Art Changes Lives at Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. Museum admission is free courtesy of JCSM Business Partners.
Now on view:
Out of the Box: An Outdoor Juried Sculpture Exhibition features ten works of contemporary sculpture to represent ten years of service to Auburn University and community. The artists’ work
will be displayed on the museum grounds in a yearlong observance of the anniversary until October 3, 2014. More than 120 submissions from across the United States were submitted and selected by Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse.
JCSM@10: A Decade of Collecting is a broad selection of the distinctive art acquired by the museum between 2003 and today. Including works by Old Masters and Impressionists; artists of local
and international renown; contemporary painters, photographers, potters, and sculptors; self-taught and academically trained—our collection continues to expand, enabling us each year to educate and more fully relate the story of art. The exhibition JCSM@10
serves not only to illustrate the coming of age of an important regional asset, it salutes the benevolent spirit of a caring community that gave it birth and nurtured JCSM to this milestone.
Breath of Identity, organized for JCSM, addresses the concept of artistic collaboration and the nature of a melded identity that is inherent in the work of Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse.
Featuring a series of large paintings with related drawings, prototypes and engineering studies for recent sculpture projects, and sequential photographs of the Hunter Museum installation, the exhibition offers insight into Mickett and Stackhouse’s shared creative
process.
Sculptor David Henderson transforms the broad, open space of JCSM’s Grand Gallery with a dramatic, site-specific installation on view throughout the fall in A Brief History of Aviation. Composed
of large, curvilinear forms constructed of fiberglass and Dacron fabric—the same materials used for ultra-light aircraft—the room-filling structure reflects man’s longstanding fascination with flight. Henderson’s elegant, repeating shapes evoke the complex,
interwoven lines found on ceiling vaults in Gothic architecture. The Brooklyn-based artist engineers each venue’s unique installation using computer-assisted design software and meticulously hand crafts the segments’ intricate design. Appearing almost weightless,
the interconnected ribs and tissue-like skin that make up A Brief History of Aviation rise, separate, and converge rhythmically within the confines of the gallery architecture as if guided by the wind.
Audubon in the Arboretum focuses on native plants represented in The Birds of America, which are present in Auburn University’s Donald E. Davis Arboretum. Celebrating its 50th year,
the Davis Arboretum was begun in 1963 as a collection of native trees of the Southeastern United States. Over the years, this collection has been expanded, not only increasing the number of tree species, but also native shrubs and herbaceous plants. The Arboretum
has also established areas of native habitats that represent various ecosystems in Alabama. As the plantings and diversity have increased, so has the diversity of the bird population.
