Department of Art & Design kicks off the school year with three exhibitions

MURRAY, Ky. – The Murray State University Department of Art & Design and University Galleries are pleased to announce three exhibit openings in August in the Clara M. Eagle Galleries and Mary Ed Mecoy Hall Gallery on the sixth floor of the Price Doyle Fine Arts Building located on Murray State’s campus. Each exhibit will include an accompanying artist talk.

Ramona Sonin’s exhibit Ramona Sonin: Tulle will be on display from Aug. 15 – Oct. 4 in the Mary Ed Mecoy Hall Gallery. Sonin will also give an artist talk on Thursday, Sept. 28 at 5 p.m. in Price Doyle Fine Arts room 623. 

Sonin is the founder and creator of a sustainable couture/wearable art studio where art and fashion blur lines and float. While delicate and tender in palette, her designs are imbued with the armored feminine – both formally and materially. The loosened whimsy of tulle, silk, hand-embroidered and sculpted florals have a sophisticated counterpoint in disciplined, masterful linework. Like the artist herself, the work is bewitched, an ethereal crusade: steam pink and unearth bound. Sonin is an associate professor and the program coordinator of the Fashion Design and Merchandising Department at the University of Memphis. She has worked in costume in the film industry, including assisting costume stylist/designer Arianne Phillips on the Oscar winning film Girl, Interrupted; worked freelance in textile and fashion design; written fashion design curriculum; and served as an invited board member with fashion technology companies as well as museums. Her work has been exhibited in the Los Angeles area, regionally in the American South, and internationally at the World Fashion Exhibition in Paris, France and the Devonport Regional Gallery, in Tasmania, Australia. Although she spends most of her time in the south, she still makes her way back to the eccentric beach city of Venice Beach, California, where she lived for two decades and which continues to influence her designs and drawings.  

Greely Myatt’s exhibit Tool will be on view in the Clara M. Eagle upper gallery from Aug. 15 – Oct. 26. Myatt will visit campus for an artist talk on Thursday, Sept. 7 at 5 p.m. in Price Doyle Fine Arts room 623. 

Myatt is widely recognized for his whimsical sculptural objects and monumental installations made from found materials. Engaging with surrealism, pop, folk and outsider art, he has developed a compelling visual language of truly reimagined but recognizable forms. His works provoke a dialogue with the viewer around a plethora of relationships, connections and effects among genre and style, form and content, scale and site, identity and place, time and space, art and its history, and concepts of art and craft. Myatt was born in Mississippi, teaches at the University of Memphis and lives and works in West Memphis, Arkansas. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Mississippi and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, and is a long-time professor of art at The University of Memphis. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States, Europe and Japan. 

The Magic Silver Show Elena Diane Curris Juried Photo Exhibit will be on view from Sept. 7 – Oct. 17 in the Clara M. Eagle Gallery. Frances Jakubek, Magic Silver juror for the Magic Silver show, will visit campus for an artist talk on Wednesday, Sept. 13 at 5 p.m. in Price Doyle Fine Arts room 623. A reception for the exhibition will follow in the main gallery.

The Elena Diane Curris Endowment for the Visual Arts was established with gifts from the Curris family in memory of Elena Curris, the daughter of Jo Hern Curris and Dr. Constantine Curris, the sixth president of Murray State. The endowment’s goal is to support the strength and reputation of the University’s visual arts programs.

Frances Jakubek, juror for this year’s Magic Silver Show, is an image-maker, independent curator, and consultant for artists. She is the co-founder of A Yellow Rose Project, past director of Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City and past associate curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts. Recent curatorial appointments include Critical Mass, Filter Photo, The Griffin Museum of Photography, British Journal of Photography, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Save Art Space and Photo District News. Jakubek has been a panelist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Photography fellowships, speaker for SPE National, and lecturer for the School of Visual Arts Masters of Photography i3 Lecture Series.

The University Galleries visitor hours for fall 2023 are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., and Tuesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. Admission to the galleries is free and open to the public. For more information about the Department of Art & Design, visit murraystate.edu/art or follow them on Instagram at instagram.com/murraystateart.