The James M. Hull College of Business and Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences have teamed up to collaborate on BizArt.  

The event series was put together to show the importance of connecting artists and people in the business world. Rather than being taught in silos, art students can benefit from strategy and management training while business and marketing students can use the design support from artists.

The first BizArt was held in October, and after organizers received positive feedback, a second BizArt event was held in early April.

Marsha Loda, PhD, associate professor in Hull College of Business, and Scott Thorp, chair of Pamplin’s Department of Art, are the two driving forces bringing the colleges together.  

The purpose of the collaboration is two-fold. First, it brings the students together so they can learn to appreciate the connection between the art and business worlds.

BizArt also gives the students an opportunity to get to know each other better, outside the classroom.

“Some students stated they are in the classroom with these people for months and don’t really know who their classmates are,” said Loda. “That’s why we wanted to create an opportunity to build relationships and, in turn, make students better engaged with their classes and the university.”

After hosting two BizArt events, Thorp has seen plenty of positives come from the venture.

“The biggest takeaway is that students need informal, career-centered gatherings to hone networking skills,” he said. “Students have commented that they lack confidence in social skills to build their peer network and market themselves. This type of event helps.”

It has also created a unique environment where socialization meets learning.

“So far, it’s all been positive. The students and the presenters greatly appreciate the opportunity to share and learn,” Thorp said.

This year, BizArt brought in former Augusta University graduates to give presentations about the classes and training that made a difference in their fields. They also spoke on how important it is to take advantage of all opportunities presented to them.   

Loda added they would like to expand and collaborate with other colleges.

“I’m trying to see how this is growing and then see what colleges the best add-ons may be. Also, there’s a possibility that we might fold this into a business-social fraternity that we’re thinking of starting,” she said.

Thorp also sees ways BizArt could grow.

“We want more graphic design students involved. Graphic design students and marketing students will likely pursue very similar career paths. It’s an excellent opportunity for them to build their network or to form companies,” he said.

Pittsburgh-based photographer and self-proclaimed nemophilist Barbora Batokova has cultivated a deep passion for fungi ever since her childhood in the Czech Republic. Growing up mushroom hunting and foraging for hearty meals, Batokova shares the cultural nuances linked to moving overseas as she explains that the “Czech Republic is a mycophilic country, which means people are not afraid of mushrooms, unlike people in mycophobic countries like the U.S.” 

Yearning for her roots, Batokova created fungiwoman, an ongoing photography and cooking project that allows her to reconnect with nature. Venturing into the woods year-round, she explores new regions, hunts for mushrooms, captures images to learn about different species, and brings the fruitful yield home to cook. Her mesmerizing photographs show small orange caps springing up from mossy grounds and vibrantly fruiting polypores branching from trees. Devoted to protecting precious corners of the woods, she hopes to inspire others to look closely at the surrounding environment.

Batokova’s forthcoming book about mushrooms will be released in 2024, and she has prints and cards available in her shop. In the meantime, you can follow her Instagram to tag along as she traverses new thickets and shares her findings.

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The Columbia Pike Blues Festival is returning this summer for its 26th edition.

The annual summer music festival is set to take place on June 17 this year and will span several Columbia Pike blocks. It will feature a collection of performances, local food, beer, and family-friendly activities, as it usually does.

This year’s headliner is Judith Hill, a singer and songwriter featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Feet from Stardom.” She’s performed and worked with John Legend, Josh Groban, Prince, and Michael Jackson and has self-produced several of her own albums.

Also playing at the festival are Annika Chambers and Paul DesLauriers, local blues guitarist Bobby Thompson, Gayle Harrod Band, and Spice Cake Blues.

A number of local restaurants will be providing food and drinks, including New District Brewing. As co-owner Mike Katrivanos told ARLnow last month, the Green Valley-based brewery will be serving beer at the festival again this year despite the fact they may be without a home come June.

Another now-shuttered business, Rincome Thai, is still set to curate the wine list for the Blues Festival.

There will also be a kids activity area, while 9th Rd. S. will be transformed into an “art alley” where the Arlington Art Truck is set to have interactive exhibits, activities, and an exhibit from the Columbia Pike Documentary Project.

More programming and activities are still expected to be added to the line-up this year, Arlington Arts marketing director Jim Byers told ARLnow. Those additions will be announced via social media as it gets closer to the festival.

Arlington Arts co-produces the event with the Columbia Pike Partnership.

About 7,000 people are expected to come to the festival this year, though that depends on the weather, Byers said. In 2022, it’s estimated about 8,000 people attended, as the festival returned to being fully in-person for the first time in three years. It was also the festival’s 25th anniversary.  

The Columbia Pike Blues Festival started in 1995 and, according to organizers, it is considered the largest music festival of its kind in the D.C. area.

Illustrator Shin Oh nestles childhood memories of visiting traditional Malaysian shops and food stalls within tiny three-dimensional renderings, placing the immense affection she feels for such spaces in small confines. Part of two companion series titled 126³ Tiny Voxel Shops and 126³ Voxel Hawker Stalls, the digital works are made with voxels, or volumetric pixels used for building in popular video games like Minecraft and Roblox. Whether depicting a bakery or dim sum stand, Shin constructs each stall uniformly with two walls and soft color palettes “because nostalgic memories are warm, and hawker stalls always give me fuzzy warm feelings as they serve affordable and great food,” she says. The “hawker centre is hot and stuffy, too.” 

126³ Tiny Voxel Shops was the first of the pair, which Shin created for a group exhibition in 2021. “During the pre-production phase of this project, I had conversations with my mother about the shops that we used to visit back then,” she shares. “I listed down as many shops as possible and filtered the list down to ten shops I think have unique visual characteristics that people can immediately recognize when they see them.” Included are both ubiquitous and rare sights, like a tailor’s studio and a well-stocked biscuit store. “There is no modern-style décor in this shop, no bright lights, no air-conditioning. One uniqueness about traditional biscuit shop is having lots of aluminum tins and glass jars, literally stacked from floor to ceiling,” she says.

This description is typical for Shin, who shares insights into her process and the objects she chooses for each space. Her ongoing series of open-air hawker stalls continues this approach with information about the dishes served from each kiosk. Bak Kut Teh, for example, translates to “meat bone tea” and is a broth with Chinese herbs and spices, pork, mushrooms, tofu, cabbage, oil rice, and fried dough known as youtiao, and Shin’s rendering of this stand includes various pots and friers used for making the dish. Although each space is imagined, the idea is to use such commonplace and easily interpretable items to create scenes that are understandable across cultures. “People can recognize the stalls from the objects even without having to understand the signboard or read the captions,” Shin shares. “In my opinion, food connects every human together, and it conquers all, from language barriers to cultural differences. I hope it’s the same for this foodie series.”

You can find more from both of the collections on Instagram. (via Present & Correct)

“Biscuit,” 126³ Tiny Voxel Shops

“Bak Kut Teh,” 126³ Voxel Hawker Stalls

Top left: “Bakery,” 126³ Tiny Voxel Shops. Top right: “Economy Rice,” 126³ Voxel Hawker Stalls. Bottom left: “Char Kuey Teow,” 126³ Voxel Hawker Stalls. Bottom right: “Kopitiam,” 126³ Tiny Voxel Shops

“Dim Sum and Bao,” 126³ Voxel Hawker Stalls

“Tailoring,” 126³ Tiny Voxel Shops

“Sundry,” 126³ Tiny Voxel Shops

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Voxel Shops and Food Stalls by Shin Oh Tuck Traditional Malaysian Culture into Nostalgic Renderings appeared first on Colossal.

Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665, painted by Dutch Golden Age master Johannes Vermeer during the late 17th century must surely be one of the best-known paintings of all time, coming at a close second only to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, 1503. So much so, it has often been referred to as the ‘Mona Lisa of the North’. But what is it about this modestly scaled, enigmatic portrait that has attracted so much attention over the centuries? In part, the painting’s fame today is thanks to Tracy Chevalier’s bestselling fiction novel of the same name, published in 1999, which imagined the life of the girl behind the scenes, and in turn led to a Hollywood film adaptation in 2003, followed by a play is 2008. Meanwhile Banksy’s famed riff Girl with a Pierced Eardrum in 2014, is amongst numerous spoofs and spin-offs.

But the painting’s enduring appeal has far more than clever marketing to thank for its worldwide recognition. We look closer at some of the painting’s key qualities that have made it such an unassuming icon of art history. 

The enigmatic mystery of Vermeer’s subject has been a subject of fascination amongst art historians and enthusiasts for many centuries. One of the most intriguing aspects of the painting is that no one actually knows who the sitter for the painting actually was. Instead, she is a ‘tronie’ or an imaginary character, which Vermeer has dressed up in sumptuous fabric and pearl earrings. Although a sitter would most likely have posed for the painting, many writers believe Vermeer has idealized his model to fit a particular type, giving her smooth, flawless porcelain skin, red, moist lips, and large, glistening eyes that meet ours with a soulful, intimate gaze. 

Vermeer’s Study Explores Dramatic Lighting

The dramatic, chiaroscuro lighting is one of the most striking and enduring aspects of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Vermeer plays with how an almost black backdrop becomes the ideal setting for his young woman, who stands out like a spot lit actor on a stage. Raking, chiaroscuro light seems to stream in from the right, catching the young woman’s pale, luminous skin face and the shimmering drapery falling from her head, creating a crisp, clear illusion of volume in space. Vermeer pays particular attention to the light on the young woman’s eyes, lips, and the suspended pearl falling from her ear. Recent studies of Vermeer’s painting reveal that he had once painted in a green curtain behind her, before obscuring it with darker color to create a greater quality of mystery and intrigue. 

The Painting Looks Different from Vermeer’s Other Work

One of the reasons why Vermeer’s painting fascinates historians is because it is an outlier in Vermeer’s overall oeuvre. Although he only produced a small volume of paintings during his lifetime, his paintings have predominantly focused on interior scenes viewed from a distance, with features such as floor tiles, windows and furniture creating perspectival lines that pull us into the scene. While Vermeer often painted women alone in interior settings, this painting stands out for its closely cropped design, in which there is little to no background detail. Instead, the painting is a masterful exercise in simplicity, restraint, and elegance. 

Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring was less popular than the artist’s other paintings during his day, and it was even lost for over 200 years! Since going on display at its current home in the Mauritshuis in the Hague in 1902, however, all this has changed. Chevalier’s novel, published in 1999 was an international bestseller which did much to publicize the painting, along with subsequent film and play adaptations respectively in 2003 and 2008. Following the success of Banksy’s mural in 2014, famously adorned with a facemask during the global pandemic, the Mauritshuis museum launched a competition in March 2023, titled My Girl with a Pearl, asking artists to reimagine the artwork in their own creative way, with some surprising and unexpected results including painting, photography, digital imaging, ceramics and felting.

As the premiere visual storytelling form, illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a truly interdisciplinary practice using experimentation, reflection, and point of view. Confronting subjects of importance can be achieved with bold strokes or with a whisper, drawing the viewer closer to a place of understanding. Through their envisioning the world of an author, contemplating life, or delving into one’s gender identity, these young illustrators are giving us a roadmap to the future. They imagine and build worlds of fact, fantasy, and poetry that go beyond the page using ink, ceramics, pixels, paper, cloth, graphite, time, and sequence.

Where these inspiring illustrators come from is as unique as their culminating work. With many having studied in the field, others emerge from animation, health care, advertising, design, and social sciences. They bring not only their deep passion for illustration as a practice but their attention to the needs of society through art. Distinct in how they reach this goal, the one-year MA in Illustration and two-year MFA in Illustration Practice programs give current practitioners, or those new to the field, choices on advancing their creative output.

Acknowledged nationally as a premier leader in art and design education, MICA is deliberately cultivating a new generation of artists—one that is capable of seamlessly integrating innovation, entrepreneurship, and creative citizenship with contemporary approaches to art, design, and media.

MICA is redefining the role of artists and designers as creative, solutions-oriented makers, and thinkers who will drive social, cultural, and economic advancement for our future.

What will you create?

See more thesis work and full artist profiles at mica.edu/gradshow23.

Alejandro Aguilar Canela, MFA ’23 (Illustration Practice) (@alejandrocanela), “Flower” (2023)

Nimo Jiang, MFA ’23 (Illustration Practice) (@nimooko), “Folding World: Agatha Christie” (2023)

Jodie Chiou, MA ’23 (Illustration) (@jiiezuo), “Ice Cream Teen” (2023)

Dwayne Huang, MA ’23 (Illustration) (@dwaynehuang_), “The Doomsday” (2023)

Yuanyuan Zhang, MFA ’23 (Illustration Practice) (@yuanyuanzhou_art), One spread from the book, A story of Wedgwood: Bringing elegance to the daily table (2023)

Rainy Zhang, MFA ’23 (Illustration Practice) (@rainyyyyz), “Fountain Plaza” (2023)

Andromeda Xie, MA ’23 (Illustration) (@andromeda_x), “Waterlillies” (2023)

Di Liang, MFA ’23 (Illustration Practice) (@di_liang_), Keyframe from animation “Cut &” (2023)

Breeze Hu, MFA ’23 (Illustration Practice) (@breeze_hu_art), Cover art from graphic novel, A Night Ride to the Day (2023)

Andrew Haener, MFA ’23 (Illustration Practice) (@andrewhaener), “Digital Quilt” (still) (2023)

Madalyn Drewno, MA ’23 (Illustration) (@madalyn.drewno), “Portrait of Eric Skinner” (2023)

Sissel Tan, MA ’23 (Illustration) (@sissel.tre), “Nautical Fashion” (2023)

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article 13 Illustration Graduates to Watch From the Maryland Institute College of Art appeared first on Colossal.

Agriculture and tourism are among the primary industries that drive the state’s economy, and the South Carolina Ag + Art Tour has been bringing those two essential elements of its culture together for a dozen years.

Led by the Clemson Cooperative Extension Service, this year’s Ag + Art Tour kicked off in earnest April 18 at the University of South Carolina’s Russell House, where agritourism farm operators, government officials and county committees convened to begin another year of agriculture education, artisan exploration, rural collaboration and farm experience in South Carolina.

The South Carolina Ag + Art Tour itself is a free, self-guided tour of farms and markets featuring local artisans at every stop. During the tour, visitors can see first-hand where their food comes from, watch artists in action and purchase their works, enjoy the melodies of local musicians and learn more about rural life. The tour is the largest free farm and art tour in the nation with over 85,000 visitors participating since 2012.

“We’re all about rural tourism, we’re all about agricultural tourism and the ag experience — that’s what this is all about, and that’s where I see it going for the future,” South Carolina Ag + Art Tour Director Will Culler said. “The Tour has grown over the years and touched the lives of so many people. Not just in agricultural education, but rural revitalization and community revitalization and economic development.”

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The S.C. AG + Art Tour has operated in 15 South Carolina counties over the past 12 years, and the Tour has seen hundreds of farms in dozens of communities embrace agritourism as a method of farm enterprise diversification, agricultural education, and rural revitalization, and economic development.

The tour’s first official stop is May 6 in Lexington County, with numerous dates to follow from York County at the top of the state, to Colleton County near the bottom. For a full list of dates and locations, visit the official Ag + Art Tour website at www.agandarttour.com/.

Culler said the tour has grown so much, in fact, that some of the previous stops have reached the point they don’t need or can’t handle the extra traffic the Tour provides — which, of course, is the ultimate goal.

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“Just this past year I was informed by the York County AG + Art Committee that several of their more mature agritourism farms, some of whom had participated in the tour for the past 12 years, would not be returning for the 2023 season. … It was not that they couldn’t enjoy the Tour or cherish the relationships the Tour offered. The reasons given were that these agritourism venues no longer needed the Ag + Art Tour to realize their goals, to realize their passion. They had gotten their start, they had matured, and they had decided to step aside and let the next potential venue embrace agritourism,” Culler said. “And embrace agritourism is just what they have done. York County will see the same number of Tour stops (28) this year as last year. Some of them may be just a just a little less mature but ready to blossom.”

Culler, who also serves as a senior agribusiness extension agent and Lexington County coordinator for Clemson Extension, was elected last year by the North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association to a three-year term on their board of directors.

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“This was a great honor for me as this organization of over 700 farms in all 50 States, Canada and Europe is doing incredible things for agritourism,” he said.

More information about this organization and the resources it offers is available on its website https://nafdma.com/.