Carmon Colangelo named first dean of Sam Fox School

November 18, 2005
Washington University Record
link to original article

Carmon Colangelo named first dean of Sam Fox School
By Liam Otten

Carmon Colangelo, director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, has been named the first dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced Nov. 16.

“Carmon Colangelo is an accomplished artist and an experienced academic leader,” Wrighton said. “In both capacities, he has demonstrated an exceptional ability to incorporate new concepts and new technologies alongside traditional art and design techniques.

“His creativity and passion will help fulfill our vision of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and realize its considerable potential.”

Formation of the Sam Fox School – which aspires to become a national model for the creation, study and exhibition of multidisciplinary and collaborative work – comes amidst a nearly $60 million campaign to improve campus arts facilities. Plans include extensive renovations to existing facilities as well as two new buildings designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, both scheduled to open in fall 2006.

Colangelo’s appointment – effective July 1 – follows from the work of an advisory committee chaired by Richard J. Smith, Ph.D., the Ralph E. Morrow Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

Colangelo will oversee the Sam Fox School’s four academic units – the College of Art, the College of Architecture, the Graduate School of Art and the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design – as well as the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, home to one of the nation’s finest university collections of modern art.

In addition, Colangelo will serve as a member of the University Council and as the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration in the Arts.

“This is just an amazing opportunity, and I am absolutely thrilled to join Washington University as first dean of the Sam Fox School,” Colangelo said. “This new structure presents tremendous opportunities for innovative collaboration and to become an international center for creative activity to address, explore and contemplate the challenges of contemporary design in the 21st century.

“Two beautiful new Fumihiko Maki buildings; nationally ranked architecture and art programs; and one of the very finest university art collections and galleries in the country – the combination and potential are extraordinary.

“The Sam Fox School will strive to be a leader and one of the most unique and dynamic schools of design and visual arts in the world. I am honored to join its faculty in a leadership role.”

The current deans of Architecture and Art will report to Colangelo, who in turn will report directly to Wrighton. In addition, Colangelo will chair the Sam Fox School Executive Committee, comprising the deans of Architecture and of Art; the director of the Kemper Art Museum; and leaders of the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences and the Kenneth and Nancy Kranzberg Information Center.

“I think we have succeeded in hiring one of the most talented arts administrators in the country,” said Jerry Sincoff, dean of Architecture and a member of the advisory committee. “Under Carmon’s leadership, the Lamar Dodd School has completed design and planning for a new $40 million campus that will unite its arts and design programs in a single location.

“I am certain he will bring that same energy and collaborative approach to St. Louis.”

Jeff Pike, dean of Art and current chair of the Sam Fox School Executive Committee, and Sabine Eckmann, director of the Kemper Art Museum, also served on the advisory committee.

Eckmann noted that Colangelo was founding director of Georgia’s Ideas for Creative Exploration, which promotes “innovative, multidisciplinary projects and advanced research in the arts through publications, performances and exhibitions.”

Pike added, “At Georgia, Carmon effectively built new interdisciplinary initiatives while strengthening both the faculty and the graduate program. We look forward to working with him.”

About Carmon Colangelo

Colangelo is a widely exhibited artist known for large mixed-media prints that combine digital and traditional processes.

Over the past decade, Colangelo’s work has been featured in 15 solo shows and dozens of group exhibitions in Argentina, Canada, England, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Puerto Rico and across the United States. His work has been collected by many of the nation’s leading museums, including the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.

Born in Toronto, Colangelo earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in printmaking and painting from the University of Windsor in Ontario in 1981 and a master of fine arts degree in printmaking from Louisiana State University in 1983.

From 1984-1996, Colangelo headed the printmaking department at West Virginia University and was named chair of the Division of Art in 1993.

In 1997, he became director of the Lamar Dodd School, which encompasses approximately 1,000 undergraduate and 90 graduate art majors. He was named a distinguished research professor in 2003.

Under Colangelo’s direction, the Lamar Dodd School started a significant visiting artist scholar series; recruited more than two dozen full-time faculty and staff positions; increased graduate and teaching assistantships by more than 50 percent; and renovated the recently named John D. Kehoe Center, a 13th-century monastery in Cortona, Italy, for its study abroad program.

U.S. News & World Report ranks the school’s M.F.A. program among the top 21 in the nation and the printmaking program among the top three.

Colangelo and his wife, Susan, have three daughters: Jessica, 19, Ashley, 17, and Chelsea, 11.

2005-2006 Project Grants Announced

Congratulations to the recipients of 2005-2006 ICE Project Grants. Nearly $12,000 will be distributed in support of six projects chosen by the ICE Selection Committee. The projects and lead applicants are as follows:

Put It in the Scrapbook George Contini, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Film Studies

A multimedia theatre piece based on the life and career of Julian Eltinge. The project will incorporate new and archival video projections, animation, and other media in a narrative exploration of Eltinge, one of the most colorful characters in the history of the American stage and silent film. Professor Contini will play more than twenty-five characters in the solo performance, directed by Kristin Kundert-Gibbs, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film Studies, in collaboration with Music Director/Arranger Rachel Townes, Adjunct Professor, Hugh Hodgson School of Music.

The Three-Layer Cake Tour Audrey Molinare, Erin Burke, and Danielle Benson, MFA candidates, Lamar Dodd School of Art

A series of three installations in private residences, transformed and opened to the public for interaction. Molinare, Burke, and Benson have been collaborating on large-scale installations during their studies in printmaking and sculpture. This project will extend their activity to three homes, selected by a “call for venues”, over a period of six months. The Three-Layer Cake Tour will incorporate traditional materials as well as sound, video, and sensor technology, resulting in public openings and DVD documentation of the events.

The Flock Tree Dr. Jason Cantarella, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics

A sculptural installation that explores the idea of division and grouping using concepts from computer science. The project will represent a flock of birds in flight, suspended in space and organized as an octree, a data structure that indexes the distribution of objects in space. Dr. Cantarella will work in collaboration with Luke Hegel-Cantarella, a theatrical designer based in New York with extensive experience in designing and building on a grand scale.

Nuno No Odori Glen Kaufman, Professor, Lamar Dodd School of Art

A performance uniting dance, video, music, and costume in a set inspired by traditional maku, fabric walls used in Japan to mark special events or venues. Professor Kaufman will collaborate with Andrea Trombetta Allen, MFA, Lamar Dodd School of Art and a member of the Warehouse Collective dance studio in Athens, who will choreograph and perform the work in Spring 2006.

Interactive Virtual Actor Michelle Smith, PhD candidate, Theatre and Film Studies

A project to develop a prototype virtual actor who can interact with a live actor on stage. Smith will create 3-D computer models and an artificial intelligence framework for the virtual actor, and a wireless “acting glove” for a live actor to use to interact with the virtual actor. The project will support Smith’s dissertation research on granting agency to media on the live stage, and involve students and faculty in the Interactive Performance Lab at UGA.

Arbitrary Dialogue  John Crowe, BFA candidate, Lamar Dodd School of Art

Preliminary research and development of a multimedia performance exploring language and alienation. Crowe will begin the programming and planning of a performance in which actors perform in silence and audience members listen to different recorded dialogues on headsets. In addition to a call for scripts, the project will require the development of a multi-layered audio mix on a shared timeline.

The projects were selected from eighteen proposals based on the following criteria:
– Intellectual and artistic merit
– Feasibility of the project under sponsorship of ICE
– Extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity
– Degree of innovation
– Potential for future funding and development

ICE Open House: uses without objects

Wednesday, October 19 at 6:00 PM
ICE Room, Tanner Building Room 101
Poetry reading by O.B. Bassler and Patrick Fadely

Professor of Philosophy O.B. Bassler recently completed two volumes of poetry: ” The Plaster Years” and “In The House of Black Spaniards”. His work (poetic, critical, and mathematical) has been published in Pulse Berlin and The Annals of Scholarship. He is currently at work on a book on intrinsically large numbers, tentatively titled “The Long Shadow of the Parafinite”. Patrick Fadely is a BA candidate in Linguistics. After self-publishing a volume of “8 Poems,” he has started an extensive study of logical structures in lyric poetry.

The reading will be split into two apposite segments: the first part will deal explicitly and implicitly with the work of Marcel Duchamp, and will extend critically, poetically, and graphically a tenuous interpretation of what we may learn from his activity as artist and non artist. The second half of the program will center on the art of manifesto, and the possible permutations of “stance.”

ICE Open House: contain-decay

Wednesday, October 12 at 7:00 PM
ICE Room, Tanner Building Room 101

An interactive sound and video performance by Ben Joel Coolik and Eric Marty (STREAM). Ben Coolik is a collaborative artist who brings sound, light and explorative technologies together in performance. He holds a Masters degree in theatrical design from UGA. Eric Marty is an award- winning composer and sound artist active in the US, Canada, France and Germany. He holds a PhD in composition and computer music from the University of California at Berkeley and teaches sound and interactivity in the departments of Art and Music. Studio for Research in Art and Music (STREAM) is an Athens-based effort to foster innovation in the arts through public performances, exhibitions and workshops.

ICE Open House: ArtScience

Wednesday, September 28 at 6:00 PM
ICE Room, Tanner Building Room 101

An evening of informal presentations featuring Dr. Jason Cantarella, Laleh Mehran, and a window installation by Amanda Burk. Dr. Jason Cantarella, Professor of Mathematics, will screen digital animation from the Math and Visualization workshop and share his work with geometric knot theory. Lamar Dodd School of Art Professor Laleh Mehran will select key contemporary works at the intersection of art and science and discuss her genre-blurring series, The Xerces Society. Meet Amanda Burk, a graduate candidate in Printmaking, and explore her interior/exterior window installation at ICE.