Spring 2019
Arctic chronicles
A tall ship carrying artists and writers through the Arctic stirs thoughts of ice art, Frankenstein, and the need to archive disappearances for Washington State University English professor Debbie Lee. » More ...
Artists
Spring 2019
Video: Archiving Ice
Archiving Ice.
Caroline Landau
Svalbard and San Francisco 2017–2018
During the Arctic Circle Artist Residency in October 2017, Caroline made molds from “bergy bits” (small icebergs from calved glaciers). She painted melted wax on individual pieces of ice that washed upon the shores of Bloomstrandbreen, Svalbard in Spitsbergen. Read more on Caroline’s website.
An essay in the Spring 2019 issue by WSU Regents professor of English Debbie Lee describes the work and impact of the Artist Residency: Arctic chronicles
Spring 2019
Gallery: Arctic journey
Writer and Washington State University Regents professor of English Debbie Lee traveled to Svalbard in the Arctic aboard the tall ship Antigua, as part of the Arctic Circle Artist Residency Program. Follow the journey through Lee’s photographs below, and read her essay, “Arctic chronicles,” in the Spring 2019 issue.
Winter 2018
Briefly noted
Freedom’s Racial Frontier: African Americans in the Twentieth-Century West
Edited by Herbert G. Ruffin II and Dwayne A. Mack ’02 PhD History
University of Oklahoma Press: 2018
Between 1940 and 2010, the black population of the American West grew from 710,400 to 7 million. With that explosive growth has come a burgeoning interest in the history of the African American West—an interest reflected in the range and depth of the works collected in Freedom’s Racial Frontier that link past, current, and future generations of African American West scholarship. The West is revealed as a place where black Americans have fought—and continue to fight—to make … » More …
Summer 2018
Fly on the Wall
Podcasts by Squeak Meisel
If you can’t come to the artist, the artist will come to you, thanks to a series of podcasts produced by Washington State University Fine Arts department chair Squeak Meisel.
Called Fly on the Wall, the artists interviewed on Meisel’s podcast have shown their work at some of the biggest venues in the world, such as the Venice Biennial. They come to the Pullman campus, teach for a few days, work one-on-one with undergraduate and graduate students, and give a public lecture.
But Meisel realizes that not everyone has time or ability to … » More …
Summer 2014
Gallery: Gustav Sohon and the Mullan Road
Gustav Sohon (1825–1903) was an artist, interpreter, and topographical assistant. Sohon executed some of the earliest landscape paintings of the Pacific Northwest. One of his first assignments was with Lieutenant John Mullan, who was surveying the country between the Rocky and Bitterroot Mountains for the Pacific Railroad Surveys led by Isaac Stevens.
Read about Mullan in our feature “Lost Highway.”
Summer 2016
Color your WSU
Take a break and color your own Bryan Hall.
Tarah Luke ’05 drew this abstract version of the iconic clock tower at WSU for Washington State Magazine. Read more about her work in coloring books for adults.
Download the coloring page (PDF)
Summer 2016
Color my worlds
An alumna artist brings out the kids in us
Tarah Luke felt like her hands would fall off after completing 120 pages in adult coloring books over five and a half weeks.
Luke ’05 didn’t color the pages, though. The Seattle-based artist designed and drew the images featured in the four books. The Eiffel Tower, a marching band, an octopus, and a movie camera are just a few examples from the series of themed volumes divided into places, music, animals, and inventions.
Luke’s collection is part of a growing national trend. Adult coloring books, usually featuring complex patterns within images, have become an increasingly popular … » More …
Winter 2014
Finding the artist: An absurd, incredible journey
We trace the history of Harold Balazs ’51, one of the most prolific public artists in the Northwest. Settling in Washington, he has made our corner of the universe a nicer place to be.
» More ...
Winter 2014
Seeing and knowing
“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled,” writes art critic and author John Berger in his 1970s Ways of Seeing.
Berger, a mainstay for students of art and Western culture, examines how a large part of what we see when we look at something depends on our habits and conventions, the things we think we know.
As men and women, Berger notes, we may see things differently. Our teachers, our books, even our communities tell us what we’re looking at and what it means. Children see things differently, again. Lacking preconceptions, they may recognize qualities in a work of … » More …