alumni issue spring 2017 “The story of Africatown is one that all Alabamians should know. It is an amazing story of survival in the face of adversity,” said alumna April Terra Livingston when asked why she feels this sculpture project is important. In February, MFA alumna APRIL TERRA LIVINGSTON’s cast iron bust of the Africatown hero, Cud - joe Lewis, was unveiled in the courtyard of Union Missionary Baptist Church in Mobile. The sculpture is a memorial to Lewis and to the survivors of the last slave ship in the US. Livingston, who has been working on the bust, and its accompanying plaques for more than a year, says she feels this is a way to educate more people about the survivors of the slave ship Clotilde and Lewis’ history. Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis (ca. 1840-1935) was the longest living survivor of the Clotilde, the last recorded slave ship to dock in the United States. Lewis was part of a group of approximately 112 Africans captured and taken as slaves on the Clotilde about 1859. The ship sailed from the Dahomey Kingdom (the area of present-day Benin and Togo) in West Africa and arrived in Mobile, Alabama, on July 8, 1860 - illegally - 52 years after the US abolished international slave trade. Lewis helped found THE LOUPE the settlement known as Africatown, just north of Mobile. CONTINUED ON BACKPAGE > 2 spring 17 innovation URCA CONFERENCE STUDENT RESEARCH ABOVE: Nadia DelMedico talks with a visitor at the poster session at the Bryant Conference Center. RIGHT: Kalypso Homan describes her project to the URCA judges. art history and anthropology SOMMER FLIGHT SIMULATION add a sense of speed, urgency and fear HALLQUIST. Hallquist’s poster was to the simulation. The entire experience titled “Images of Antichrist within Bible Senior BFA major KALYPSO HOMAN should be so intense that the player moralisée Codex Vindobonensis 2554, made a head-spinning presentation at might suspend disbelief for long enough Vienna, Österreichischen Nationalbib- the recent Undergraduate Research and to believe that they are flying, or even liothek.” Economics and German major Creative Activity Conference held at UA. flying for their life.” Reed O’Mara presented her art history Art history majors Nadia DelMedico, research poster, “Getting Ahead: The Sommer Hallquist and art history minor Junior art history major NADIA DEL- Roles of Headless Saints in the Contest Reed O’Mara presented their research MEDICO presented original research for Coronation Site.” in posters during a session held in the into extant slave dwellings on the Heritage Ballroom at Ferguson Student antebellum UA campus. Her poster Center on UA campus. titled, “Too Close to Home: The History Homan explained how her of Slavery on the University of Alabama A RARE TOUR OF LYON dizzying idea was brought to life: “The Campus,” was selected as the third place HALL aim of this project is to use a HTC Vive winner in the Arts & Humanities catego- headset to bring the viewer on a 3D ry of the URCA poster sessions. Del- Under the direction of Assistant time-based immersive virtual reality Medico’s poster also won second place Professor of American Art RACHEL experience. With our research we are in the Harrison Awards for Excellence in STEPHENS, five art history students exploring the possibility for a realistic Research — Undergraduate Poster Pre- spent the spring semester studying the flight simulation from the point of view sentation at the recent Annual Graduate history and contents of an antebellum of a bird. This simulation takes the Student Symposium in Art History at plantation in Demopolis, Lyon Hall. form of a predatory chase. The player UA’s Bryant Conference Center. Stephens was given rare access to the will enter the role of the prey fleeing a largely untouched family archives supernatural force, the goal being to Other presenters at the URCA poster of the home, built in 1852 and now session included senior double major in owned by the Marengo County His- loupe 3 research FACULTY & STUDENT RESEARCH torical Society. At semester’s end, the students, LAURA WYMER, OLIVIA TURNER, AMY SMOOT, JAMIE RESCHKE and LAUREN EICH, gave public tours at the mansion in which they talked about the architecture, furniture, decorative arts and daily life of the family. Professor of Art Gay Burke in her Woods Hall office in 2009. GAY BURKE her celebrated and acclaimed work in IN MEMORIAM over 80 national exhibitions including numerous solo exhibitions at venues The department with many friends such as the University of Nevada at UA AND UAB COLLABORATE and family were deeply saddened to Las Vegas, the University of Califor- learn of the death of Professor GAY nia at Berkeley and the School of the The studio art faculty of The Univer- BURKE on May 1, 2017. In 1973, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Those sity of Alabama and the University of Burke was hired to teach photography wishing to honor Professor Burke may Alabama at Birmingham presented in the Department of Art and Art His- make a contribution in her name to their first UA/UAB Studio Faculty tory, when the subject was still suspect any charitable organization working to Art Exhibition at The University of as a fine art medium. Burke became preserve democracy and social justice Alabama Gallery in Tuscaloosa, an un- the first woman to receive tenure in in America. precedented collaborative event by the the department. She earned her MFA twenty-two artists (SEE PHOTO, PAGE 11). from the University of Florida where The Loupe, published since 2002, is she studied under renowned photog- the newsletter of the NASAD-accredited LAURA LINEBERRY rapher and photomontage innovator Department of Art and Art History in The Jerry Uelsmann. After she came to University of Alabama’s College of Arts Full-time instructor of graphic design and Sciences, for students, alumni, Alabama, she worked with Walker faculty, staff and friends of the depart- LAURA LINEBERRY was awarded Evans at the end of his career. Pho- ment. Please send correspondence to Best of Show by American Advertising tographer Wayne Sides credits Burke Rachel Dobson: [email protected]. Federation Tuscaloosa in February with raising the profile of photography 2017, her fourth time to win that (loop), n. 1. a small magnifying glass as an art form in the South, evidenced used by jewelers or watchmakers, or for award. In 2016, she won two AAF in part by the large number of former viewing photographic transparencies. Tuscaloosa Silver ADDYs: for work students who responded to requests completed for Alabama Alumni Mag- for memories in a special Loupe article azine and for her role in the updated honoring her on her 40th anniversary branding architecture for UA. (Loupe Spring 2013). She exhibited 4 spring 17 research FACULTY RESEARCH ALUMNI PROFILE LUCY CURZON JULIE HALL FRIEDMAN (BA Associate Professor LUCY CURZON ARH 1981) is an old hand at support- published the first full-length study ing the arts. For most of her adult life, of the British group Mass-Observa- she has volunteered and raised funds tion’s engagement with visual culture. for every area of the arts, from theater Mass-Observation and Visual Culture to ballet to visual arts, in local and – Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain statewide organizations. Recently we (Routledge, 2017) critically analyzes asked her to tell us about her life expe- the role that visual culture played in rience and if she has some advice for the early development of the innova- aspiring professionals in the field of tive British anthropological research the visual arts. And, we wanted to hear group founded in 1937. In Curzon’s what her memories are of her years in book, she explores the paintings of the Department of Art and Art History. Graham Bell and William Coldstream; Friedman graduated magna the photographs of Humphrey Spend- cum laude with a bachelor of arts in er (brother of Stephen Spender); the art history and a minor in history from paintings, collages and photographs UA. “I had Joe Bolt, Robert Mellown, of Julian Trevelyan; and Humphrey PETE SCHULTE Eloise Angiola and Anna Spiro. Hon- Jennings’ photographs and the widely estly, I loved all of them. I think I took recognized Mass-Observation film, Assistant Professor PETE every class offered in the department. Spare Time, among other sources. Her SCHULTE was named the 2017 I took a good many studio classes with research positions these works as key South Arts State Fellowship re- Richard Brough and Al Sella. I also sources of information in illuminating cipient for Alabama and awarded took some art education classes.” the complex character of British iden- $5,000. Two of his large-scale Back in Mobile, she volun- tity during the Depression era. drawings in Abstraction Today teered with many arts organizations. in Atlanta’s Museum of Contem- In 1995, Friedman was appointed to porary Art of Georgia won crit- the Alabama State Council on the Arts ical praise in the arts magazine (ASCA) by Governor Fob James and Burnaway. has served in that organization for more than two decades, as member, as council chairman and currently as chair of the Grants Committee. Along with her service with the ASCA, she has been involved with local arts orga- nizations and in support of Alabama writers. Friedman has served on the boards of the Mobile Ballet, the Mobile Opera and the Alabama Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She also helped establish the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Now loupe 5 paths JULIE HALL FRIEDMAN LEFT: In 2009 with ASCA officers in Washington, DC, for the unveiling of the Helen Keller sculpture in the capital rotunda.