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Two assistant professors in the art department will have their work displayed in McMaster Gallery Oct. 11–Nov. 18. “Hunter & Robbins” features Dawn Hunter’s mixed media drawings and paintings, and Kathleen Robbins’ photography.
“After new faculty have been in the department a year or so, and after they’ve had a chance to get their sea-legs, I like to exhibit their work as a way to introduce them to the community,” said McMaster Gallery Director Mana Hewitt, who curated the exhibit. “An opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 11, and we’d like everyone to meet the artists and see the work they create.”
Hunter’s work is “like a collage, but not a collage.”
“I’ve isolated figures and scenes from Vanity Fair magazines and re-contextualized them,” she said. “I create collages to use as a 'still-life' reference for my paintings. I began constructing them into 3-D maquettes in order to have a more spatial reference.”
For Hunter, there was never any question about what she would do when she grew up. “I was always serious about my art, and from the moment I went to art school, I was committed,” she said.
Originally from Hawk Point, Missouri, Hunter came to USC in August 2004 from the Atlanta area, where she was teaching at the Roswell Visual Arts Center and the Atlanta College of Art. She also was frequently invited to teach at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she received a BFA. Before moving to Georgia, she lived in Portland, Oregon, where she taught at the Oregon College of Art and Craft.
At USC, Hunter teaches and coordinates several Foundations courses, including Art 103 and 112. “Art 103 is a fundamental overview for majors and non-majors,” she said. “We talk about elements and principals of design, such as how it relates to painting, sculpture, industrial design, and advertising.” Always trying to encourage students to aspire to something greater, Hunter has started a gallery that exclusively features student art and is run by students in McMaster College. (To read about the new student gallery, click here.)
Robbins was an art major in college who began as a painter.
“Then I took a photography class and was immediately better at that,” she said. “I was always interested in storytelling in one form or another. I was an English minor, and photography became a good vehicle for that.”
Robbins’s work in the new exhibit, “As Told to Me,” is a series of 14 photographs she began in the spring. The photographs are “new images meant to appear as enlarged family photos, but they are fiction,” she said. Most are color; a few are black and white.
Robbins’ images have been nationally exhibited, and her photographs are part of numerous private and public collections, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. After receiving her MFA in 2001 from the University of New Mexico, she taught at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, before joining the USC faculty in 2003.
McMaster Gallery is located in McMaster College, home to the USC Department of Art, 1615 Senate Street. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Monday–Friday, and 1–4 p.m. Sunday. The gallery is closed Saturday and University holidays
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Swan Song, acrylic on canvas, 2005, Dawn Hunter
as told to me, photograph, 2005, Kathleen Robbins
