Summer 2024 at the University Galleries featured work from Professor Emeritus Jerry Hatch and his partner, Hing Wah Hatch as well as another successful MFA Co-Curatorial collaborative exhibit with Erin Tyler.

Brick City Gallery

Boomerangs, Butterflies and Then Some
July 1 – August 2 | FFAW: August 2, 6-8 pm

Featuring work from Jerry and Hing Wah Hatch, Boomerangs, Butterflies and Then Some has images from their past and present interests made with various media including cast plaster, carved wood, various drawing media, watercolor, oil, collages, papercuts and mixed media.

Jerry Hatch

Hing Wah Hatch

Carolla Arts Exhibition Center

Current State, a co-curatorial project with Jodi McCoy and Erin Tyler
July 1 – August 2 | First Friday Art Walk: August 2, 6-8 PM

As inherently transient beings, we collect connections to the places we inhabit throughout our lives. But are we ever really in a single place? And how do we mark a place when things are in constant flux? We can be physically rooted in Missouri but digitally omnipresent, here for a season – longing to be elsewhere, or even feeling utterly displaced. The artists in this exhibition all have a unique tether to this land that we call Missouri. Geography binds us together; where we are informs who we are and what we make.

We asked thirteen contemporary artists from Springfield, Kansas City, and St Louis to offer works of art that respond to their current state – geographical, physical, virtual, and or spiritual. Sarah  Williams’ Nightscapes captures intimate markers of neo-regionalism, dwellings often at the center of what we physically call home. Mikey Yates’  Watching  Winter Turn to Spring documents the artist’s view from his studio in Kansas City, a view familiar to many artists. Finally, St Louis’ Emily Mueller works at the intersection of meditative mark-making and the investigation of intuitive form and color-in her Leaf Silhouette series, Mueller combines physical materials and process to explore her current state.

These responses present only a sample of Missouri’s creative footprint; outside of it is a larger and wider echo. Land and our place on it is often understood as a resource or a mere pin on a map. But what if we started to think about our current state in conversation with our identity: How does place show up in our ideas and the work we make? How does our current state intertwine with and enrich our life story? And, how does our occupation of this current state also tell the story of this place?

Exhibiting artists: Stella Blackmon, Rick Briggenhorst, Madeline Brice, Will Chiles, Sage Dawson, Josh Johnson, Cesar Lopez, Emily Mueller, Shauna Le Ann Smith, Amanda Smith, Mikey Yates, Kellen Wright, and Sarah Williams.

Greta Cross for the Springfield News Leader

Rick Briggenhorst and Cesar Lopez

Shauna Le Ann Smith and Sage Dawson