Faculty Triennial

The Art + Design Department is holding it's Faculty Triennial this year (usually it's a biennial, but we didn't have a gallery last year during the building construction).  So for the next month, Heather and I are showing our collaborative piece "Field Kit of the Cryptozoological Studies and Observations of Dr. William Oliver Raymond" as part of the show.  It's really fun to see what all the full-time and adjunct faculty create as their personal works.

"Laughing Matters" Art Show

I'm excited to announce that this weekend my animation "Flexibly Indecisive" is going to be shown at the Studio Gallery at the 6th Street Playhouse as part of their 50th anniversary production of "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown."  The gallery show is called Laughing Matters and is with the Wine Country Arts Council.

What's fun is that the Charles M. Schulz Museum is in Santa Rosa (his hometown) and the Museum is helping celebrate with some special activities as well.  This includes an exhibit on the 50th anniversary that will also been shown in the Studio Gallery concurrently with the show.

This combines so many things I love - theater, comics, Charlie Brown, and art/animation - I'm very excited to be a part of it all!

The Museum of Real and Odd

I'm very excited to share the art piece that Heather and I created that has been included in a new show at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art called The Museum of Real and Odd.

Our piece is entitled "Field Kit of the Cryptozoological Studies and Observations of Dr. William Oliver Raymond".  It includes about 20 specimens and several photographs, all documented in the accompanying Journal.  It was a lot of fun to create and we made a great team pulling this all together.  Heather brought her expert painting skills and overall concept (and quality control) to the work.  Meanwhile my own interest in the subject matter paid off in research and sculpting most of the custom specimens.  We already are planning what our next "kit" will be!

From the Press Release:

The truth is out there. And so is the art.  In partnership with the Big Car, we bring the work of 13 contemporary artists exploring the idea of UFOs and the paranormal to the Tube Factory at 1125 Cruft St.

iMOCA’s Museum of Real and Odd, curated by Jeremy Efroymson, is a commissioned exhibit with artists from around the country making new work for the show. After an open call for submissions received 250 proposals, Efroymson selected the 13 artists: Nayda Collazo-Llorens in collaboration with Ander Monson, Scott Raymond & Heather Abels, Jennifer Scheuer, Robert Thurlow, Katy Unger, Alex Grabiec, Julio Orta, Pato Herbert, Cassandra Klos, Josh Haines, and Michael Jordan, aka Alkemi.

Efroymson feels high-caliber artists are well poised to remove some of the negative associations with the unknown. “The folklore and mythology of the paranormal has really saturated our society,” he said. “Especially with the ghost hunter shows on television and the prevalence of the topic in movies.  I remember the movie Poltergeist from my childhood, which really scared me. While we still have scary movies, I think maybe we now have a more open view to paranormal experiences of a positive nature. I’ve seen shows and artwork that deal with these topics, but they are not always of the best quality. I wanted to curate a show on these topics with high quality art and artists.”

Find the iMOCA's site on the show HERE

 An article from the Indianapolis Star (with a slideshow of the exhibit) can be found HERE

"Words" Exhibition Animation

So this is a fun development.  I created a little animation for an art call by the Art League of Lincoln out in central California.  The only requirement was that the work somehow involve the use of the written word.  This idea came from a Facebook post.  I had posted an update about having trouble making a decision - a common situation for me.  And my Aunt posts that she has that, as does my dad and grandfather.  Apparently my dad calls it being "flexibly indecisive"

I actually was planning an entirely different animation...a very complicated one that needed me to create and rig some 2d characters in Toon Boom Harmony.  Over a very long and unproductive weekend, in my sketchbook where I was trying to think up some animated monsters, I was frustrated and drew a little sketch of myself and how I was feeling at that moment.

When Heather got home from the weekend, and I had basically no progress, she saw my little sketch and loved it.  She said that's what my animation should be.  I thought back to that Facebook post, and it all clicked into place.  I often tell my students that sometimes it's the tangental ideas, the ones you sketched out in a flash and discarded, that become the best projects.  That also shows the importance of having a sketch book, and exploring your ideas on paper first.  The computer sucks the soul of out ideas and it's too easy to get tunnel vision when you're staring at a monitor looking for that flash of inspiration.

The show has been running about a month and today is it's last day.  I wasn't able to see it in person, but hopefully the Art League will post some photos online.  It's a fun first dip into this new world of art exhibitions.

Nashville Gallery Animation Project

Here's one of the video loops that showed at the APSU Graphic Design & Animation Gallery in Nashville this past weekend.  My Animation Production students were each assigned one of the 12 Principles of Animation, and had to animate the word "Animation" showcasing that principle.

It was a nice assignment, in that the students learned about having to work as just one cog in a bigger wheel.  They had to start and end on the same (provided) frame so that everything would loop together.  It also was a very technical exercise, and they really had to focus on draftsmanship and becoming efficient animators.

animation in action at the gallery

Nashville Animation & Graphic Design Show

With the help of Professor Paul Collins, the three new faculty at Austin Peay have assembled a gallery show featuring our respective areas.  It's going up during the monthly "Art Crawl" in downtown Nashville and should get a lot of traffic!  My students worked on a collaborative piece about the 12 Principles of Animation, to which I contributed several scenes to as well.

Check out the press release below or at:  http://www.apsu.edu/news/new-exhibit-nashville-showcases-apsu-graphic-design-and-animation-students-and-faculty

The Austin Peay State University Department of Art and Design will showcase the work of its students and faculty during April’s First Saturday Art Crawl in Nashville. The Department of Art and Design will present the exhibition, “Where the Wild Things Are,” on April 2 in Nashville’s L Gallery, in the heart of Nashville’s art district.

The exhibition will highlight the contributions of first year faculty Patrick Gosnell (graphic design), Rachel Bush (graphic design) and Scott Raymond (animation). The presentation will feature a variety of graphic design installations, including new work by APSU graphic design students. The exhibit will also present multi-projection animations featuring creature explorations and a celebration of the guiding principles of animation by current APSU animation students.

The reception and viewing hours for the exhibition will be from 6-9 p.m. on Saturday, April 2, in Suite 73 of Nashville’s Arcade, located between 4th and 5th avenues, off Church Street in Downtown Nashville.

This show is made possible through generous support of APSU’s Faculty Senate Student Academic Success Initiative Award program.

For more information on this exhibition, which is free and open to the public, contact Paul Collins, APSU associate professor of art, at collinsp@apsu.edu.