Works in progress
Aunspaugh Fifth-Year Fellows in Studio Art

By Jane Ford

Through the Aunspaugh Fifth-Year Fellowship, a post-baccalaureate initiative that gives support to promising studio art graduates, six artists have devoted the 2004-2005 academic year to a concentrated exploration of their own art. The transitional year helps the studio art graduates strengthen their portfolios, work with a faculty adviser in their chosen concentration — photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture and digital art — and have time to create a body of work. They also get their own studio space and work as fifth-year interns, helping in undergraduate studios.

The Aunspaugh Fellows ended the academic year with a group exhibit that showcased their work.

Sculptor Katherine Shirey focused on making performances with sculpture and short videos about the body/sex/the gaze and the chase. She explored sexual and interpersonal power with a nod toward the original masters of performance art (Bruce Nauman and Rebecca Horn specifically).

Alexander Stockwell worked with artificially decayed and optically rephotographed 16mm footage — both found and shot. He focused on the play and decay/dissolution of representational images into the abstract.

Ellen Ann Gallup made collage paintings using paint, paint chips, found
objects and things that would be considered trash. Her work explores texture, color, shape and composition, and the interaction of these elements. The final show of her year’s work was called “Maps and Diagrams.”

Adam Moyer’s series of small collages uses found images to both point out and create moments when man and nature intersect. The collages hover on the line between criticism and celebration — enticing the viewer with a warm sense of nostalgia while at the same time questioning the values the images preserve.

Colin Whitlow and Alice Bailey challenged their creative photographic talents in two very different ways. Whitlow created a photographic novel, and Bailey staged the portrait exhibit “Facing Sexual Assault.” Links to their stories: http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/bailey.html
http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/whitlow.html