News

Professor Delin Lai has been awarded a grant from the Asian Cultural Council of New York to spend this summer in China to work on his research project "Architectural Remains of Baptist and Presbyterian Churches in Southeast China."

Photo: Sage Chapel, University of Nanking, Nanking, China, 1917.

The newly acquired Bob Thompson, "Self Portrait in the Studio" is now on view on the second floor of the North Building at #yourSpeed! Bob Thompson was a Louisville native who took the art world by storm during the 1950s and 1960s and became one of the most respected African-American artists of the late 20th Century.

The Speed's Curator of Contemporary Art, Miranda Lash said, “Thompson, along with the great Sam Gilliam, is one of Louisville’s most important artists. Both artists emerged out of segregated Louisville in the late 1950s and early 1960s and went on to transform our understanding of contemporary painting in different ways. Thompson’s Self Portrait provides a unique glimpse into the identity of an artist who came from Kentucky and went on to create a splash in the New York art world at a remarkably young age.” Speed

Thank you Speed Art Museum and Miranda Lash for collecting this work by Bob Thompson.

Bob Thompson, a highly motivated, energetic and passionate painting student, attended the University of Louisville in 1957 and received a Hite Scholarship in his second semester. In the two years that Thompson was a student, he had the opportunity to study with a wide array of excellent teachers who inspired him to excel as a creative individual. Thompson's teachers included Dr. Justus Bier (the founder of the Hite Art Institute), Ulfert Wilke, John Frank, Charles Crodel and Dr. Dario Covi.

In the early years, the Department of Fine Arts offered a curriculum including studio classes taught in collaboration with the Louisville Art Center Association. This affiliation allowed Bob Thompson to study with Eugene Leake and Mary Spencer Nay, instructors who both served as directors of the Art Center Association.

At the University of Louisville, Bob Thompson received an education with a global perspective that integrated classical and enlightened philosophies, avant-garde ideas, modernist and figurative methodologies, as well as calligraphic expressionism and eastern spirituality.

This week Professor Rachel Singel hosted a three-day lithography demonstration and workshop with Douglas DeWeese and his printmaking students from DuPont Manual High School for the second year in a row! Students had the opportunity to learn about the process of printing a lithographic stone and each created their own lithograph on a polyester plate. Special thank you to Reid Broadstreet, Lucas Keown, and Cassidy Meurer for their assistance!

Wednesday evening Professor Tiffany Calvert spoke at Critical Mass II, a discussion on the role of criticism for KY artists regionally and nationally, with Great Meadows inaugural Critic-in-Residence Dan Cameron, and Vinhay Keo, Emily Elizabeth Goodman, and Joey Yates. The event was hosted by KMAC Museum and organized by Lexington's UnderMain#greatmeadowsfoundation#hiteart

Ewing Fahey (BA in Studio Art and Art History, 1942) is featured in LVA.

Mary Clore (BFA 2016) and Kevin Warth (BFA 2015) are co-founders of Ruckus Louisville, a critical art review collaborative.

Ruckus is an independent writing and review collaborative founded by Mary Clore, Kevin Warth, and Luke Gnadinger. Ruckus seeks to promote artists, curators, and institutions that are committed to visual excellence by way of critical dialogue in the city and region of Louisville, KY.

Ruckus defines art excellence as possessing: a concern for the socio-historic contexts of work, an engagement with the broader discourse of art nationally and internationally, and a demonstration of thoughtful conceptual content that moves beyond trends, home goods, or hollow localism.

Ruckus is invested in catalyzing a literacy in the discrete fields of art, craft, and design. Ruckus believes that by better identifying where one ends and another begins, a more robust landscape of interdisciplinary art-making can emerge.

For more information, visit: https://ruckuslouisville.com/

Professor Delin Lai participated in the conference “Gendering the Garden, from Antiquity to the Present: Cross-cultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” on March 15, 2018, at the University of Virginia. This one-day symposium aims to create new cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogues about how gardens often become the locus for gender definitions and transgressions in literature and culture.

An invited speaker, Professor Lai’s talk is entitled “With Whom Do I Sit?: The Chinese Private Garden as a Place for Being With Ideal Companions.”

Jeremy Brown (BA 2017) is the March 2018 Artist-In-Residence for Louisville Public Library

Lexi Bass (MA 2012) will premiere her third long-form experimental film, "How Bluebirds Are Born," on Friday, March 30 at Full Frame Theater in Durham, NC. This film is part of the 2018 MFA|EDA (The Master of Fine Arts in Experimental & Documentary Arts) Thesis Exhibition at Duke University, where Lexi will receive her degree in May 2018.

How Bluebirds Are Born (2018) Trailer | Lexi Bass on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/256006517

How Bluebirds Are Born (2018) synopsis:

http://mfaeda2018.org/#cbp=ajax/bass.html

UofL Interior Design alum, John Haley designed flagship restaurant of Long John Silver.

" Environmental Branding Design "

John Haley (BFA 2015) is featured in UofL Magazine's Spotlight:

Professor Khalili’s Design for Interaction course visited the incredible new space at Solid Light Inc this morning as they continue researching an interactive exhibition project for the Speed Museum. A big thanks to the Solid Light team for their time and expertise!

Last week Professor Rachel Singel had the amazing opportunity to travel to the Newberry Library in Chicago, IL to research the history of printmaking, papermaking, and bookbinding! Special thank you to the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library and the University of Louisville for making it possible!

Hite alumna Elizabeth Driscoll Smith (MA in Art History, 2016; Advisor: Dr. Jongwoo Jeremy Kim) has been accepted to the doctoral program in Art History and Architecture at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) where she will study with Professor Jenni Sorkin. Her study will be fully supported by UCSB’s 5-year Margaret Mallory Fellowship. Elizabeth currently holds the position of Zvi Grunburg Resident Fellow at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Remembering William (Bill) L. Fischer (1918-2018)

For most all of his life, Bill had been an artist, beginning at about age 11, and later attended the University of Louisville on an art scholarship in 1937, the first year for the art department. He studied with the world famous muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for a year, and where, in later years, he maintained a winter home. Bill's art has been locally acclaimed and exhibited many times over the years. His prominent work has included the design of the stained glass windows at Keneseth Israel Congregation on Taylorsville Road. He was a US Army veteran of WW II, and very early on, worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times in layout and as an illustrator. This was prior to founding and then retiring as owner of the old Fischer's Men's Shoes on Market St. and on Jefferson St., whereupon he became a very successful investor and philanthropist.

During his long career as an artist, he also encouraged and supported young artists. He established the Bill Fischer Working Artist scholarship fund which funded scholarships in studio art at area colleges and universities including the University of Louisville. Recently this fund was refocused toward artists beginning their professional careers. He was also a long-time and consistent donor to the BFA and MFA programs in the Department of Fine Arts. He established the Bill Fischer Senior Project Grant, awarded each semester to the most promising students in both 2-D and 3-D studios based on their BFA review, to aid in the mounting of their BFA Senior Exhibition. He provided underwriting for off-campus BFA studios at Our Mother of Sorrows and was a long-time and consistent donor to the MFA program through his generous and ongoing donations to the MFA Studio Building currently under renovation in Portland neighborhood.

Photo of Bill Fischer by Renée Murphy

Professor Tiffany Calvert participated in the First Director's Cut at After Hours, with Speed Art Museum Director Stephen Reily and artist Vian Sora about the Speed Museum’s exhibition "Women Artists in the Age of Impressionism” during the After Hours event on Friday. #hiteart#speedartmuseum — with Tiffany Calvert.

The Hite is happy to present Environmental Designer Derek Friday, based in Hamburg, Germany and Boulder, CO. Friday is speaking in conjunction with Professor Meena Khalili‘s Design for Interaction course. Event at the Cressman Center, Tuesday 3/27 | Tickets via Eventbrite | Co-sponsored by AIGA Louisville | 6p social, 7p talk. Event info here: Curiosity: Derek Friday

Professor Tiffany Calvert participated in the First Director's Cut at After Hours, with Speed Art Museum Director Stephen Reily and artist Vian Sora about the Speed Museum’s exhibition "Women Artists in the Age of Impressionism” during the After Hours event on Friday. #hiteart#speedartmuseum

Cathy Shepherd (BFA 1981) is featured in LVA's Vignette.

The  poetic and philosophical work of Sophie Eisner combines the hard and the soft, in both tangible materiality and the emotive and psychological nuances of color and space. Her work quietly unveils the need for the other, like flesh and bones, in order to achieve life and balance. Her objects frequently offer a sense of waiting to receive or provide for an interaction, an experience. Relaxed silicone forms draped or suspended like the skin that is shed after a useful life, speak to the dignity of labor’s relationship to having lived. Her installations are at once playful and somber, evoking a presence of the space as an entity, one that has been formed through relationships with others, one that waits for us to form a relationship with it.

Julie Leidner (BFA 2006) is featured in Insider Louisville for her Sheherazade Gallery project.