Author Archives: mamatos

Patty Caroll Wins BBA Photography Prize

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Berlin-Based BBA Gallery awards Patty Carroll 1st place in the the BBA Photography Prize 2023! Read prize announcement post on Facebook. 

Patty Carroll, Party’s Over, 2021, Archival inkjet print, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 2023.007, Acquired with funds provided by the Barton P. and Mary D. Cohen Art Acquisition Endowment at the JCCC Foundation

Art-Related Careers

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On Nov. 1, 2023, the Nerman Museum hosted a Young Artists Retreat, aimed at high school seniors, to allow them to learn more about careers in the arts. Below is the Art-Related Careers overview information shared in their programs. Download this list in PDF format.

Art-related Careers

Independent Artists:

  • Artist: uses diverse mediums to create works such as sculptures, paintings, murals, installations and photographs. Artists who are working full-time professionally often have a studio team.
  • Studio assistant or manager: works with artists to successfully plan and create works, logistical aspects of sending artworks to clients, administrative responsibilities.

Museum and Non-profit Arts Organization Roles:

  • Director: provides the leadership and vision for the institution, strategic planning, fundraising and overseeing both internal and external affairs. Some directors also work as/with curators.
  • Curator: responsible for putting together exhibitions, through researching and selecting works that speak to each other through some sort of common thread. In the institutional setting, this may involve working with exhibition designers, collection managers and the interpretation team among others. Many exhibitions take years to pull together.
  • Exhibition Designer: helps curators and artists bring their vision to life in the complex setting of museum and gallery installations.
  • Preparator: works with exhibition designers to build and install exhibitions and collections.
  • Learning & Engagement: focuses on using art as a medium for learning—not only about topics related to a classroom curriculum, but also to better understand the world.
  • Marketing & Communications: collaborates with artists, designers, educators and administrators to share information about art exhibitions, programs and events.
  • Interpretation: creates resources that help audiences understand and connect with the art, often in collaboration with curators, educators and independent writers.
  • Programs: works with artists, administrators and others to develop and implement programming that relates to art exhibitions.
  • Registration & Collections Management: ensures the safety and care of the art collection, managing loans of artworks, conservation efforts, storage and information about the collection.
  • Development: spearheads donor relations and fundraising for the institution which can include managing programs and travel associated with donor events and financial management.
  • Archives/Library: many institutions have a research library or archive that may be digitally available that serves as a resource for artists, curators, educators and students.
  • Visitor or Guest Services: works with front-of-house staff to ensure visitors feel welcome.

Gallerists and Independent Curators:

  • Gallerist or Curator: responsible for putting together exhibitions, through researching and selecting works that speak to each other through some sort of common thread.
  • Art Dealer: acts as an intermediary between buyers and sellers but may not have a gallery or curatorial role.
  • Auction Houses: major art auction houses are an important part of the art market, and there are various roles involved in valuation, appraisal and selling of artworks.

Higher Education:

  • Professor: teaches fine arts or studio arts at the college level. Most professors have a Ph.D. or terminal degree (MFA) in their subject area.

Independent Contractors:

  • Writer: bring the world to life through words—be it in poetry, essays, journals or other outlets and writing styles.
  • Installation and art handling: many art handlers work with museums, galleries or private collectors to move and install works safely, which may involve assisting with shipping artworks.
  • Photography: artists and institutions often work with professional photographers to get good images of their artwork.
  • Web design: artists and institutions often work with professional web designers to create engaging platforms for their content.
  • Conservator: highly specialized, conservators typically have in-depth knowledge about a particular type of media (textiles, painting, etc.) and have some scientific background also.

Commercial Arts: There are many opportunities to use art skills and experience in the commercial sector, whether it be for a particular company or as an independent contractor or businessperson. Below is a list of just a few of the many fields available. Most require specialized training and education.

  • Fashion design
  • Graphic design
  • Industrial design
  • Illustration
  • Animation
  • Architecture
  • Interior design
  • Printmaking
  • Set and costume design
  • Filmmaking

Nick Cave receives 2023 Race, Place & Diversity Award

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Nick Cave, artist, received the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey 2023 Race, Place & Diversity (RPD) Award on Nov. 4, 2023. RPD gives out this award to individuals and organizations that further diversity and equity in their communities.

The Nerman Museum has two of Cave’s Soundsuits in its permanent collection, one of which was last on view during the museum’s Adorned exhibition.

Nick Cave (Left), Soundsuit, 2005, Mixed media, (Right) Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2011, Mixed media, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of Marti and Tony Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation

 

American Infamy – Roger Shimomura

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Roger Shimomura, American Infamy, 2006, Acrylic on canvas panels, 61.62 x 100.5″, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006.15, Acquired with funds provided by JCCC and Marti and Tony Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation

During World War II, the United States government placed into incarceration camps some 110,000 Japanese Americans living along the West Coast. Among them was the Seattle-born Roger Shimomura, whose earliest childhood memories were formed in the Minidoka concentration camp in southern Idaho, where he was sent with his family. Since the late 1970s Shimomura has made hundreds of paintings and prints reflecting on his experience of incarceration, working in a flat, cool style influenced by both American pop art and Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. American Infamy, from Shimomura’s Minidoka on My Mind series, presents a wide-angle view of the incarceration camp, spread across four vertical panels like a Japanese folding screen and viewed from a traditional Japanese bird’s-eye perspective, as if to emphasize the government’s conception of the incarcerees as essentially Japanese despite their American ways and citizenship. The composition offers numerous colorful glimpses of daily life in the camp, including women doing laundry, a girl jumping rope and people lined up outside the bathroom. These are overshadowed, however, by the ominous black silhouette of an armed guard wielding binoculars at the left, and by the dark clouds that obscure the composition’s base and several parts of the scene above, clearly signaling Shimomura’s critical view of this unjust incarceration.

Roger Shimomura earned his BA from the University of Washington in 1961 and his MFA from Syracuse University in 1969. Shimomura is also a respected printmaker, and JCCC owns several of his prints which are on view in the Carlsen Center’s Works on Paper focus area.

— David Cateforis, 2012

Galileo’s Garden Noon at the Nerman Presentation

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The Nerman Museum, alongside Johnson County Community College’s Art History department , hosts the Noon At The Nerman series. Noon at the Nerman is a weekly interdisciplinary program examining works of art on view at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art or on campus. Students and staff gather at the museum or at other locations around the campus on select Wednesdays at noon, then go to a specific artwork to hear a JCCC  faculty or staff member speak briefly on that work of art.

Listen to Doug Patterson’s Noon at the Nerman Presentation about Dale Eldred’s Galileo’s Garden.

During the talk about, Dr. Patterson’s referenced Prof. Paul Tebbe’s work with the analemma. Since then, they have uncovered a video Prof. Tebbe’s public talk demonstrating the analemma and the overlay he and his students made for the sculpture.

Information on this post was adapted from JCCC’s Astronomy blog.

About Roger Shimomura

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Roger Shimomura, American Infamy, 2006, Acrylic on canvas panels, 61.62 x 100.5″, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Acquired with funds provided by JCCC and Marti and Tony Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation
Read more about American Infamy

 

  • American, b. 1939 in Seattle, Washington
  • Lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas
  • BA from the University of Washington in 1961; MFA degree from Syracuse University

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

Roger Shimomura, 2003, Housing Discrimination, acrylic on canvas

Shimomura was born in Seattle’s Central District. His first few years were spent interned with his family at the Puyallup State Fairgrounds while permanent camps were being built by the U.S. government. Soon he and his family moved to Camp Minidoka in southern Idaho. His father was told by administrators to seek employment outside the Western coast, and so the family settled briefly in South Chicago. After the war ended, the Shimomura family was permitted to return to Seattle, where Shimomura developed his interest in art.  He served in the U.S. Army two years as an artillery officer in Korea, then moved to New York where he worked as a graphic designer. He taught at the University of Kansas beginning in 1969, and he was designated a University Distinguished Professor in 1994, the first so honored in the history of the School of Fine Arts. His work is represented in the permanent collections of over 85 museums nationwide. A past winner of the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award, in 2008, he was designated the first Kansas Master Artist and was honored by the Asian American Arts Alliance, N.Y.C. as “Exceptional People in Fashion, Food & the Arts.” His personal papers and letters are being collected by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Roger Shimomura, 1978, Minidoka No. 3 (Diary), acrylic on canvas, Spencer Museum of Art, KU

 

Andrew McIlvaine: Resilience Story – Reach through walls (poem)

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Reach through walls

Mira, I want to show you something.
Let me tell you why you wear that sheathing.
Why you’re so hard to reach.
Why you weigh so much,
And it feels so hard to leave.

I know that you hear me speak,
I know that you feel me breathe.
I know that same feeling,
That one, where you feel unseen.

Sometimes I want to run,
But my feet feel like concrete.

Sometimes my mind feels so weak
And weeks go by
Before I find a new routine.

I remember being thirteen
Thinking I was unclean.

Like no matter how much
I scrubbed my skin,
The stain of generational pain,
Generations longing
For anything but the same,
Just wouldn’t leave my brain.

Old fate on repeat,
Like passing trains.
Stuck in a loop
A circle of blame.P

I hope I’m healing.
I tell my myself,
As the tears form
And begin to rain.

I hope these sacrifices are worth the gain.
I reach out to the ancestors
To voice my shame
Knowing they may be able to help,
But they’re too far away.

So, I turn to the images
That flow through my veins.
The ones that may help me explain
Why this shadow,
This reflection
is one and the same.

Mira, open your eyes,
I hear you say.
I believe you can move through walls
Try to break the chain.

— Andrew Mcilvaine