Reynolds College Blog

Art and design department announces summer gallery schedule

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This summer, Missouri State University’s Department of Art and Design invites audiences to experience two powerful exhibitions exploring identity, storytelling and underrepresented histories.

The exhibitions are on view at the Carolla Arts Exhibition Center and Brick City Gallery.

Summer program celebrates fourth year

Now in its fourth year, the department’s summer programming continues its mission to showcase diverse voices and emerging talent through thoughtfully curated visual arts exhibitions.

“Our core summer audience is pretty open minded and excited to see our exhibit spaces try new things and explore new ideas,” said Jodi McCoy, Director of Exhibitions. “While our summer audience is smaller, our summer exhibits have been featured in national reviews. They’re a bit of a hidden or emerging gem.”

At the Carolla Arts Exhibition Center

The 2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition opened May 27.  This event is the capstone showcase for Master of Fine Arts graduate students.

Next, “Let Me Tell You a Story: Gathering Our Roots to Find Belonging” opens June 21. MFA candidate Olga Shute co-curated the exhibition. It features six Latin American artists whose works explore heritage, memory and identity through storytelling.

“As we got deeper into planning with these particular themes of identity, it became very important to me to make intentional space for the voices of the artists to speak rather than have a heavy curatorial hand,” McCoy said.

Carolla Arts Exhibition schedule

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Art history and museum studies students bring research to the public

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Several art history and museum studies students from Missouri State University spent a busy Spring 2025 semester showcasing their research at several conferences.

The students appeared at the Missouri Archaeological Society, the Catherine Reed Jolivette Art History and Visual Cultural Symposium and the Missouri Academy of Science.

The art history and museum studies programs are part of the BA in Visual Art and Culture in the Department of Art and Design.

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Chris Rodgers joins art and design faculty

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The Department of Art and Design has a new face in the ceramics studio, and he’s already making waves with his thoughtful teaching and grounded artistic practice.

Originally from Charleston, West Virginia, Chris Rodgers comes to Missouri State University with a passion for clay, community and creative risk-taking.

Rodgers’ work spans clay, steel and cast concrete, often shaped by self-imposed project parameters. “The problem-solving of working with ceramics is a huge part of what continues to draw me to this material,” he said.

Roundabout path leads to passion for ceramics

Rodgers didn’t always know he’d end up working with ceramics. Like many students, he shifted majors a few times during college before discovering a spark in an unexpected place — a hand-building class.

“I was completely fascinated by the material possibilities and uncertainties of working with glaze,” he said. That curiosity stuck. Since then, ceramics has become both his medium and his way of thinking. A turning point for him came during graduate school with a series of six sculptures titled “Leaning from the Steep Slope.”

“That was also the first time I made something and thought, ‘I’d be excited to see this if it wasn’t mine,’” he recalled.

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Dr. Mitzi Kirkland-Ives publishes new book on Hans Memling

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The Department of Art and Design’s Dr. Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, professor of art history and visual culture, has published her latest research on the fifteenth-century German painter Hans Memling.

Released in April 2025 through Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, “Hans Memling and the Merchants,” takes readers into Memling’s world in Bruges, Belgium, far from the courts and churches that usually defined artistic success.

Vibrant career in fifteenth century Bruges

Book cover featuring artwork of Hans Memling
Click book cover image to learn more.

Kirkland-Ives noted that instead of painting for kings or cardinals, Memling found his audience within the rising urban middle class among bankers, politicians and artisans. He subsequently built a thriving career in Bruges.

“He’s an interesting figure,” she said. “He’s not originally from the Low Countries, but he shows up in Bruges and winds up being one of the most called upon painters of his moment there.”

The book builds on Kirkland-Ives’s long-standing interest in the intersections of art, ritual and society in late medieval Europe. Her previous book, “In the Footsteps of Christ: Hans Memling’s Passion Narratives and the Devotional Imagination in the Early Modern Netherlands,” offers a close study of Memling’s narrative strategies and the ways viewers engaged with images as part of their devotional lives.

In that book, Kirkland-Ives invites readers to consider how a single panel painting could guide the imagination through complex religious experience.

She expands on this theme further in her new book by exploring the social and material realities of Memling’s world.

This includes how his workshop operated, how he sourced his pigments and how his portraits and altarpieces reflected the politics and power plays within Bruges. In fact, Memling’s works often elevated an individual’s or a family’s status or publicly demonstrated status that they already had.

Bruges was an international hotspot at the time, Kirkland-Ives noted. Memling’s client list reflected this. His work traveled across Europe—from Castile to Florence—thanks to a system of patrons who often ordered pieces while visiting and had them shipped home. [Read more…] about Dr. Mitzi Kirkland-Ives publishes new book on Hans Memling

BFA in Design Senior Exhibition now on view at Carolla Arts Exhibition Center

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Missouri State University’s Department of Art and Design announces this semester’s BFA in Design: Professional Design Practicum Exhibition is on view at the Carolla Arts Exhibition Center.

The exhibition is open April 28-May 9 and includes the First Friday Art Walk May 2 from 6-9 p.m.

The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Capstone course features client-based projects

This capstone exhibition features the individual projects, portfolios and client-based projects of graduating seniors in the BFA in Design program.

Projects range from branding and marketing materials to digital media and product design and graphic novels, reflecting the diverse interests and skills of the Spring 2025 cohort.

Most of the clients who worked with the students are small business owners, but some are institutional, coming from local museums, non-profits, churches and artistic or musical initiatives.

As part of the practicum, students present self-promotional materials, including business cards, portfolios and branded merchandise, alongside real-world design solutions developed in collaboration with clients.

Exhibit wall displaying design projects
More projects from the 2025 BFA in Design exhibition now on view.

Associate professors Jacek Fraczak and Cole Closser teach the practicum course. They emphasize student engagement and interaction with clients, including communication, project management and creative problem-solving.

“The first long-term assignment is a real-life professional experience, when a student needs to find for themselves an existing client expressing the needs in the domain of graphic design or illustration,” Fraczak explained. “The clients may be local, regional or even international. Students have worked for clients from Saudi Arabia, Canada, Mexico, Slovakia and Germany.”

Senior graphic design major Mckenna Johnson said working with real-life clients was both exciting and motivating.

“It pushed me creatively as I worked to create a full brand identity from scratch,” she noted. “With strict deadlines, I had to communicate clearly, manage my time effectively and stay focused to deliver a final product that both my client and I were proud of.”

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