Department of Art and Design Welcomes New Faculty

Two new permanent faculty members have been hired by the department, starting this fall term. Assistant Professor Natalie Loveless is an art historian with a contemporary focus, and Assistant Professor Jesse Thomas joins the painting staff.

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Natalie Loveless has been newly appointed as assistant professor in the History of Art, Design and Visual Culture with a focus on contemporary art and theory. She received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz, under Donna Haraway, a Master's in Art History from Tufts University and an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary studio from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has previously taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of Western Ontario, and Wilfrid Laurier University, and held research fellowships at the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University and the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. Her work has appeared in The Canadian Journal of Communications, Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, S: The Journal of the Jan Van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique, and Aspect: The Chronicle Of New Media Art.

Also an interdisciplinary artist and curator, Natalie's installations, performance actions, video works and curatorial projects have been presented internationally in festivals, galleries and artist-run centers in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. In 2011 Natalie co-founded TotalArtJournal with artist Jeff Huckleberry, a peer-reviewed journal that seeks to establish a dynamic forum for interdisciplinary discourse grounded in the arts. It is one of several means by which she investigates the intersection of theory and practice, and the necessity of both in academia as well as in studio-based practices. Earlier this year, she curated the interdisciplinary event New Maternalisms at the FADO artist-run centre for performance art in Toronto.

Natalie Loveless' Official Website
Total Art Journal
FADO Performance Art Centre

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Jesse Thomas, 
Bentbrook Farms, 2011, Oil on canvas, 40x30"

Painter Jesse Thomas joins the U of A Faculty from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis where he has been teaching in Painting and Foundations since 2003. Jesse's recent work depicts small groups of people interacting in domestic interiors. Of primary interest: the relationship of form to its manner of execution within the historical context of painting- the way technique relates to style, and how the two together shape content. He sees painting as a way of thinking through an image, one where the means of production are intimately connected with a desire for authenticity and discovery.
Jesse's recent paintings from the Cerulean Brigade series have been exhibited widely. In 2011 they were the subject of solo exhibitions in San Francisco and Chicago. They were also shown at NEXT Artfair in Chicago (Robert Bills Contemporary) and at AQUA Artfair in Miami (Eleanor Harwood Gallery), and have appeared in print twice in New American Paintings (Midwest Edition 2010 and 2011) and online at EyeSEEHue, CurbsandStoops, FecalFace, and other artblogs. In addition to his experience teaching at the Sam Fox School, Thomas has taught classes in painting in Florence, Italy for WUSTL, and in Cortona, Italy for the University of Georgia. He received his BFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993, and his MFA in Painting from Washington University in St Louis in 2003.

Jesse Thomas Official Website
Eye See Hue Issue 02
Jesse Thomas@Eleanor Harwood

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On a related note, the Department of Art and Design and the Faculty of Arts are pleased to announce that Design Studies professor Cezary Gajewski has stepped into a more permanent role as Department Chair, after having served in an acting capacity for the past year. Cezary has a long history with the department, where he was originally a student in the early 1990s. He currently holds Master's degrees in both sculpture and design.