The recent Department of Visual Arts Design Spring 2021 Faculty Art Exhibit was a showcase of the talents of UNA’s faculty. It was held in mid-March and was home to many works by the University of North Alabama’s professors. Descriptions of some of the art and their artists are as follows. 

Professor Alexander Pate is a 3D design and digital modeling teacher. He created  “Lifted”and “Intertwined”, works that incorporate movement and form as significantly as his physical mediums. 

“I am an object maker with my work coming from a place of material exploration, it is the exploration that often defines the work. In my work, there is a flow of conscious control and subconscious release,” Pate said. “For me, this is a constant exercise of trusting my instincts and training to allow the forms to grow and evolve. To immediately understand an artwork is disappointing. I do not provide something with a direct narrative, but something meant to start a narrative. Through a lens of non-objectivity my work does not contain one meaning or way of being understood, but millions.”

Professor Daniel Leonardos, created the “Serif-8 Board Game” and teaches digital media. For feedback, questions and inquiries, e-mail [email protected].

“Serif-8 is a board game that sets players at a space station in the year of 2551. The theme reinforces the feeling of insecurity towards exploring the unknown and leaving the comfort zone. Such feelings relate to designers when first entering the industry. Players work together and compete to survive in orbit for one year by taking and managing a variety of freelance design jobs in the station,” Leonardos said. “The goal behind this product is to help students, faculty and professional designers explore new paradigms of the relationship between client and designer.”

Professor Joseph Reynolds is a photography teacher. He photographed “Marcia”, “Sara, Marcus Vinícius e Marcos Adriano” and “Sostenes”. 

“These photographs describe the shared experience of living in the small Braillian town of Cristalândia is the mining town whose mining no longer sustains it, and it is shared human experience — not economic opportunity — that holds the town together,” Reynolds said. “As a Brazilian who has never lived in Brazil, my shared experience with the land and people of Cristalândia allows me to belong there even though I live in the U.S. I use the view camera of the 19th century because it is slow and demands collaboration. Photography becomes a catalyst for building relationships, utilizing curiosity in one another to overcome difference.” 

Professor Chiong-Yiao Chen, printmaking and professional practices She created “Transient. New York”, “About Looking, New York”

“I have longed to know life beyond the locale where I was born and raised. Whenever I travel, I observe keenly and document obsessively, intending to capture a slice of the surrounding life and to feel the wonderment of the other land, its local colors, and its vibe. I have savored the remains of ancient glories and bathed in the aura of modern-built human marvels,” Chen said. “Making these images is a sojourner’s attempt to define the meaning of already lived moments and to make concrete the ineffable.”

Professor Parker Seward created “Collection of Brushes Used by Sign Painters and Muralists from Around the World” and “Better Safe than Sorry” and attributes his form to French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. He teaches painting and drawing.

“Jean Baudrillard defined Hyperreality as a simulation of something which never really existed. As an artist working in the style of hyperrealism, I seek to create fabricated moments of time that when translated through paint, resemble a photograph while still maintaining a sense of ambiguity,” Seward said. “My paintings focus on a very temporary instance –the split second when a photograph is taken. By painting it on a large scale, I can immortalize this imagined moment in time and seemingly elevate its significance. In this way, I am able to comment on Baudrillard’s definition of ‘hyperreality by combining multiple photographs to form a single image, resulting in the depiction of an impossible observation.”