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Spring 2024

Visual arts

Fall 2005

Bringing couture to campus

The annual Mom’s Weekend fashion show last spring featured the work of 13 Washington State University student designers. It was an impressive display, considering that it was the first time many of the young designers had created a multi-piece collection.

Not so for Beth Hearnesberger (’05 AMDT), who was participating in the show for the second time. This year, she received one of the “Best of Show” Mollie Pepper Outstanding Student Designer Awards. Like many of her classmates, Hearnesberger traded sleep for sewing to prepare her collection. She even hand dyed the fabrics for her dresses.

The brief fashion show is the culmination of a … » More …

Spring 2009

Robert Helm, 65 – Acclaimed Northwest artist, teacher

Robert Helm, an acclaimed Northwest artist known for surreal imagery and exquisite craftsmanship, died October 21, 2008. He was 65.

Helm was born in Wallace, Idaho, and attended North Central High School in Spokane, where he met Tamara Kimpel. They married in 1966 and had a daughter, Brenna, and a son, Boone. He earned his M.F.A. degree at WSU in 1969 and taught at the University of Colorado before returning to teach at WSU from 1971-84.

Robert Helm, Iron Ground, 1991Robert Helm’s Iron Ground (1991)
From … » More …

Spring 2006

Growing as an Artist

IT’S AN ARTIST’S DREAM to be recognized by experts and curators and to have your work shown by an internationally-known museum.

Isaac Powell, a 26-year-old fine arts student at Washington State University, realized that dream last fall when his painting won a spot in a traveling exhibit that opened at the Smithsonian Institution.

His piece, Growthplate, took grand prize in the nonprofit VSA arts juried exhibit of young artists with disabilities. It also brought him a $20,000 award, which he says has already been funneled back into his art.

Lean, hip in black-rimmed glasses, and relaxed, he settles into his chair in his 12-by-12 studio … » More …

Spring 2006

The Clothesline Project

Haunting and colorful, the Clothesline Project usually stops students in their tracks as they head across the Glenn Terrell Mall to class. It’s a display of several hundred t-shirts made by people connected to Washington State University with messages about how violence, particularly against women, can affect individuals, families, and communities. For a week last October, the campus community had a chance to read the words of victim/survivors and their friends.

Summer 2008

On the road

Museum of Art director Chris Bruce has not been content of late to just set up a traveling show and then send it back. He’d just as soon put the show together and make sure it gets seen as much as possible by putting it on the road. Bruce started with a major Roy Lichtenstein exhibition a couple of years ago. After arranging with collector Jordan Schnitzer to assemble the exhibition, he sent it around the West to seven other museums, from the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle to the Austin Art Museum in Texas, making it possible for over 117,000 people to see work … » More …

Summer 2008

Color + Modulation

Rob Tyler ’96
2006

Rob Tyler’s animated films combine hand-painted film cells, computer manipulation and atmospheric electronic music to produce a hypnotic come-hither based on changing, pulsing colors that riff off a primary abstract shape to the music of Unrecognizable Now, Moksha Kusa, Carpet Music, In Support of Living, and Solar Marquardt. Although there is no indication that these films are meant for anything more than a DVD-scale viewing, Tyler’s films may recall (for those who can recall) psychedelic light shows of the 1960s, and would certainly work wonders as rave backgrounds. Their luminosity evokes … » More …