McDonough opens "Enigmatic Reflections" faculty art show

The work of 17 faculty in the Department of Art at Youngstown State University is featured in a new exhibit that opens Aug. 28 in the McDonough Museum of Art on campus.

The exhibit, titled “Enigmatic Reflections: Department of Art Faculty Exhibition,” runs through Oct. 24.

Note that new health and safety guidelines at the museum include enhanced cleaning and sanitizing, daily health screenings for staff, temperature and hand sanitizer station, face coverings required, social distancing of six feet or more, defined traffic patterns, special hours by appointment for vulnerable populations, and capacity limits of seven people per gallery.

Full- and part-time faculty included in the exhibit include Tony Armeni, Lauren Baker, Claudia Berlinski, Dragana Crnjak, Debra DeGregorio, Joseph D'Uva, Johnathan Farris, Richard Helfrich, Kevin Hoopes, Jennifer Kirkpatrick, Sharon Koelblinger, Christine McCullough, John Guy Petruzzi, Jeff Piper, Dana Sperry, Paige Stewart and Sara Tkac.

The show particularly focuses on the research of two professors, Dragana Crnjak and Dana Sperry, accomplished during faculty research leave:

• During the spring of 2020, Crnjak focused on smaller scale art works that resulted in two different painting series, Days and Shadows. “The two bodies of work are accumulation of daily reflections, memories, questions and discoveries I have filtered visually over the past few months,” she said. “While individually fragmented and allusive - both series operate as a cartography of my mind – diagramming daily interruptions and irregularities as well as repetition and patterns. The softness and instability of compressed charcoal enabled me to emphasize the subtle, ephemeral uncertainties of the days since March 2020.”
• Sperry, an associate professor of Digital Media, will display a map that includes an interactive QR code to represent his The Why Here:1877 Railroad Strike, a self- guided audio walk in Pittsburgh and reflection on the human consequences of swift technological and economic shifts. It examines the physical and intellectual connections between the largely forgotten uprising of 1877 and the technology advancements currently taking place just blocks away involving Big Tech corporations such as Uber. “When a society greatly alters its technology and economic models, it must also address the human consequences of such changes,” he said. “As history has shown, not doing so can prove disastrous.”

Some of the participating artists will present livestream gallery talks throughout the run of the exhibition. The schedule includes: Crnjak at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 8; Christine McCullough at 1 p.m. Sept. 22, and Lauren Baker at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6.