Art Department Faculty
Mark Hall
Associate Professor, Art
Chair, Division of Fine Arts
Either the stars were aligned or I was simply the recipient of a fortuitous coincidence of celestial events because I was born the same year the first on-air television station began broadcasting in my home city of Indianapolis, Indiana. My first babysitter was an eleven inch black and white RCA TV and such early cultural icons as Uncle Miltie, Jackie Gleason, Edward R. Murrow, Howdy Doody, and Ernie Kovacs. My older brother quickly introduced me to
classic reading material like Mad Magazine and the lyrical tones of the orchestra known as Spike Jones and the City Slickers. I particularly liked his recording of Carmen. Once in school at P.S. #38 I had my horizons expanded when it was announced that anyone who could memorize and identify the music, style and composer of a dozen records would get a day out of class to hear the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. I never missed that free concert in the four years I was eligible. I also made the yearly trip to the Art Museum where I was mystified by the work of odd named individuals like Seurat and Renoir. I was raised in a German/English neighborhood and French is still a mystery to me. Whether the malady of creating puns comes from a genetic mutation or from countless trips with my father who was known for his particularly grievous use of them I will never know but I found as I grew my humor and view of the world was clearly at something other than 90 degrees. This is by way of saying I had a normal childhood for the 1950s. I did the usual amount of schooling for someone who had a love-hate relationship with school. I received degrees (usually in Art or Theology) from Hanover College, Christian Theological Seminary, the University of Louisville and Indiana State University and did additional graduate studies at the University of Chicago. I worked in the world of the art museum at both the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the David and Alfred Smart Museum.
I choose to express myself through the print media because of the rich and seductive look of ink upon paper and because once created I can make a copy for myself and therefore, am able to part with and yet keep my work. Whether it is the result of the above mentioned history or the numerous times I was dropped on my head my prints tend to take on a satirical bent. All is fair game for a satirist but I chose to question and explore that which most intimately surrounds me. Television, religious beliefs, cultural sacred cows, my ego, the environment in which I live or have lived, all come under scrutiny. I seem to raise reoccurring questions in many of my prints: Is there such a thing as manifest destiny? Or does the hand of God or whatever really select the winner at the beauty pageant? What are our definitions of hell and heaven and if you could put anyone or anything in hell who or what would it be? Like Manet, if I were to update past cultural icons like Dante or Ovid how would I change them? How do I see myself and where do I fit into the society that surrounds me? I raise questions but leave it to the viewer to find answers. Working four years at the Indianapolis Museum of Art taught me that style is a social and historical creation that can be changed and adapted to different needs. I borrow freely from the past. The decorative and structural look of late medieval English manuscripts, the repitition of a William Morris wallpaper, the patterning of Grant Wood and Roger Brown, the Pop image of Warhol or Lichenstein, the structure of a mandella, all or some are utilized in my work. The admonition given me by a past art instructor was: “Steal from great art and maybe some of it will rub off. ” I do.
Email: mark.hall@maryvillecollege.edu
Website: faculty.maryvillecollege.edu/theprint
Carl Gombert,
Associate Professor, Art History
Carl Gombert was born in Brimfield, Ohio in 1959. He started taking painting lessons at the age of 14 with money he earned delivering newspapers. He earned a BFA in Drawing from the University of Akron and an MFA in Painting from Kent State University. He worked as a stagehand before pursuing a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts at Texas Tech University. He has exhibited in more than 100 shows throughout the country, and since 1993 has taught painting, drawing and art history at Maryville College in Tennessee. His work has recently been acquired by the Mabel Larson Drawing Collection at Austin Peay State University, the Avampato Museum ( Charleston, WV), the Evanvsville Art Museum and the Mobile Museum of Art.
Artist's Statement
I am drawn to the human face. I am captivated by its flexibility and the variety of expressions it can achieve. Trying to convincingly render these forms is deeply satisfying, though the effort can be frustrating, too. I also really love the process of working from life, yet most of my work is derived from photographs. The techniques of realism are used, yet I don't think of myself as a phot orealist. I'm not after the look of the photograph, nor am I concerned with the photos' presumed link to reality. Rather, I think of these images as plausible fictions. I want to explore unnatural colors, larger-than-life scales, etc., but still make an image that looks "as if" it could exist.
Equally important is the process of making images. There are easier, more efficient ways to produce images, but I find myself drawn to more time consuming methods. These works—especially the ballpoint pen and the rubber-stamped drawings—involve countless small repetitive acts. As the drawings progress, the processes take on an aspect of meditation that is quite liberating. The process allows my hand to take care of making marks, while my head puzzles out what the images mean.
I'm also interested in the nature of illusion—how is it that flat images are perceived as three-dimensional? I often try to make the backgrounds as flat as possible to highlight this puzzle. Also, I am currently very interested in making real, textural and patterned g rounds and then superimposing illusionistic images over them. Also interesting are images composed of numerous repeated smaller images. At a distance they read as portraits; up close they break down into aggregates of individual stamped images.
Humor and playfulness are important, too. The grimaces and odd facial expressions are an attempt to get past portrait conventions—to present faces in a wider variety of pose and gesture than is standard. I find that most people freeze up when asked to sit for a photograph. Everyone seems to have a stock pose and expression that they go to automatically in front of a camera. I'm also interested in trying to suggest expressions of emotions other than the typical anemic smiles of most formal portraits (yet, I don't believe for a second that these image s actually reveal or express emotions). The overblown grimaces and goofy expressions are funny, as are the color choices. Similarly, the prints use stamps that are somehow related to the image, often in a humorous way. These are caricatures—models mugging for the camera, hyperbolic exaggerations of real emotion.
Most important, though, is the spiritual aspect of portraiture. Although I have tried at times to find ways around it, I cannot escape the conclusion that the act of knowing one another is intimately bound up with the act of seeing one another—of direct person-to-person visual contact. Furthermore, I am more than ever convinced that portraiture is the best means for studying and revealing the divine spark that is within us all.
Email: carl.gombert@maryvillecollege.edu
Adrienne R. Schwarte
Assistant Professor of Art and Graphic Design
Adrienne most recently relocated from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area but has roots in Youngstown, OH, Detroit, MI, Dallas, TX and Sioux Falls, SD. She received her BA in Communication and Graphic Design from Buena Vista University and her MFA in Multimedia Design with an emphasis in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 2005. Adrienne has worked as a professional graphic designer for six years in both the corporate and freelance market. She has worked for such organizations as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, KTTC-TV (NBC affiliate) and ByDesign Studio.
Her recent creative production and research interests include internet advertising: recall and recognition, environmental and sustainable graphic design, non-for-profit graphic design, design foundation education, cooperative learning in design studios, visual extremes and representations of women in the visual realm. She has presented at such conferences as the Foundations in Art Theory and Education (FATE) Biennial Conference, Design: Refining our Knowledge International Conference, University of Minnesota First Friday Series and Buena Vista University Career Symposium.
Artist's Statement
Much of my creative production is a mixed collection of professional, client-based work in graphic design, personal explorations into the theme of visual extremes through digital imaging, traditional and digital photography and interactive media. As a designer who works in the visual world and a child of the digital age, I am constantly immersed in the gate keeping and agenda-setting that comes from working in front of a computer screen or behind a lens. I am fascinated by the positive and negative results that emerge from our society and how they can be represented visually. I find that life, specifically in the visual world, is filled with sharp contrast and polar ends of the visual spectrum. I also find that the visual extremes or ends of the spectrum often have much more in common than at first glance. When objects are placed at polar ends of the spectrum, they begin to share commonalities that bring them close together even though they are situated apart. My work investigates how this is supported in both the physical, cognitive, psychological and visual realms. However, it is key to be constantly aware of our visual surroundings in order to realize this phenomenon. It is the dichotomy between the two ends of the spectrum that I find most stimulating and emotionally arresting. I also find that many of my experiences in life have followed this approach, which is what has led me to investigate it.
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy follows a constructivist and cooperative approach to learning. I follow the constructivist theory that learning is inherently social and we learn from those around us and vice versa. I find it important for students to be actively involved with each other in the classroom. Therefore, I incorporate some design projects that serve as team-based projects where students must work together to complete a successful design solution.
Focusing on a more learning-based paradigm, I incorporate cooperative structures into my classroom. In my classroom I utilize cooperative learning theories and divide my students into base groups at the beginning of each semester. Another key component in my classroom is the process of guided discovery, which is essential in a highly creative field. I find it is essential for students to determine new ways of understanding, finding solutions to design problems and grasping different ways to understand familiar and unfamiliar material.
Ultimately I am constantly concerned with my students’ abilities to understand, decipher and communicate material to a high method of transfer to other courses and the professional world. I desire for my students to learn not only the discipline-specific material that I present but also the more global principles of how to learn and how to gain a passion for learning.
Email: adrienne.schwarte@maryvillecollege.edu
Staff
Polly Ann Martin
Instructor, Ceramics
