Fine Arts Gallery Past Exhibitions

Threads of Identity: African Textiles in Mixed Media

Exhibition Dates: March 17 - 21

This exhibition by Lola Okunola showcases her vibrant mixed media art, inspired by the rich heritage of African fashion and culture. Using African textiles and prints, she creates captivating pieces that celebrate the diversity and unity of the Pan-African experience, blending tradition and contemporary expression.   

_{Image credit: Headshot of artist Lola Okunola} 
 

Spring 2025 SOAAD Capstone I

Exhibition Dates: March 26 - April 5

Spring 2025 SOAAD Capstone II

Exhibition Dates: April 9 - April 19

_{Image: Photographs from SOAAD Capstone I}

New Visions 2024

New Visions 2024 will be the 41st annual juried exhibition for students of the KSU School of Art and Design. This tradition celebrates the unique artistic vision, outstanding talent, and deft creative skill of our students. The juror for this year’s exhibition is artist Leandra Urrutia.

_{Image: Installation of exhibition}

Spring 2024 SOAAD Capstone I

Exhibition Dates: March 27 - April 6

Spring 2024 SOAAD Capstone II

Exhibition Dates: April 10 - April 20

Spring 2024 SOAAD Capstone III

Exhibition Dates: April 24 - May 4

_{Image: Installation of SOAAD Capstone I}

2024 Art Educators Biennial: Playful Encounters 

The Zuckerman Museum of Art’s 2024 Art Educators Biennial, Playful Encounters, considers how art can be about play and the myriad ways artist-educators engage artmaking for enjoyment and recreation. Play carries the imagination to unexpected destinations and supports unbridled generative work.

_{Image: Installation of Art Educators Biennial}

Fall 2024 Textiles + Surface Design Senior Capstone

Exhibition Dates: November 5 - November 9

_{Image: Installation of Textiles + Surface Design Senior Capstone}

Fall 2024 SOAAD Capstone Exhibition

Exhibition Dates: November 13 - November 23

_{Image: Joshua Lynah, Alondra, Oil on panel, 2024}

New Visions 2023

The New Visions annual exhibition opportunity allows students across all disciplines of the School of Art and Design to showcase their talent and skill. The ZMA is excited to continue expanding this longstanding tradition by featuring a prominent artist, critic, or curator to serve as both juror and visiting lecturer. The juror serves to represent each discipline and expose students to diverse points of view, practices, and techniques. New Visions 2023 marks the 40th exhibition opportunity and will be juried by artist Ben Butler, whose works are displayed on ZMA Project Walls North and West. Butler will present a virtual artist lecture on Thursday, January 19, at 7:00 pm. 

The Visual Voice:  An Artists Books and Broadside Exhibition

This exhibition presents an exquisite survey of contemporary artists' books and broadsides selected by artist Lesley Dill. Works on view celebrate varied collaborations between papermakers, bookbinders, printmakers, visual artists and in some cases poets and poetry. They additionally illustrate the rich and  vital developments in the field of book arts. Thus, this exhibition celebrates the power and artistry of both the book form as well as the visual and written word.

_{Image: Headshot of Lesley Dill}

Placemaking: Forging Stronger Ties through Collaboration

This exhibition focuses on the creative endeavors of Master Craftsman students in KSU’s School of Art and Design. Their engagement with the community produces sculptural artworks of all shapes and sizes. Through partnerships with various municipalities, artists, and community leaders, students have had the opportunity to explore professional development and creative placemaking in a variety of media. This exhibition will focus on recently installed projects and unrealized opportunities that students have been a part of.

_{Image: Metal Origami Crane at Smith Gilbert Garden}

SOAAD Alumni Biennial 2023 

The Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art (ZMA), housed under the School of Art and Design in the College of the Arts at Kennesaw State University, is pleased to offer an opportunity to KSU’s School of Art and Design alumni to submit their work for possible inclusion in a juried biennial exhibition. A fellow alum of the School of Art and Design, selected by the Zuckerman Museum of Art, will jury this biennial exhibition which will be installed in the satellite Fine Arts Gallery. This opportunity provides KSU alumni across all disciplines fo the School of Art and Design the ability to showcase their current body of work and demonstrate their post-graduate artistic advancements. Moreover, the exhibition opening reception and juror lecture will create a forum for discussion and inquiry regarding SOAAD alumni artists.

_{Image: Installation of the exhibition}

Visions of Recovery

The Fine Arts Gallery of the Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, in collaboration with the KSU Center for Young Adult Addiction & Recovery, is pleased to present Visions of Recovery, an exhibition featuring artists whose works reflect how recovery from substance use disorders, eating disorders, or other addictive disorders has impacted their lives. 

New Visions 2022

The New Visions exhibition series provides students across all disciplines of the School of Art and Design the ability to showcase their talent and skill. The newly revitalized series continues to offer students an annual juried exhibition opportunity as originated by the Visions Registered Student Organization, the first arts organization at KSU, when the College of the Arts was founded. The ZMA is excited to continue expanding this longstanding tradition by featuring a prominent artist, critic, or curator to serve as both juror and visiting lecturer. These additional associations serve each respective discipline with visibility, exposing students to diverse points-of-view, practices, and techniques. Moreover, this approach acknowledges the internal and external associations of advanced learning through relevant engagements and dialogues among leading artists, curators, and critics.

_{Image: Installation of 2021 exhibition}

In Conversation: The Fluid and The Concrete

This exhibition presents an exquisite selection of contemporary artists books published by Sue Gosin, president of Dieu Donné Press and co-chair of Dieu Donné Papermill in New York.   

Each work on view is produced as a collaboration between papermaker, bookbinder, visual artist and poet, and illustrates the rich and notable developments in the field of modern hand papermaking. The fluid sensibility of this medium alone offers unlimited realizations as the foundation for encompassing a variety of techniques, processes, and aesthetics. Thus, this exhibition celebrates the power and artistry of both the book form and the visual and written word. Artists in the exhibition include Lesley Dill with poetry by Tom Sleigh, Jane Hammond with poetry by Raphael Rubenstein,William Kentridge with poetry by  Wislawa Szymborska, Abbey Leigh with writings by W. H. Auden, Michele Oka Doner with her own writing, Mark Strand with his own writing and imagery along with poetry from many other writers, and Eliza Kentridge with her own writing and imagery. The exhibition will also feature work by Sue Gosin. 

SOAAD Part Time Staff and Faculty Exhibition 

The ZMA will display exciting new work by part-time faculty and staff in the KSU School of Art and Design (SOAAD). This talented group of artists contributes tremendously toward achieving the School’s mission. This exhibition will showcase the talents of these artists and will provide an opportunity for KSU and external communities to become familiar with their artistic work.

_{Image: Installation of exhibition}

Art Educators Biennial 2022: Invisible to Visible

The second-ever Art Educators Biennial exhibition is juried by Atlanta-based artist Al Shockley and features diverse works by P-12 art educators in our region. The juried exhibition highlights work that focuses on bringing a unique creative vision to life. Aspects of this year's theme include how art educators support student development by making their artistic accomplishments visible and by providing opportunities to cultivate their creative vision. 

_{Image: Installation of exhibition}

Christopher Payne: Asylum

The Fine Arts Gallery of the ZMA is pleased to present a selection of photographs from Christopher Payne’s haunting series, Asylum. From 2002 to 2008, Payne visited seventy institutions in thirty states, photographing palatial exteriors designed by famous architects and crumbling interiors that appeared as if the occupants had just left. Additionally, he also documented how these hospitals functioned as self-contained cities, where almost everything of necessity was produced on site: food, water, power, and even clothing and shoes. Many of these places have since been demolished. The photographs from this powerful series serve as the final, official record of these sites. Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals was published by MIT Press in 2009 and includes an essay by Oliver Sacks.  

 Payne states, “We tend to think of mental hospitals as “snake pits”—places of nightmarish squalor and abuse—and this is how they have been portrayed in books and film. Few Americans, however, realize these institutions were once monuments of civic pride, built with noble intentions by leading architects and physicians, who envisioned the asylums as places of refuge, therapy, and healing. For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, more than 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948 they housed over half a million patients. But over the next thirty years, with the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these massive buildings neglected and abandoned."

_{Image: Buffalo Ward by Christopher Payne}

New Visions 2021

The New Visions exhibition series provides students across all disciplines of the School of Art and Design the ability to showcase their talent and skill. The newly revitalized series continues to offer students an annual juried exhibition opportunity as originated by the Visions Registered Student Organization, the first arts organization at KSU, when the College of the Arts was founded. The ZMA is excited to continue expanding this longstanding tradition by featuring a prominent artist, critic, or curator to serve as both juror and visiting lecturer. These additional associations serve each respective discipline with visibility, exposing students to diverse points-of-view, practices, and techniques. Moreover, this approach acknowledges the internal and external associations of advanced learning through relevant engagements and dialogues among leading artists, curators, and critics. The New Visions 2021 exhibition provided viewers with a significant opportunity to witness a variety of artistic methodologies.

_{Image: Installation of exhibition} 

Some Early Visionaries 

“I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact miracles.”  — Walt Whitman

Some Early Visionaries featured drawings and collages by renowned artist Lesley Dill. The exhibition was on view in the ZMA Fine Arts Gallery from Tuesday, March 16 through Saturday, April 10, 2021. In celebration of April as National Poetry Month, the artist presented a live one-hour Zoom lecture on Friday, April 9, 2021. Dill’s talk addressed the use of language and poetry in her artwork and provided insight into her artistic studio practice where the intersection of language and fine art materialize as printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance and explore the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of the writings of Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu, Tom Sleigh, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, into works of paper, wire, horsehair, foil, bronze and music—works that awaken the viewer to the physical intimacy and power of language itself.

_{Image: Hester with gold radiance by Lesley Dill}

Master Craftsman Classroom to Community

A retrospective of artwork created to date in the KSU Master Craftsman Program was showcased in the Fine Arts Gallery. The Master Craftsman Program is a design and fabrication workshop for students housed in the School of Art and Design. The Program is led by Director and Lecturer in Sculpture, Page Burch.

Over the last four years, the Master Craftsman Program has partnered with various municipalities and organizations, such as the City of Kennesaw, to collaborate in designing and creating public works ranging from manhole covers to large sculptures. KSU art and design students are involved in the process from start to finish, helping to conceive of designs and honing their skills while executing the creation of new public art. This exhibition will document the production history and display examples of their work.

_{Image: Sculpture installation for Acworth PD}

SOAAD Alumni Biennial 2021 Exhibition

The Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art (ZMA), housed under the School of Art and Design in the College of the Arts at Kennesaw State University, was pleased to offer an opportunity to KSU’s School of Art and Design alumni to submit their work for consideration in a juried biennial exhibition. This opportunity provided KSU alumni of the School of Art and Design the ability to showcase their current body of work and demonstrate their post-graduate artistic advancements. 

The SOAAD Alumni Biennial 2021 Exhibition was juried by Hannah Amuka, a 2020 School of Art and Design graduate, and features 34 works by 19 alumni artists. In addition to selecting the works of art for the SOAAD Alumni Biennial 2021 Exhibition, Amuka presented a virtual lecture as part of our Last Wednesday Lunch monthly program.  

_{Image: Salmon Run! by Chris Noosh}

The American Print Alliance September 11, 2001 Memorial Portfolio Exhibition

Virtual Exhibition | Digital Animation

"A memorial portfolio is a way to help us understand the loss of so many individual lives.” -Dr. Carol Pulin

Dr. Carol Pulin, Director of the American Print Alliance, started this project by suggesting that each artist create one print to commemorate one person. Pulin intended for this portfolio to honor individual lives and thereby, create a new legacy from the terrible events that took place on 9/11. Each contributing artist is a member of an alliance council or a subscriber to the journal, Contemporary Impressions. The imagery reflected in each print is as distinct as the artists, who range in age from high school students to retirees. Many works commemorate life with imagery of landscapes, figures, city scenes, abstractions, and some with expressions of sorrow or hope. The portfolio memorial is intended to cherish memories of life, with artwork as individual as those who are no longer with us. The scale of the project will unavoidably remind viewers of the number of innocent lives lost on September 11, 2001. The power of this memorial comes from seeing the actual prints in the exhibition and the representation of numerous communities, demonstrating the role of the arts in all of our lives.

Digital Animation Capstone/Owl Film Festival

Virtual Exhibition | Digital Animation

_{Image: Benjamin Russell}

Spring Capstone I Exhibition: Studio Art 

Virtual Exhibition | Studio Art

_{Image: Velveteen Rabbit Spread by Haylee Barrios}

Spring Capstone Exhibition II: Graphic Communications

Virtual Exhibition | Graphic Communications

_{Image: Space: An Explorer's Guide by Micah Nabbs}

Cuban Super Heroes

Cuban Superheroes paid homage to Africans who brought their culture and art practices to Cuba through the transatlantic slave trade. African-derived deities serve as guides, protectors and agents of change in Cuban culture. These qualities align them with the universal concept of superhero – a powerful being with supernatural transformative abilities. Printmaking and illustration students drew inspiration from these beings and each artist identified, researched and generated a visual vocabulary to explore the superhero concept. This exhibition was a collaborative artist-scholar project created by printmaking and illustration students in Kennesaw State University’s School of Art and Design. 

Presented as part of KSU's 2019-20 Year of Cuba. 

_{Image: Orisha by Maddy Smith}

Infectious Creativity

This Fine Arts Gallery exhibition presented diverse works created during quarantine by P-12 art educators. As part of the ongoing partnership between the KSU School of Art and Design and the metro Atlanta visual arts educator community, Infectious Creativity shared a glimpse of the creative processes of front line educators. The juror for this show was Louise E. Shaw, curator of the David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

_{Image: Lurking by Suzette Spinelli} 

Laboratory 

In this atelier, KSU architectural photography students created an investigational space where they explored architecture, light, spacial relationships, and conceptual thinking through photography and video. The gallery was transformed from traditional art exhibition space into a visible studio.

Visitors were invited to view first-hand, the creative process artists undergo in making their work. Over the course of this five-week installation, this transformative space permitted the audience to witness the artist’s experiments, edits, critiques, distillation, and process toward making refined works.

_{Image: Installation of exhibition} 

Art as Activism: Social Justice and Sustainability 

Presented by CIFAL Atlanta Distinguished UN-SDG Ambassadors

Two CIFAL Atlanta Distinguished United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2020 Ambassadors created this exciting initiative, Art as Activism: Social Justice and Sustainability, funded by RCE Greater Atlanta. Ambassadors Allison Yates and Cam Lorys developed the plan for this event during their time together in the CIFAL Atlanta program. Allison and Cam wanted to be able to develop a project that incorporated both social justice and environmentalism. As a result, they believed the creation of an exhibition of art made completely out of recycled materials that followed a social justice theme would work perfectly for their goal. The Ambassadors presented a virtual lecture for our November Last Wednesday Lunch program on November 18, 2020. During the virtual presentation, three award winners were announced to be given prize money to donate to one of ten charitable organizations working to solve issues of social justice or sustainability. 

_{Image: Photographs of the winning artworks}

Fall 2020 Capstone Exhibition: Studio Art

Virtual Exhibition | Studio Art

_{Image: Moon Pie by Livie Wang}