When have you last had a good, or even great, conversation? Was it with an old friend, colleague at work, or in a spirited debate with a stranger (soon perhaps, to be a friend) where you were challenged by someone or some idea that you had never considered?
Sun Touch, JB Wood
For me, the best conversations - where the resulting insights "stick" - are those which have depth and humor. Those where at the end I have had to conclude that my way of looking at the world has changed - when some new learning, some new joy from the experience, or appreciation of the subject at hand, was the result.
Over the last (large!) number of years, my best and longest-lasting conversational partner has been with Glass, and the process of making sculpture.
---JB Wood
Builders No. 3, Jacob Lawrence
This exhibition is the culminating project of students enrolled in a UM-Dearborn Art History capstone seminar taught by Professor Susan Erickson
Drawing on the strengths of the permanent collection of the Stamelos Gallery Center made possible through donor contributions through the years, a selection of prints, paintings and glass explores the ways artists have interpreted places and spaces. Artworks range in approach from realistic to fantastic, and abstract to expressive. European, Mexican, and American artists, including many from Michigan, are featured. A generous loan from the University of Michigan Museum of Art allows expansion of the theme to include Chinese and Japanese artists.
Kelli Anderson is an artist, designer, animator, and tinkerer who pushes the limits of ordinary materials by seeking out possibilities hidden in plain view. Her books and projects have included a pop-up paper planetarium, a book that transforms into a pinhole camera, and a working paper record. Intentionally lo-fi, she believes that humble materials can make the complexity and magic of our world accessible.
Innovation and Inspiration: The Art of Paper Engineering was created to introduce the Valerio and Karen Imarisio Pop-Up Book Collection to students and the greater community and to inspire ideas through the innovative work of professional paper engineers and artists on display.
This exhibition features complex forms of paper engineering, origami and kirigami folding techniques through inspirational works found in pop-up books, the paper arts and commercial design. Several displays illustrate a direct connection between various applications and a similar pop-up book.
Faced with the use of violence to enforce geopolitical borders, people struggle to preserve culture and community. Within Armenia and the rest of the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, as well as across the world, the human cost is painfully high. This lecture considers the hope of many to end the bloody cycle of violence, learning to live together and embracing a better future for all.
Kristin Anahit Cass is a Chicago-based artist working in photography, video, writing, sculpture and other media. Her art explores the intensely personal spaces where our lives intersect, considering underlying questions of social justice and human rights. As an artist of mixed ethnicity and a descendent of genocide survivors, Cass's work reflects her passion for amplifying diverse voices telling stories that inspire change. In addition to her arts education, her career as a lawyer gives her a unique perspective on the injustices that so many people and communities face every day. Cass is a graduate of the University of Chicago.
The New Freedom Fighters: Women And Nonviolent Resistance project explores the often unrecognized role that women play in the survival and evolution of cultures and communities. The women profiled in this project live every day under military threat and use different types of nonviolent resistance to defend their human rights and mitigate the consequences of war in their communities. The lives of the women you meet here have been irrevocably shaped by war. Despite feeling the effects of the violence on their homes, families, career prospects, and communities, these women understand the need for creative nonviolence to break the cycle of war and intolerance.
Borderlands Under Fire exposes the world of a frozen conflict and documents the effects of state-sponsored violence on daily life in the frontier villages of Armenia, a tiny country in the South Caucasus. Caught at the geopolitical crossroads of East and West, Armenian villagers find themselves used as pawns in a political power game, and ignored by international organizations like the OSCE and the UN. But they refuse to give up their agency, and they continue working to make change from within their communities. Even as the people of these border villages suffer violence and privation daily as a result of war, they hold fast to their homeland, preserving their language and culture as part of the world's heritage. The project explores the villagers' use of creative nonviolent resistance to defend their human rights and develop their communities.
And the
prize-winning
photos are...
David Rubello retrospective (Title TBD)
The Stamelos Gallery Center is located on the first floor of the Mardigian Library at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. For more information, see below for contact information. Anyone requiring accommodations under the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact (313)593-5087.
Taketori Tale,
Kyohei Fujita (b. 1921),
n.d.,
Mold blown glass with gold and silver foil inclusions
Gift of Richard and Louise Abrahams,
Collection of UM-Dearborn (Adp39),
Photograph by Kip Kriigel
World renowned artist Kyohei Fujita was born in Japan in 1921. He is known as the father of Japanese studio glass. Many of his works, including this one, were inspired by early Japanese boxes that were richly decorated with lacquerwork and mother-of-pearl inlays, and traditionally used to store Buddhist writings, jewelry, inkstones and brushes. Fujita's celebrated ornamental glass boxes revive conventional Japanese aesthetics in a contemporary form. This breathtaking piece was mold blown with gold and silver foil inclusions. Whenever asked by collectors what to keep in the boxes, the artist usually stated "You should put your dreams in them."
---Laura Cotton, Art Curator and Gallery Manager
