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Past Exhibitions

CAB Art Gallery

Please see a list of our previous exhibitions below:

Art exhibit with bench in middle of floor

Here There: (Re)collecting Labor on the American Railway

May 28, 2024 – August 29, 2024

Closing Reception: Thursday, August 22, 2024 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Artist Talk: Thursday, August 22, 2024 beginning at 5 p.m., Cultural Arts Building Room 2033

CAB Art Gallery Summer hours: (May 28 - August 16, 2024) 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday, closed on Fridays

“A train has a poor memory; it soon puts all behind it.” - Ray Bradbury, The Lake.

"Here There" is an immersive multimedia installation exploring complex historical relationships among labor, industrial infrastructure, and collective memory through an examination of three significant Transcontinental Railroad sites in Northern California: Donner Pass, Bloomer Cut, and Roseville Train Yard.

The project weaves together film from these three key sites and across ten other states spanning both coasts, archival materials, audio interviews with experts, field recordings, and a chamber orchestra score. Here There creates a dance between the everyday and the epic, the industrial and scenic, past and present, noise and silence.

The work is a collaboration between UNCW Professor Stefani Byrd, Composer Caroline Louise Miller, and world renowned contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound.

CAROLINE LOUISE MILLER - Sound Design, Original Score

Miller’s work explores affect, ecology, labor politics, tactility, and digital materiality. Their music has appeared across the U.S. and internationally, including Germany, Denmark, Australia, Mexico, Canada, Italy, the U.K., and Switzerland. Miller is Assistant Professor of Sonic Arts at Portland State University, and holds a Ph.D in Music from UC San Diego. www.carolinelouisemiller.com/

STEFANI BYRD - Cinematography, Editing, Research

Byrd’s art practice includes video, new media, and interactive technologies. Their practice explores the impact of imbalanced power structures. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including South Korea, Switzerland, Spain, and Greece. Byrd is currently Assistant Professor of New Media in the Film Studies Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. www.stefanibyrd.com @stefanibyrdstudio 

ALARM WILL SOUND - Original Score Performance

“As close to being a rock band as a chamber orchestra can be” (The New York Times), Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member touring ensemble led by Artistic Director Alan Pierson that commissions, performs, and records innovative works by established and emerging composers, especially works that incorporate theatrical and multimedia elements. www.alarmwillsound.com/ 

Here_there_poster
Train track going through a forest

"Spring 2024 Studio Art Senior Exhibition"

April 11, 2024 – May 10, 2024

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 11, 2024 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m. 

The "Spring 2024 Studio Art Senior Exhibition" showcases 24 graduating Studio Art students. This show will be hosted in UNCW’s Cultural Arts Building (CAB) Art Gallery and lobby. It is free and open to the public.

Graduating Studio Art Seniors: Andrea Abernathy, Andy Álvarez, Olivia Blain, Ava Blank, Jaylen Blount, Sarah Corcoran, Dinadja Davis, Lucia Dentz Blum, Shannon Dowling, Kelsey Drake, Theresa Dunbar, Erin Gabriel, Madison Gibson, Katherine Hatley, Zavier Mass, Holt Parks, Liz Prechtel, Efren Puente IV, Bailey Roth, Syd Stich, Aleksandra Taylor, Victoria Vidaud, Reagan Williams, Campbell Wynn.

The exhibition will feature a variety of mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, digital illustration, graphic design, installation, ceramics, 3D printing and printmaking.

The "Spring 2024 Studio Art Senior Exhibition" showcases a dynamic range of styles and techniques that push the boundaries of traditional art forms. Senior Exhibition is a capstone requirement for all UNCW seniors graduating with a major in Studio Art. Join us as we celebrate the students while embracing the limitless possibilities in the world of art.

Take a look

"Donald Furst: Fifty Years of Printmaking"

February 29, 2024  - March 28, 2024

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 29, 2024 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Artist Talk: Thursday, February 29, 2024 from 5 p.m. in UNCW's Cultural Arts Building, Room 2033 

“Fifty Years of Printmaking” is a retrospective exhibition of works by Professor Donald Furst, who joined the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s faculty in 1985, will retire from his teaching career in May 2024.

Donald Furst’s “Fifty Years of Printmaking” exhibition begins with drypoint prints from 1974 and finishes with work completed in 2024. Printmaking media include drypoint, engraving, etching, linoleum cut, lithography, metal relief, mezzotint, monotype, screen printing, Solarplate intaglio, vitreography (glass plate printmaking), and woodcut. 

Works from the 70s and 80s feature landscape images with implied movement into the distance, frequently with winding roads or streams. Works from the 90s and after emphasize architectural images of ladders, hallways, and doors. These interiors often present ambiguity and risk in the suggestion of directions the viewer can choose to venture into the space. The dominant technique for these works is copperplate mezzotint, a method that allows dense blacks and an unusually broad range of tones.

Many of the prints in this exhibition were previously displayed in national and international print competitions in over twenty-five nations.

Career highlights include art colony residencies as a Yaddo Fellow in 1981 and a MacDowell Fellow in 1983. 

The North Carolina Arts Council awarded Artist’s Fellowships in 1996 and 2006 as well as an Artist’s Project Grant in 1995 to create the 10-print suite “421 Nights.” The North Carolina Museum of Art invited Furst to exhibit prints in the 12-artist exhibit “Interiors” in 2000.

Furst took two visits in 2011 and 2012 to the renowned Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque to create stone lithograph editions.  

In 2021 Furst was chosen as one of 28 printmakers worldwide to exhibit in the 10th Leonardo Sciascia Estampes exhibit, which traveled to six Italian cities, ending with Milan at the Sforza Castle.

www.donaldfurst.com

Donald Furst staircase

"Meredith Connelly: Liminal"

January 18, 2024  - February 21, 2024

Opening Reception: Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Artist Talk: Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024 from 5 p.m. in UNCW's Cultural Arts Building, Room 2033

Meredith Connelly is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, best known for her grand-scale installations that emphasize the interplay of light, science, and technology. Connelly’s illuminated, site-specific displays – complete with interactive elements – connect and submerge viewers into glowing, otherworldly environments. Developed from and influenced by the organic qualities of nature, Connelly’s structures are formed using manufactured materials that are able to accurately capture the elaborate detail of the natural world, while also supporting environmental sustainability. Having worked with lighting and technology as a material for over a decade, Connelly has built a practice that has not only captured national attention but has engaged hundreds of thousands of participants in the evocative and inclusive power of public art.

Also inspired by nature are Connelly’s complex hand-cut works on paper, reflective of the microscopic world, which she presses against transparent materials to resemble microscope slides. Connelly’s two-dimensional works have been exhibited in various galleries, group exhibitions, and museums, offering viewers a different, more collectible approach to her pivotal artistic practice.

Connelly is committed to expanding community and culture through the arts, is an advocate for equality and women in the arts, and places great emphasis on supporting emerging and underrepresented femme, BIPOC, and LQBTQIA+ artists in all stages of their careers. More recently, Connelly has also been honing her curatorial process, developing and executing art exhibitions attached to causes she is passionate about that also address complex social issues through art. The artist is a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and currently lives and creates in the Lake Norman area outside of Charlotte, NC with her husband and three girls.

www.meredithconnelly.com

Meredith Connelly Liminal illuminated mushroom
2023

"Fall 2023 Senior Exhibition"

November 16, 2023  - December 15, 2023

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 16, 2023 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

The Senior Exhibition is the culmination of study in studio art. The exhibition is juried and mounted in the CAB Art Gallery by the graduating seniors. It is the capstone event for UNCW seniors graduating with a degree in Studio Art.

 

Presented By:
Tabatha Abbott
Cooper Grant
Kim Blankenburg
Hayley Hornaday
Kait Carpenter
Harper Hunt
Ash Carroll
Elyse Kiel
Curren Conner
Amanda Kortan
Leah Davies
Jessica McClellan
Jared Dodson
Gavin Musty
Trey Glover

"Dorothy Gillespie: Portraits and Self-Portraits"

May 18, 2023  - September 1, 2023

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 18, 2023 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

University of North Carolina Wilmington’s “Dorothy Gillespie: Portraits and Self-Portraits” opened in UNCW’s Cultural Arts Building Art Gallery with a public reception Thursday, May 18, 2023 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

UNCW’s CAB Art Gallery partnered with the Dorothy Gillespie Foundation and the Radford University Art Museum, to showcase portraits and self-portraits by 20th century American Artist, Dorothy Gillespie. This one-of-a-kind exhibition is an opportunity to view never before seen Dorothy Gillespie portraits and self-portraits.

Dorothy Gillespie was well known as a painter, sculptor, and installation artist whose work encompassed many significant 20th-century trends in art, including abstract expressionism, decorative abstraction, site-specific installations, the women's movement, and art in public spaces. She pioneered joyful new directions for metal sculpture and is best known for large-scale, colorfully painted arrangements of cut aluminum strips that radiate, undulate, or curl like giant arrangements of ribbon, enchanted towers, or bursting fireworks.

On display were portraits of Gillespie’s colleagues and friends, along with many unseen self-portraits, and the iconic aluminum sculpture, "Summer Jazz", inspired by many visits to see "Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway.

In conjunction with the CAB Art Gallery’s Dorothy Gillespie: Portraits and Self-Portraits exhibition, Cape Fear Community College’s Wilma W. Daniels Gallery hosted an exhibition, Dorothy Gillespie, featuring a retrospective of her artworks, beginning May 12 - August 25, 2023.

Other Gillespie artworks were also exhibited around the Wilmington area throughout the summer of 2023. Art in Bloom Gallery showcased original Gillespie artworks on view and available for purchase. Additional venues showcasing Gillespie artworks from May through August, as part of their permanent art collections were: The Arboretum, the Cameron Art Museum, Thalian Hall, and the Wilson Center. A brochure was available at these locations with more information regarding the artworks being shown at these venues. 

Our Past Exhibitions

Check out the past exhibitions from the Cultural Arts Building.
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