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The School of Art’s students continue to excel as well:

Nicki Wood (MFA Ceramics ’06) received the Thomas Manhardt Outstanding Ceramics Student Award, and Jonathan David McPherson (MFA candidate in Photography) was awarded the Jerri and Jenk Jones Jr. Award, to help produce his first solo exhibit of installation, performance, and video at Living Arts of Tulsa this past summer.

The 39th Annual Herbert Gussman Student Exhibition was held in April, and the juror was Jeff Stokes, Executive Director of Independent Artists of Oklahoma. In honor of our benefactor, Meghan Beam designed an album featuring the words and work of past Gussman winners. With the Gussman family in attendance, the award for “Best of Show” was given to Steven Rosser (MFA candidate in Painting). Graduate awards were bestowed on: Jonathan David McPherson, 1st Place; Nicki Wood, 2nd Place; Kamal Zeidan (MA candidate in Ceramics), 3rd Place; and Mark Douglas Wittig (MFA candidate in Photography), 4th Place. Honorable Mention went to: David Varmecky (MFA candidate in Photography).

In addition, past and present students of the School of Art have been active in other ways.

Mark Douglas Wittig exhibited his work in "Display of Good Works" at the Malcolm Deisenroth Performing Arts Center. Milly Moorhead West (MFA Photography ’06) was included in the “Meridian Invitational Exhibit” at the Meridian Museum of Art and in a two-person exhibit at the Southside Gallery, both in Mississippi. Nathan Opp (MFA Painting ‘05) had a solo exhibition at the Performing Arts Center (PAC) in Tulsa.

All of the studio faculty and one of the art historians (Michaela Merryday) exhibited their creative works in “Common Ground,” the School of Art’s biannual faculty exhibition.

Glenn Herbert Davis (Photography) curated two events this year: “The Use of the Photograph,” an event / exhibition held in the Alexandre Hogue Gallery in January 2006, which featured interwoven installation, performance and video works; and “Domestic Veil,” an installation / exhibit of six student artists working with the domestic scene, held at the Oklahoma State University campus in Tulsa. Davis’ own work was featured in “The Use of the Photograph” as well as in “VisionMaker,” an exhibit held at the Leslie Powell Gallery in Lawton, Oklahoma. In addition, Davis was a panelist at the Philbrook Museum of Art as part of the ASK workshops sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.

Susan M. Dixon (Art History) presented a paper entitled “Without a Trace: the Accademia degli Arcadi and its garden in eighteenth-century Rome” in a session on “Rituals in Rome,” at the College Art Association annual conference held in Boston in February 2006. The presentation featured some material from her forthcoming book, Between the Real and the Ideal. It deals with a literary society that had aspirations to create an enlightened society in the shadow of the papal court. Her book will be issued by the University of Delaware Press in late 2006.

Whitney Forsyth (Ceramics) will have a solo exhibition of her ceramic works at Artspace in Ponca City, Oklahoma. In addition, one of her ceramic sculptures was selected for “The Sixteenth San Angelo National Ceramic Competition,” which was exhibited in the Museum of Fine Art in San Angelo, Texas. Forsyth is also among the featured artists at “VisionMaker” in Lawton, and at “The Wichita National 2005 Exhibition” at the Wichita Museum in Kansas.

Mark Lewis (Painting) had three solo exhibitions of his large-scale paintings. These include: “City and Streets” at the Georgetown University Art Gallery in Washington D.C., “Mark Lewis” at the gallery at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri, and “The Figure, City, Prairie, Studio and Home” at the Myer Gallery at Living Arts of Tulsa. In connection with these solo exhibitions, Lewis was a visiting artist lecturer at Georgetown and Northwest Missouri State Universities. Some of his paintings are also represented in a traveling exhibition titled “Facets of Perception.” The show will run from 2006-2007 at various locations throughout the United States.

Michelle Martin (Printmaking) had some of her prints accepted in the following exhibitions: “Another View 2: Selected Works from Contemporary American Printmakers,” held at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA; “Stories of Women in Print” at Texas Tech University; and the “Los Angeles Printmaking Society’s 18^th National Juried Exhibition,” held at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. In addition, three of Martin’s prints were exhibited in three different venues at the annual Southern Graphics Conference, held in Madison, Wisconsin in April 2006.

Michaela Merryday (Art History) compiled a catalogue of the Meinig’s collection of Abstract Expressionist painting. She also delivered two presentations this past academic year: “Rethinking Memorials” at the University of West Florida in Pensacola and “Dennis Oppenheim’s Move into the Pubic Realm” at the Price Tower Art Center. She continues to be actively involved with the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, sitting on the Governing Board and the Grants Selection Committee, and helping to develop a public arts program in the state.

M. Teresa Valero (Graphic Design) exhibited her photographs at the Centro Cultural Arabe Sirio in Madrid, Spain. Her show was titled “Siria y Libano, la belleza de Oriente.” She also curated “Journey to America,” an exhibit held at the YWMA of Tulsa. It included works by many of the School of Art’s student photographers