Art and Design Commons^™

Friends Of Musselman Library Newsletter Spring 2015, Musselman Library

Friends of Musselman Library Newsletter

From the Director: Open Access (Robin Wagner)

Global Perspective: Library Participation in College’s Internationalization Efforts (Lucy Marinova ’12, Munya Choga ’12)

Remembering Gale Baker

Library wins 2014 Best in Show

Summer Reads 2015 Launches

Eisenhower Exhibit

Birds of a Feather: Photography Exhibit (Sandra Blair)

Heads Will Turn: Student Exhibit (Mark Warwick)

Edible Books

Audubon Print - Carolina Parrot (Geoffrey Jackson ’91)

Life in Photos: William H. Tipton exhibit

50^th reunion Gift of First Editions (John E. Rogers, Jr. ’65)

Sharing the Past: Alumni Memorabilia (Jessica Casale ’18, Julia Hendon, Clara A. Baker ’30, Gary T. Hawbaker ’66)

19^{th …}

Techno File: Pyrometric Cones, Tina M. Gebhart

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

A pyrometer measures temperature, but pyrometric cones measure heatwork. What is a cone, how does it work, and what does any of this have to do with synchronized swimmers? [excerpt]

For Those At Home: The Romantic Nature Of Civil War Lithography, Megan A. Sutter

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Lithography, the art of drawing on stone, was an important part of American Victorian culture during the Civil War. Not only did lithography provide news in pictorial form, but it also was widely displayed in the home. With the economic move from home to factory during the early 19th century, the home became more of a “sanctuary” in which women could decorate and display. [excerpt]

Technofile: Viscosity, Tina M. Gebhart

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the effect the viscosity of a glaze or slip has on a piece of pottery. The article explains the term and provides tests that can be performed to determine the viscosity of a substance. It goes on to describe how one can manipulate the viscosity of a glaze or slip through the addition of water or other aids and includes step-by-step instructions for making a slip.

Conserving Our Cultural Heritage: The Role Of Fungi In Biodeterioration, Hanna Szczepanowska, A. R. Cavaliere

Biology Faculty Publications

The objects of cultural heritage are composed of varied materials which can be affected by diverse microbial communities. The study of these complex and heterogeneous assemblies of materials and microorganisms require an inter- and multi-disciplinary approach. Development of a strategy towards prevention, mitigation of biodeterioration and removal of microorganisms, especially fungi begins with the understanding of the materials' fabric, assessment of causes behind the biodeterioration, and the context in which it occurs.

Three aspects of biodeterioration of cultural heritage are discussed: 1) the multitude of bio-agents' on cultural heritage materials, 2) fungal interaction with substrates, and 3) prevention and conservation …

Techno File: Glaze Unity Formula, Tina M. Gebhart

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

There are many approaches to modifying a glaze recipe, and different approaches can meet different needs. Some modifications change the colorant level while others change the colorant type altogether. Some may directly replace one material with another add a few weight unit more (or less) of one of the base ingredients in the recipe, or add an amount of an entirely new ingredient. These strategies we use to alter glazes tent to parallel how we cook and modify recipes in the kitchen, but adjustments to the base glaze using the kitchen method do not always give us the results we …

Maria Sibylla Merian's Frogs, Kay Etheridge

Biology Faculty Publications

Maria Sibylla Merian (German, 1647-1717) is best known for her magnificent 1705 publication, Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium, although she published earlier works on insect metamorphosis. Merian wrote the text and painted all of the illustrations for her books, and for the early volumes she produced most of the engravings. Contemporary scholarship has focused primarily on Merian's detailed images of lepidopteran and host plant life cycles, but Merian's Surinam album also portrays anuram metamorphosis, including the first European depiction of Pipa pipa.

A Venus Of Wild Nights: The Female Nude In Paintings By Judith Linhares, Shannon Egan

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

A nude woman sits on a pyramidal assemblage of logs in a pose reminiscent of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker (1902) in Judith Linhares’s painting Up There (2003). With a delineated but transparent form, an absurdly large bumblebee feeds on enormous flowers at the base of the structure. The female figure oversees the fantastical scene like a queen bee atop a beehive. Linhares revisits the subject of a monumental female nude in her paintings (a traditional subject in the history of painting), and as such, these ‘‘queen bees’’ populate a whimsical but historical world. Her paintings are large, and even in …

Mark Greenwold’S Excited Self, Shannon Egan

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

In a recent exhibition catalog of painter Mark Greenwold at New York’s DC Moore Gallery, the artist, in lieu of a conventional statement about his work, conducted a self-interview. To his question, ‘‘Why?’’ Greenwold responded:

"I thought that I could possibly get at things that another person might find too daunting or too polite to ask—very obvious questions by the way, that I’d probably be too thin-skinned or reactive to give an honest response to if another person asked the question." [excerpt]

Embodiment And Emptiness: Alison Rector’S Interior Spaces, Shannon Egan

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

Alison Rector’s painting Green Kitchen (2002) depicts a seemingly ordinary domestic interior: a flight of stairs ascends to the right, and a foyer, furnished simply with a wooden table and chairs, leads to a kitchen and, further still, to a broom closet. The old-fashioned wood-burning stove, muted and patterned wallpaper, antiqued furniture, brass sconce, and wide-planked hardwood floor characterize this home as possibly from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, but the lack of figures and personal effects makes the definitive time of occupancy ambiguous. Rector’s unoccupied interiors, however, do not appear abandoned. Even in the quietest of her …

A Quiet Absorption: Paul Fenniak’S Realism, Shannon Egan

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

The cool early morning light casts an eerie stillness over the swimming pool in Paul Fenniak’s painting Short Cut (2006). The protagonist, a young woman with mousy brown hair and a sturdy build, carries a satchel and hunches forward midstride along the right edge of the pool. She looks toward the background of the painting, away from the viewer and across the water. Perhaps she is taking a surreptitious detour through this closed and empty space on her way to school. Fenniak skillfully captures the bluish dawn, the sun raking across clean, calm water, the gentle hint of breeze waving …

Bright Lights On Quiet Streets: Tom Keough’S Nocturnes, Shannon Egan

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

The well-kept city streets lined with trees and old brownstones may seem familiar in the paintings of Brooklyn-based artist Tom Keough, but the neighborhood is disquietingly empty. Keough situates the sidewalk in the immediate foreground of his paintings and compels the viewer to enter into an eerily vacant scene. With few exceptions, Keough leaves the always still and sometimes snowy New York setting largely unoccupied. Nonetheless, Keough conveys human presence in his paintings with the soft glow of lamplight from windows, footprints in the snow, and cars parked along the side. The theme of urban alienation—a paradoxical sense of loneliness …

'La Maggior Porcheria Del Mondo': Documents For Ammannati's Neptune Fountain, Felicia M. Else

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

The story of the creation of the Neptune Fountain on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence is long and tortuous. Scholars have drawn on a wealth of documentary material regarding the competition for the commission, the various phases of the fountain's construction, and the critical reception of its colossus, both political and aesthetic. A collection of unpublished letters at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles offers a new perspective on the making of this major public monument. Sent by Bartolomeo Ammannati to the prvveditore of Pisa, they chronicle the artist's involvement in the procurement and transportation of marble from …