Regis West Gallery
View class exhibitions highlighting exciting courses offered in the Department of Art.
On view now ARTS 3890/5890 - 3D Modeling & Digital Fabrication.
ARTS 3890/5890 - 3D Modeling & Digital Fabrication with Robin Schwartzman
This course teaches the fundamental tools of 3D modeling and digital fabrication with a focus on practical applications in the arts. During the Spring 2020 semester, students designed projects utilizing the Department of Art's XYZ Lab laser cutter and Rhino, a 3D modeling software. ARTS 3890/5890 was taught by lecturer and research technician Robin Schwartzman with support from teaching assistant Morgan Oie. Students featured in this online exhibition include Dylan Anderson, Joseph Blackhawk, Vee Crichton-Hill, Gray Ditmar, Matthew Fistler, Dawson Grimm, Alex Hein, Cholong Kim, Minjae Kim, Raymond Ma, Esin Menceloglu, Grace Passus-Yang, Patrick Pepin, Leslie Solano, and Karlie Thomas.
Dylan Anderson, Childhood Home, February 2020, Laser cut acrylic
Patrick Pepin, Room Tile, February 2020, Laser cut MDF, Cling wrap and wall insulation
Matthew Fistler, Sugar Maple Window Shade, February 2020, Laser cut MDF and spray paint
Dawson Grimm, Isle Delfino Topography (in progress), January 2020, Laser cut MDF
Grace Passus-Yang, Undertale Light Box, February 2020, Laser cut cardstock and MDF, acrylic paint, LED strip lights
Raymond Ma, Ice Cream Kendama, February 2020, Laser cut MDF, neon string
Karlie Thomas, Chair Lift, February 2020, Laser cut chipboard, fishing line
Cholong Kim, Dressing Table, April 2020, 3D model
Esin Menceloglu, Disinfectant Wipes, April 2020, 3D model
Leslie Solano, Roses in Vase, April 2020, 3D model
Joseph Blackhawk, USB Race and Keyboard, April 2020, 3D model
Alex Hein, Junkyard Dog MK III, April 2020, 3D model
Minjae Kim, Birthday Cake, April 2020, 3D model
Vee Crichton-Hill, Koi End Table, April 2020, 3D model
Gray Ditmar, Squishies, April 2020, 3D model
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From the Archive
View works from the archive featuring Usakos — Photographs Beyond Ruins: The Old Location Albums, 1920s to 1960s
Unknown photographer
Cecilie Geises, All Red netball team, sports fields, Usakos old location, c. 1950
8.5 x 13.5 cm
Collection of Cecilie GeisesUsakos — Photographs Beyond Ruins: The Old Location Albums, 1920s to 1960s is an exhibition that centers on three private photographic collections owned by four female residents of the small town in central Namibia called Usakos. The exhibition was on display in the Regis West Gallery from April 5 – 23, 2016 and served as a mobile version of an exhibition on permanent display in Usakos curated by Paul Grendon, Giorgio Miescher, Lorena Rizzo and Tina Smith. The exhibition was organized by the African Studies Initiative, a Title VI African Studies National Resource Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education and was co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change and the Department of Art. The presentation at the Regis Center for Art was coordinated by Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, Associate Professor of History and Shaden M. Tageldin, Director of the African Studies Initiative.
Usakos, a railway town
Usakos developed as one of the main hubs of first the German colonial and later the South African railway system, and its urban morphology was marked, from its early beginnings, by the policies of segregation and apartheid urban planning. The exhibition highlights a particularly traumatic moment in the town’s history, when in the early 1960s the apartheid administration began to remove African residents out of what was then called the old location into newly built townships that were geographically removed from those parts of the town henceforth reserved for “whites.”The collectors and the collections
The photographic collections kept by the four women lay out the physical and social landscapes of the old location. They range from studio photography, images of particular location sites and buildings, photographs of mission congregations and school classes, music bands and football teams, and many portraits of men and women posing in front of the camera. Most images were taken by local or itinerant African photographers, and they evidence a vibrant aesthetic and visual culture in a cosmopolitan environment that made a stand against the containments and constrictions imposed by the politics of race.The four women and their photographic archives are part of a trans-generational network and practice of collecting and curating. Since their lives and those of their fellow residents have been deeply marked by the experience of forced removal, and concurrently by economic decay and socio-cultural disruption, their collections have become part of diverse discourses and practices of commemoration and memorialization.
The women’s care for the photographs, the ways in which they have, for several decades, placed them in albums, displayed them in living rooms, shared them in conversations with family, friends and acquaintances, and stored them in handbags and boxes, is an expression of how these women’s small but continuous daily aesthetic acts powerfully countered the ruination of their living environments. This is why the collections transcend the concern to recover the past alone and likewise describe an ongoing reflection of the present and invite an opening towards the future. The Usakos photographic collections then constitute forms and practices of collective mobilization of memory and experience, of vision and imagination—articulated, perhaps, in a more silent, submerged tone.
Unknown photographer
Photographer Jan Christian, Usakos old location, 1950s
8.5 x 13.5 cm
Collection of Gisela Pieters & Olga GaroësPhotographs by Paul Grendon
The resonances of the old location photographic collections in the past, present and future are taken up in the exhibition through the work of photographer Paul Grendon [see below]. Grendon’s camera follows the traces and layers of Usakos’s experience of colonialism and apartheid that remain visible in the physical and social landscape of the town: it exposes ruins of the old location houses and maps out a decaying railway infrastructure, but also explores the many ways in which residents of Usakos have related and continue to relate to their environment and turn spaces of ruination into places of belonging.The Exhibition Catalogue & Content
The exhibition catalogue (Basler Afrika Biblographien, 2016) includes an essay on photography and an essay on Usakos’s urban history, three image sections including black & white sections introducing the women collectors and their collections of historical photographs, and one section with color photographs by Paul Grendon.The exhibition consists of framed black & white photographs selected from the women’s collections [see below], and framed color photographs by Paul Grendon. Additionally there are information panels and two large maps. A last panel informs visitors of the exhibition curators, donors and supporters in Namibia, South Africa and Switzerland.
Notable is the substantial involvement of students in the exhibitions in Usakos and in Basel. Based on collaboration between the University of Basel and the University of Namibia, the students of both universities participated in the mounting of the exhibition in Usakos (and also worked on common oral history projects) and again students of both universities mounted the exhibition in Basel together and also integrated their research into the exhibition.Project Partners and Funders
Carl Schlettwein Stiftung Basel; Centre for African Studies, University of Basel; District Six Museum Cape Town; Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft Basel; Max Geldner Stiftung Basel; Pro Helvetia Johannesburg; Stiftung Mercator Schweiz; Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; and the University of Minnesota.
Photographs of Usakos old location, c. 1950s
Collections of Cecilie Geises, Gisela Pieters and Olga Garoës
Photographs by Paul Glendon