College of Visual and Performing Arts and SU in Florence art professors collaborate on faculty exhibit

College of Visual and Performing Arts and SU in Florence art professors collaborate on faculty exhibitApril 21, 2009Jill Ennis

Faculty members in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) and SU in Florence (SUF) studio art professors have collaborated on a faculty exhibition titled “Drawing the Other: Works on Paper by SU and SUF Faculty.” The exhibition is open at the SUF Art Gallery in Florence, Italy, through May 2.

With 32 faculty members participating, the exhibition is a unique opportunity for the students at SUF to see the work of their professors both in Florence and on the home campus. Nearly 100 guests attended the exhibition’s opening on April 2, including a strong turnout of students in the studio arts program. Casey Landerkin, a junior illustration major, applauds the initiative: “To know that your teachers are not just admirable as teachers but as artists, too, is an empowering feeling. At the gallery opening, I got to see the personal works of the people who I am learning everything from, and I can see the bits and pieces of knowledge and skill I have taken from each of them and what I need to take from them next.”

The idea for the exhibition was born during a visit to the Syracuse campus by SUF Director Barbara Deimling and SUF painting professor Kirsten Stromberg. In meetings with faculty and staff at VPA, the two realized that a collaborative exhibition would provide an opportunity for fostering cross-campus communication and projects. Returning to Florence, Deimling and Stromberg worked together with exhibits coordinator Devorah Block to develop a theme for the exhibition. VPA department chair Ludwig K. Stein was instrumental in finalizing the details of the project and enlisting the participation of his faculty.

“This exhibit aimed to promote dialogue and collaboration between the Syracuse campuses through an artistic exploration of cross-cultural experience,” says Stromberg about the conception of the exhibition. “As institutions engaged in international education, these issues are fundamental for us as faculty as well as for our students.”

These goals are reiterated by Deimling: “This exhibition invites the visitor to think critically about such diverse themes as difference, integration, plurality, otherness and movement-topics that are at the very core of international education for faculty and students alike.”

“The work in ‘Drawing the Other’ exemplifies the interconnectedness of Syracuse and Florence and proves that the SU faculty in both cities is thriving brilliantly,” says VPA Dean Ann Clarke, who also participated in the exhibition as an artist.