In his influential treatise De pictura (On Painting), Italian Renaissance architect, artist, and theorist Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) proclaimed that a painting should be treated like a window on the world, a theory on illusionistic perspective that influenced the great pantheon of Renaissance masters from Sandro Botticelli to Leonardo da Vinci. While this expectation has long since given way to more experimental interpretations of space and viewership, the underlying concept remains unchanged – art as a lens through which to view the artist’s perception of the world. The Faculty Art Show 2020 embraces this spirit of reflection, from subjects and surfaces to systems and symbolism.

The virtual exhibition takes us on a quiet yet profound journey of introspection to explore, linger, experience, and react. Works introduce us to new locations and points of view carefully selected and arranged, like the miniature home series by Jason Lanegan, Assistant Professor of Sculpture. For Lanegan, the recontextualization of minute reconstructions into new spaces (even his own childhood home) creates a therapeutic cleansing of memories that also invites joy. Like houses, he notes, we are continually adding on and modifying: “Because of entropy, [we] will never stay in stasis.”

The ever-shifting nature of time and memory is reflected in numerous works in the exhibition, such as in Seeing 2020 by Gareth Fry, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design. In this wheel-shaped work make of digital prints on copper, Fry explores the intriguing and sometimes bizarre futurist predictions made during the twentieth century about the year 2020. Looking backward in time, Professor Bob deWitt contemplates memory in It was Good to be Once Young (graphite self-portrait) and Associate Professor Howard Fullmer honors the past in Should Not Perish and Content of Character (portraits made of brass shell casings).

I invite you to explore the work of the inspired and inspiring faculty of Utah Valley University’s Department of Art & Design. The Faculty Art Show 2020 is a gateway as well as an intersection of perspectives, ideas, and viewpoints that reflect the world both externally and internally. I commend the Art & Design faculty for their work and laud their achievements. We thank the wonderful team at the Woodbury Art Museum for hosting this engaging and powerful virtual exhibition.

Let us all take time to linger and to celebrate the restorative power of looking, experiencing, and imagining.

Courtney R. Davis
Department Chair
Art & Design Department
Associate Professor of Art History

Utah Valley University