The Carolla Arts Exhibition Center featured an exciting range of new works from professional artists and students during the Spring 2024 semester. We connected with our queer community with the help of Aaron McIntosh, showcased a selection of our best student work curated by Steve Snell, and closed out the year with our annual BFA in Design: The Professional Design Practicum exhibition.

Entanglements: Aaron McIntosh
January 25 – March 1 | First Friday Art Walk: February 2 and March 1

Aaron McIntosh interrogates the intertwined relationships between humans and plants—our interdependence, our co-evolution, and our history of hierarchies—across many artistic mediums. In Entanglements, the artist takes up the metaphoric potential of plant life where he finds speculative roots to scaffold and explore queer ecologies. McIntosh rejects colonialist and heteronormative paradigms that dominate botany in its perpetual “othering” of queer- ness. Instead, he asks how might we imagine queerness through the sexual and gender-variant dynamisms present in the plant world.

A fourth generation quiltmaker from the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, McIntosh’s practice is deeply rooted in fibers. He employs this legacy as a language, form, and tool as it offers him both material comfort and a tactile trace of kinship. The quilts, sculptures, and collages on view in the exhibition draw upon images, objects, and stories from McIntosh’s own geographical, cultural, and familiar background, as well as his research in botanical and LGBTQIATS+ archives. Through participatory art making methods, he also draws in queer communities from the places he’s called home.

By embedding queerness into representations of nature, McIntosh envisions a world where diverse queer bodies across time and space are enmeshed with plant life —and where their quilted display envisions new futures for queer and botanical kinship.

Organized by Juliana Rowen Barton, Director of the Center for the Arts, with Madeline Camplese (’24), Gallery360 Manager and Curatorial Assistant (Spring 2023)

2024 Annual Juried Student Exhibition, juried by Steve Snell
March 25 – April 12 | First Friday Art Walk: April 5

The Annual Juried Student Exhibition features work from the breadth of our department’s undergraduate and graduate students. Juried by Kansas City-based artist, Steve Snell, we are also excited continue the legacy of Mark J Hall with the Mark J Hall Best in Show Award, in addition to many other monetary awards.

Mark J. Hall Best in Show
Ellen Aulbach, “The Kitchen Before I Go to Bed,” 2023, oil on wood panels.

Best Graduate
Joy Okokon, “Shuku,” 2023, stoneware clay, overglaze, clay beads, brass beads electric firing.

Best Undergraduate
Ellen Aulbach, “The Kitchen Before I Go to Bed,” 2023, oil on wood panels.

Best Freshman
Gabby Glamkowski, “Princess and the Me,” 2023, Mixed Media (watercolor, colored pencil, pen).

Best 3D
Ann Danis, “Fall Blow,” 2023, steel.

Best Painting
Ellen Aulbach, “The Kitchen Before I Go to Bed,” 2023, oil on wood panels.

Best Drawing
Vaeya Nichols, “Grandpa’s Hostas,” 2023, graphite.

Best Photography
Emery Wilcoxon, “Wander and Wonder,” 2023, chromogenic prints.

Best Metals/Jewelry
Julia McKlin, “Protection,” 2023, cast bronze.

Best Animation
Elliot Wheat, “Glip and Geoffrey Take a Pet to the Vet,” 2023, 2D animation.

Best New Media
Anton Pleshka, “Tholus,” 2022, multimedia installation.

Best Illustration
Taylor Sandridge, “Pop! Illustrations For Graphic Terms,” 2023, digital.

Best Graphic
Sage Winkler, “Sage,” 2023, digital illustration.

Best Art Education
Brianna Conyers, “Visual Verses,” 2023, acrylic.

BFA in Design: The Professional Design Practicum
April 29 – May 10 | First Friday Art Walk: May 3

Every semester, the Carolla Arts Exhibition Center is pleased to host an exhibition of work by graduating students from the Department of Art and Design. The spring exhibition showcases the talent and skill of students who have spent years developing a design practice that will carry them into their professional careers.

Exhibiting Students: Parker Bensyl, Maria Biondo, Andrea Collazos, Amber Dudenhoeffer, Dorottya Faa, Savannah Hayton, Melissa Hendrickson, Ethan Holman, Abigail McClure, Caroline Mouton, Emmagyn Parton, Madison Raushel, Siera Richardson, Trinity Riecker, Lauren Rose, Natalie Ross, Alissa Roth, Lora Spinabella, Taylor Stafford, Samantha Stoltz, Olivia Stone, Katelyn Thornton, Allison Waddle, Katie Wemhoener and Paris Wilken.