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Artist: Brett Suave

Date: 2013

Medium: Stoneware with Underglaze

Location: CMU Library

Suave is an artist who works with many mediums but specialized in mainly ceramics-based work. Suave attended CMU originally as a science major with an art minor. He realized how unhappy he was and switched to a full-time studio art major with a ceramic's concentration. Suave graduated in 2013 with a BAA in studio art.

Suave enjoyed drawing realistic portraits. When he met ceramic artist Mark Chatterley, he was told to incorporate his realistic portraits into his ceramic works. Now making ceramic portraits, many people like his friends wanted their own and would commission Suave. He would find inspiration for his sculptures in anything that can generate emotion.

- Ava C.

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Artist: Alisa Golden

Date: 2017

Medium: cotton, muslin, binding tape, embroidery thread; printed, dyed, embroidered

Location: CMU Library

Alisa Golden is an artist who specializes in quilt making, feltworks, prints, and book art. She is from the San Fransisco Bay area. Her art focuses on interaction and change. Golden published her works in her own magazine titled Star 82 Review.

The imagery featured in the quilt resembles guns, something Golden was uncomfortable working with at first. After grad school, Golden discovered you can learn a lot tackling subject matter you are uncomfortable with. While quilting Golden thought of stories she has been told about guns and came up with a handgun as the reoccurring symbol in her piece. The design of the quilt was inspired by Wallace Bernmans Collages, which many featured guns.

- Ava C.

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Artist: Allen Leepa

Date: 1962

Medium: Oil painting

Location: Wightman Hall

“Abstract Expressionist “action painting” by Allen Leepa, 1919-2009 who was an art professor at Michigan State University 1945-1983. He also authored popular textbook “The Challenge of Modern Art”. After retirement he founded the Leepa Rattner Art Museum in Tarpon Springs, Florida.”

At first I was not going to choose any art pieces from the classroom because we all see it everyday but after reading the description about the piece I thought it was very interesting. At first glance I can obviously tell it’s some type of rendition of modern art but I was expecting a timeframe of maybe late 90’s early 2000’s but it was actually made in the 80’s which was interesting to me. Allen Leepa is also a pretty important person to this type of art who has founded his own art museum and wrote his own book about Modern art which is breather popular. To add he was also an art professor at MSU. I was not expecting the artist of this piece to have so many big achievements under his belt so I chose to write about him.

The mediums he mainly covered where abstract modern paintings, Lithographs, and sculptures and he won a Childe Hassam Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

-JD Rourke

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Artist: Teresa Dunn

Date: 2021

Medium: Oil on linen

Location: Park Library, CMU

Teresa Dunn is a Mexican American artist who was raised in rural Southern Illinois. Her identity, life, and art are significantly influenced by her racial and cultural heritages, particularly the complexities of being a brown woman in the Midwest. She received her MFA from Indiana University Bloomington in 2002.

It is a part of Dunn's ongoing exploration of the human condition, specifically focusing on the idea of identity and the complexities of growing up as a multicultural individual. The painting is a part of the Dennos Museum Center Collection in Michigan. The painting explores the complexity of identity and the experience of individuals who are multiracial.

- Eesha Panvelkar.

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Title: The Nightclub, 2022.
Medium: Oil on Canvas

Location: This art piece hangs next to the Cafeteria entrance within Towers.

About the Artist: McKenna Van Abel is a Studio Art and Interior Design student here at Central Michigan University. I am also an Interior Design student and have had the opportunity to talk with her and learn a bit about the work she has done. She is a very gifted artist and works primarily with oil on canvas which is what this piece was made of. She has a very distinct style that is so intriguing and eye catching.

What first drew my attention to this piece was the vibrant colors that stood out from the dark background. There is a lot to look at when viewing this piece, however, because of the color my focus was initially brought to the girl in blue. The different shapes and shadowing throughout this artwork creates the illusion of texture and depth.

Megan Grotenhuis

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Title: Body and Soul

Date: 2001.6

Medium: Resin
CMU Art Collection

Location: CMU Library

What is Resin? A resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds.

I was unable to find much information about this artist, however, I was very intrigued by this sculpture and couldn't help but talk about it. What first brought my attention to this sculpture was its organic and unique shape. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at at first but after looking more closely I realized the sculpture was of a woman leaning back. There are a lot of different meanings that the artist potentially could have intended for this piece, and I believe the artist titles it “Body and Soul” for the reason that he wanted viers to come up with their own meaning and thoughts to this artwork.

Megan Grotenhuis

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Artist: James Adley

Date: 1984

Medium: Acrylic on linen

Location: CMU Music Building

James Adley, born in 1931, enlisted undertaking his national service and, in 1963, enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art. After graduating, he took a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied under Clyfford Still. A teaching post was granted to him at Penn State but he soon moved to teach at Michigan State.

Adley’s canvases are unabashedly Modernist: they exist as indexes of the act of painting, eschewing “readymade” images of both nature and culture. The surfaces of Adley’s paintings are mapped by striated layers of color that interact as compositional events, creating multivalent levels of space. The artist’s movement is embodied in painterly marks created with such implements as rakes, trowels, push brooms, rollers, and squeegees. Adley’s art asserts the body as the mediator of experience, and the trace as the physical remnant of the phenomenal world.

Kyle Filipowski

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Artist: José María Sicilia
Date: 1989
Medium: Color Woodcut Print
Location: CMU Library

Born in 1954 in Madrid, Spain, José María Sicilia is a Spanish abstractionist artist who went on to study at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid before moving to Paris in 1980.

Sicilia is known for his evocative paintings which utilize wax and printer’s ink. By investigating light and matter in his work, Sicilia explores the space between appearance and absence. “Things appear and disappear-- so that in the end you’re left with a kind of mirage,” he has explained of his interests. The artist’s travels to Tangier, Syria, India, and New York, along with the paintings of Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, have all contributed to the themes and processes in Sicilia’s practice.

Kyle Filipowski

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Title: Hatfield Swamp

Material: Acrylic

Location: CMU art collection 2020.004.001

Artist: David Fisher began teaching at the department of art as a painter but he became interested in photography he has then founded the photography program.

This art work first caught my eye because the colors but it also caught my attention because it reminded me of the little play carpets we had as a kid the ones that look like a city and a highway it made me feel very nostalgic, the colors and how it looks made me feel wild like when when your painting and your imagination goes crazy it makes you feel like you can see your soul in every color that is on there.

-Maria Dietz

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Artist: Teresa Dunn

Date: 2014

Medium: Oil on linen

Location: Park Library, CMU

Teresa Dunn is a Mexican American artist who was raised in rural Southern Illinois. Her work has been exhibited in numerous locations across the United States. Dunn is currently a Professor of Painting and Drawing at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Dunn's paintings usually include humans. She draws inspiration from her personal experiences as a Mexican American artist raised in rural Southern Illinois, and her work often reflects the complexities of growing up between two cultural heritages.

'A Day in the Life of Chemin Hsiao' was inspired by her desire to celebrate the achievements and contributions of women in science. Chemin Hsiao is a researcher and scientist, and the subject of Teresa Dunn's artwork. She wanted to highlight the importance of their work and the challenges they face in their daily lives. The artwork is a tribute to Chemin Hsiao's dedication to her research and the impact it has on the world. Her approach is to create a visual narrative that tells the story of Chemin Hsiao's day, divided into several sections, each representing a different part of her day.

- Eesha Panvelkar