Facilities and possibilities for artistic creation
Cummings Arts Center has generous studios, darkrooms, computer laboratories and galleries supporting our diverse disciplines. There are newly renovated studios in sculpture, ceramics and printmaking and a new white-box gallery for student exhibitions and special course projects.
You will have access to internships, retreats and trips to major art centers as well as our visiting artist programs. As a senior, you will be given a studio that is yours 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At the end of the year, you'll exhibit your thesis work in the Cummings Arts Center's galleries.
Special visiting artists and residencies
The Dayton Artist in Residence and the Weissman Visiting Artist programs give our art students the opportunity to work with leading national and international artists through workshops, studio classes and exhibitions. Visiting artists have included Maya Lin, Faith Ringgold, Sol LeWitt, Mary Heilman, Elena Sisto.
John Cohen, photographer/film maker, Henry Horenstein, photographer/author and Denny Moers, photographer, are among our most recent visting artists.
The department sponsors changing exhibits in the galleries of Cummings Arts Center which relate to course work.
Some of the artistic endeavors of our graduates
Peter Som '93 would draw for hours, adding clothes and accessories, creating a cast of companions in his fertile imagination. Today, these imagined characters have transmogrified into "Peter Som," one of New York's most celebrated fashion labels.
Hale Ekinci '06, Assistant Professor of Art at North Central College teaching graphic arts classes in the Interactive Media Studies program, grew up in Turkey and moved to the U.S. to double major in art and computer science. She then worked as a graphic designer and web content manager in Istanbul. She completed her M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts and Media at Columbia College in Chicago. Her work varies from creative fiction and mixed media to video and animation. Her current research is translating Turkish traditions and idioms to surrealistic visual stories.
Holly Clare Simpson '04, M.D., graduated magna cum laude with distinction in her major field of studio art, minored in French and a followed a concentration in premedical studies. Dr. Simpson attended Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and completed an internal medicine internship at Einstein Medical Center. During her ophthalmology residency at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, she earned the Suber & Cynthia Huang Humanism in Ophthalmology Award.
Jonathan Bucci '94 is an artist and curator living in Salem, Oregon. He moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2006 after spending ten years in Washington, D.C., where he earned an M.F.A. in painting from American University. He has exhibited his work throughout the mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Northwest. While living in DC, he served as curator for the Watkins Collection and Gallery at American University (1999-2005) and as Assistant Director and Curator of Collections at the American University Museum (2005-2006). He is currently Collection Curator at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University.
Shana Kaplow '84 is an associate professor of painting and drawing at St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minn.
Anne Leighton Massoni '95 is Program Director, Photography, at the The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pa.
John Cyr '03, owner of Silver 68 fine silver gelatin printing in Brooklyn, NY, is an instructor at the International Center of Photography in New York City.