library #3 and the upcoming LogoLounge #7. His digital print “Kindness of Strangers” is in “Art of the State.”
Lowther, an assistant professor of time-based media at UAB, holds a secondary faculty appointment in the UAB Department of Mechanical Engineering and co-directs the Leonardo Art and Engineering Interdisciplinary Program. He teaches video, animation, interactive design and 3D modeling/animation. Lowther is a recipient of the prestigious College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, in recognition of his innovative use of space and video projection to reference stereotypes of masculinity in Hollywood film. His videos and installations have exhibited both nationally and internationally. His exhibited work, “Tease,” is an interactive boîte d'optique, French for optical box, an early optical device or toy created before the advent of cinema.