Moving Forward - Oakland University Art Gallery

This exhibition features the work of the full-time faculty of the Department of Art & Art History at Oakland University. After your virtual visit fill out our guest book and let us know about your visit.

Featuring

Aisha Bakde, Claude Baillargeon, Bruce Charlesworth, Susan E. Evans, Setareh Ghoreishi, Dick Goody, David Lambert, Lindsey Larsen, Colleen Ludwig, Kimmie Parker, Sally Schluter Tardella, Maria Smith Bohannon, Cody VanderKaay.

COVID-19 Protocols

In the Press

Oakland University News

September 15, 2020

"Oakland University Art Gallery presents ‘Moving Forward’"

Now through Nov. 22, 2020, the Oakland University Art Gallery will present “Moving Forward,” an exhibition featuring the work of the full-time faculty of the Department of Art & Art History at OU. Participating artists include: Aisha Badke, Claude Baillargeon, Bruce Charlesworth, Susan E. Evans, Setareh Ghoreishi, Dick Goody, David Lambert, Lindsey Larsen, Colleen Ludwig, Kimmie Parker, Sally Schluter Tardella, Maria Smith Bohannon, and Cody VanderKaay.

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The Oakland Post

September 30, 2020

"OU Art Gallery presents ‘Moving Forward’ exhibition through November"

The Oakland University Art Gallery’s newest exhibition, ‘Moving Forward,’ is up and running until Nov. 22. The exhibition features a number of works — including paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs — done by full-time faculty in the Department of Art & Art History.

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Detroit Art Review

October 17, 2020

"Moving Forward @ OUAG"

Every fall since I can remember, the Oakland University Art Gallery, under the direction of Dick Goody, Professor of Art, Chair of the Department of Art & Art History and director of the Oakland University Art Gallery, has started off the fall season with a large curated show (supported with a four-color catalog) that would have required months in the planning and often brought in artwork from various parts of the United States and beyond. Given the current situation under Covid 19 restrictions, Goody has opted to curate a faculty show, including his own work, supported with information on the web site to provide a venue for his faculty members. I suspect he is waiting until later in 2021 to present the public with something more in keeping with his previous tradition. Nevertheless, the gallery is open to the public, with Covid 19 restrictions in place, noon – 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday, closing November 22, 2020. It’s worth a visit.

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See all past exhibitions

Claude Baillargeon
Aisha Bakde
Bruce Charlesworth
Susan Evans
Setareh Ghoreishi
Dick Goody
David Lambert
Lindsay Larsen
Colleen Ludwig
Kimmie Parker
Sally Schluter Tardella
Maria Smith Bohannon
Cody VanderKaay

Tour The Gallery Virtually

Claude baillargeon

Professor of Art History
Chief Academic Adviser

Artist Bio

Claude Baillargeon is a Canadian citizen born and raised in Québec, who now divides his time between Metro Detroit and Toronto. Following an undergraduate degree in still photography, he earned a master of fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in the history of art from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2002, he joined Oakland University, where he was recently promoted Professor of Art History. For the last fifteen years, his scholarship has been primarily concerned with the photographic representation of environmental degradation, phenomena beyond the threshold of human vision, especially radioactivity, and all facets of the nuclear experience from Hiroshima to Fukushima. In 2019 he curated the exhibition McMillan’s Chernobyl: An Intimation of the Way the World Would End for the Oakland University Art Gallery.

Artist Statement

While contemplating the enormous consequences of the A-bombing of Japan, the Austrian philosopher Günther Anders drew from classical mythology to create an allegory of modern technology gone awry. Known as the Promethean gap, his concept asserts that “our imagination is unable to grasp the effect of that which we are producing.” In Anders’s view, the atomic age unleashed destructive powers of our own making, which reach far beyond our capacity to imagine their repercussions. As the fear of nuclear warfare intensified during the Cold War, the American and Soviet governments launched peaceful atom programs, initiatives ostensibly designed to foster the production of atomic energy for civilian use. When the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was built in the 1970s, Soviet scientists were united in their belief in the infallibility of its technology. The unthinkable destruction of Chernobyl’s Reactor Number Four on April 26, 1986, has once again demonstrated the growing gap “between our action and our imagination.”

The Peaceful Atom and the Promethean Gap, 2020

Archival Inkjet Prints16 x 24 in View Claude baillargeon's Work

Aisha bakde

Visiting Assistant Professor of Graphic Design

Artist Bio

Aisha Bakde is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Graphic Design. She teaches Motion Graphics and Web Design. She has a BA in Architecture and Masters in Urban Planning and an MFA Integrated Design and has researched Human Centered and Experience at College for Creative Studies. She has worked in User Experience Researcher conducting collaborative research in autonomous driving. Her areas of interest include Human-centered Research, Interaction Design and Design addressing culture and social issues. Her other passion includes creating illustration based on real life experiences and situations. Her vision for the future is in children’s illustration. She lives in Royal oak with her husband a newborn baby boy and two dogs.

Artist Statement

Little things: The everyday mundane mostly characterized by practical, transitionary or everyday activities are unnoticed. These activities being productive verses unproductive dictate our time, but how often do we appreciate the joy of these little things Having a warm bath, enjoying brushing your hair, getting a new plant, or simply spending some time with yourself are some of the belittled things in life. These illustrations are a glimpse into the mundane activities of my life and how sometimes a pause helps to freshen up a bland day.

I am my own illusion, 2019

Inkjet Print8.5 x 11 in View Aisha bakde's Work

Bruce charlesworth

Assistant Professor of Art

Artist Bio

Bruce Charlesworth's work encompasses installation, video, performance, photography and software interactivity. His work has been shown at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the American Film Institute, the New Museum in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Whitney Biennial, the International Center of Photography, the ZERO1 Festival in San Jose and many other museums and galleries throughout the world. Among other awards, he has received fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Artist Statement

Tooth and Nail is a hypothetical graphic novel fragment, limited to two pages. The characters are animals derived from Charlesworth's 2001/2004 video, The Happiness Effect. In the video, an illustrated story about a neglected puppy and his forest friends serves as a parable to justify the political and interventionist actions of a devious human narrator. Tooth and Nail begins with a synopsis of previous events and launches into a new, ultimately unresolved storyline.

Tooth and Nail, 2020

Pencil Drawing With Digital Color40 x 35 in View Bruce charlesworth's Work

Susan evans

Associate Professor of Art

Artist Bio

Susan E. Evans received her B.F.A. in photography/holography from Goddard College, and an M.F.A. in photography from Cornell University. Evans has exhibited in many national/international group/solo shows; received multiple grants and residencies and has work in collections worldwide including the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; George Eastman House, Rochester, the Museum of Fine Art Houston and the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art. She likes fondue.

Artist Statement

What we look at everyday becomes familiar and generally, familiar things become preferences which define ideas, beliefs and experiences. Although I have not made any of these works as a group these pieces become an intimate self-portrait. The true meaning of the piece is not about each image individually, instead it is about the sum, juxtaposition and connection between the different elements. Who then is the true author of the artwork?

Some Art From My House, 2020

Mixed Media View Susan evans's Work

Setareh ghoreishi

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design

Artist Bio

Setareh Ghoreishi was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and graduated from University of Art Tehran with a BFA in Graphic Design. She graduated from Florida Atlantic University with an M.F.A in Graphic Design and M.F.A in Art &Technology from University of Florida. Setareh is multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer who explore the role of visual art and design in the interaction of two different cultures Iranian and American cultures. Her work illustrates different cultural values by using the personal experiment through the language of digital art and installation. She is the assistant professor in Graphic Design for the Art and Art-History Department at Oakland University.

Artist Statement

In our contemporary consumerist society, we have been far from nature. Our lifestyle focuses more machines and technology. It is essential to find more relationship to the natural world and address environmental concerns. These works aim reconnect modern life to nature and how human can put the value on environment and nature in urban life.

Biophilia, 2020

Archival Inkjet Print (7 Prints)27.5 x 18.25 in View Setareh ghoreishi's Work

Dick goody

Professor of Art
Chair of the Department of Art & Art History
Director of the Oakland University Art Gallery

Artist Bio

Dick Goody is a Professor of Art, Chair of the Department of Art & Art History, and Director of the Oakland University Art Gallery. He teaches drawing and painting. He has organized more than sixty curatorial projects at the gallery. His most recent exhibitions were Your Very Own Paradise and American Paintings from the Nancy and Sean Cotton Collection, 1850-1940. He has an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London and a PGCE in Art & Design Education from Middlesex University. Goody’s own paintings have been featured in ten solo shows and over forty group exhibitions in London, New York, and Detroit.

Artist Statement

The subjects in my work are local and biographical, but painting itself is a language of process, action, and ideas. It may seem that I’m interested in something external, but really, I’m interested in painting and what it communicates universally as a visual language.

Showroom, 2019

Oil on Canvas36 x 36 in View Dick goody's Work

David lambert

Lecturer in Art and Photo
Media Lab Manager

Artist Bio

David Lambert was born and raised in Kentucky and graduated from Georgetown College with a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry and was awarded the Kentucky Young Scientist Summer Fellowship at the University of Kentucky. He graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art with an M.F.A in photography. While attending Cranbrook he was a finalist for the Daimler Chrysler Emerging Artist award and a recipient of the Robert H. Daisley Memorial Scholarship. His work has been shown nationally in Philadelphia, New-York City, and Boston; and is held in the permanent collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. He is the lab-technician and a lecturer for the Art and Art-History Department at Oakland University. He lives in Berkley, Michigan with his wife and two boys.

Artist Statement

Snags tend to be misunderstood or overlooked, often seen simply as a dead tree. Snag is an ecology term for a standing dead tree or a submerged log. Their presence shows vitality and they provide shelter for fish and birds while aiding in bio-diversity. This work aims to highlight their presence and overtly bring them to the forefront of the narrative.

Mary Rebecca, 2017

Archival Ink-Jet Print 29.75 x 19.75 in View David lambert's Work

Lindsay larsen

Visiting Assistant Professor of Graphic Design

Artist Bio

Lindsey Larsen is an educator, graphic designer, and artist currently based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is a Visiting Professor of Art in Graphic Design at Oakland University and co-runs an experimental design studio with her husband, Wes Larsen. Her practice regularly appropriates tools and methodologies from both art and design to explore the world, our social interactions, and the systems that we create and participate in.

Artist Statement

The tears start to form, not as an emotional response, but as the natural order of things. Falling freely from her tear ducts, falling down to the landscape where they rightfully belong, to the dust-covered ground that they are immediately absorbed into.

Baby girl thinks of home, 2020

Dye Print on Aluminum 18 x 24 in View Lindsay larsen's Work

Colleen ludwig

Associate Professor of Art

Artist Bio

Colleen Ludwig has made several immersive environments exploring ecological themes. These include the collaborative work The Last Fish shown at the Winthrop University Galleries in Rock Hill, SC and Shiver shown at the ISEA Festival in New Mexico and the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY. Her current work-in-progress, Biomassacre, explores eco-grieving and the Sixth Extinction. Ludwig received her MFA in Time and Interactivity from the University of Minnesota and her BFA in Film and Television from NYU. She is currently an Associate Professor at Oakland University and pursuing an MS in Architectural Design with a concentration in Digital and Material Technologies at the Taubman School of Architecture at the University of Michigan.

Artist Statement

This series of ceramic forms represents my foray into computationally-designed objects. The base form is designed in Rhino 3D modelling software. The surface is patterned with dynamic code written in Grasshopper and Rhinoscript. By using code, endless bespoke designs are possible. The final output is sent to a KUKA industrial robotic arm, which is outfit with custom tools. These early iterations are part of my new area of exploration, merging industrial digital fabrication with traditional architectural and sculptural practices.

untitled (basket weave), 2020

Robotic-Extruded Ceramic Vase7.5 x 4.5 x 4.5 in View Colleen ludwig's Work

Kimmie parker

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design

Artist Bio

Kimmie Fabian Parker is a life-long Michigander. She holds a BS in Merchandising from Michigan State University, a BFA in Graphic Design from Wayne State University, and an MFA in 2D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. As Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Oakland University, she teaches motion design and animation courses. Prior to joining OU, she worked as an in-house environmental graphic designer and art director, and as a design consultant. Kimmie is President Emeritus of AIGA Detroit, and current Treasurer of Design Inquiry, an international organization for experimental graphic design research. Her design practice oscillates between the theoretical and the practical, exploring themes at the intersections of connection and disconnection, entropy and innovation, craft and technology.

Artist Statement

Exchange #7 and Untitled (Layered Drawing #9) explore themes of connection and disconnection though chance encounters and provisional materials. I wanted to create tenuous physical and emotional relationships between the components within each piece, and to reference the ways in which all things—seen and unseen—are interconnected.

Exchange #7, 2018

Wool, Cotton View Kimmie parker's Work

Sally schluter tardella

Associate Professor of Art

Artist Bio

Sally Schluter Tardella uses architectural tropes as metaphor to explore personal ideas of body, gender, culture, and politics. She moved from New Jersey to study Painting at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her works have been featured in solo and duo shows in Michigan and Missouri. She has had work included in group exhibitions around the country including: Brooklyn, Chicago, New York City, Washington DC. and San Francisco. In Michigan, she has exhibited widely in university galleries. Currently, Schluter Tardella is working toward an upcoming exhibition, “unsheltered”, at Macomb Community College Art Gallery, opening in January 2021. A collaboration with sculptor Cody VanderKaay, their project is a visual response to what it means to “have shelter” and to “shelter in place”. They will probe the personal, political, and social meanings of what constitutes shelter and home, particularly during and as a result of Covid-19.

Artist Statement

A wall surrounds, encloses, immures. A barrier, it is a continuous surface that divides rooms, separates and retains elements. I see transparent and opaque layers of material from above and below, as I imagine cross sections of wood beam structures folding into new systems of wall. These paintings represent individual walls. Decorative wallpaper pattern is a cue for the nostalgia of time passed, of home, of childhood. I reconstruct and re-member interior spaces enclosed by walls, marking them with layers of fulvous liquids suggesting stains and spoil. The ideal inferred by the pattern is here tarnished and repurposed. In bulb the atmosphere is lit by the single light bulb, the space defined is both deep and blocked by surface texture, whereas in light, the light source is transparent and the space is shallow. In fan the screen is made of tactile architectural symbols. We look from both above the space [floor plan view] and into the space from the front [elevation view] and see an intimate space behind which looms the mysterious, the unknown. In these paintings, there are moments of clarity and obfuscation—of almost being able to see through a screen into deep space. We are invited in by tactility and materiality but cannot quite see or understand the space beyond.

Bulb, 2020

Oil on Canvas72 x 48 in View Sally schluter tardella's Work

Maria smith bohannon

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design

Artist Bio

Maria Smith Bohannon is a designer, writer, and practitioner whose research includes expressive use of typography and image, and more recently delves into sustainable design practices. She has an MFA from Kent State University and a BFA in Graphic Design with minors in Illustration and Drawing from the Mary Schilling Meyers School of Art at The University of Akron. She practiced professionally at the Williams McBride Group in Lexington, Kentucky where she was creative director and as an art director for Kleidon & Associates in Akron, Ohio. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Oakland University.

Artist Statement

My work fluctuates between art and design, between the graphic and organic, and the concrete and intuitive. These prints, based on the mathematical treatise by Alexandrian Greek mathematician Euclid, explore the design of compositions that illustrate the relationship of circles, equal parallelograms, correspondence of shapes, and points of tangents. Rather than existing solely as mathematical postulates, I am interested in the inherent geometric beauty, and logical order of such ideas, as they translate into graphic designs that push the boundaries of traditional printmaking craft.

You of Many Faces, 2019

Laser-etched Print 23.5 x 17.6 in View Maria smith bohannon's Work

Cody vanderkaay

Associate Professor of Art

Artist Bio

Cody VanderKaay was born and raised in North Metro Detroit and graduated from Northern Michigan University with a B.F.A. in Sculpture and from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia with an M.F.A. in Sculpture. Vanderkaay has exhibited at venues across the country such as the Ann Arbor Art Center (MI), Atlanta Contemporary (GA), Arena 1 Gallery (CA), DC Arts Center (DC), Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center (OH), Snug Harbor Cultural Center (NY), Soo Visual Arts Center (MN)and Twin Kittens Gallery (GA), among others. His artwork has appeared in art publications such as Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, New American Paintings, Detroit Sequential, Detroit Art Review and There Magazine, as well as the White Columns, Artists Space and Drawing Center artist registries in New York. His work is in private collections such as the Francis J. Greenburger Collection (NY) and he has been an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (NE), Jentel (WY) and Joshua Tree Highland House (CA) residency programs. VanderKaay is an Associate Professor of Art at Oakland University’s Department of Art and Art History.

Artist Statement

VanderKaay’s artworks explore and consider how individuals, objects and spaces interrelate, and how relationships between these entities develops over time. The sculptures displayed in this exhibit signify various states of change: A circular plane of wood appears pleated and compressed to produce a variegated effect; a vertical square column bends in diverging directions under invisible force; a small-scale architectural relief implies stories behind the scenes.

Featuring

In the Press

"Oakland University Art Gallery presents ‘Moving Forward’"

"OU Art Gallery presents ‘Moving Forward’ exhibition through November"

"Moving Forward @ OUAG"

Moving Forward: The Artists

Claude baillargeon

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

The Peaceful Atom and the Promethean Gap, 2020

Aisha bakde

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

I am my own illusion, 2019

Bruce charlesworth

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Tooth and Nail, 2020

Susan evans

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Some Art From My House, 2020

Setareh ghoreishi

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Biophilia, 2020

Dick goody

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Showroom, 2019

David lambert

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Mary Rebecca, 2017

Lindsay larsen

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Baby girl thinks of home, 2020

Colleen ludwig

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

untitled (basket weave), 2020

Kimmie parker

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Exchange #7, 2018

Sally schluter tardella

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Bulb, 2020

Maria smith bohannon

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

You of Many Faces, 2019

Cody vanderkaay

Artist Bio

Artist Statement

Backstage, 2019

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