Upcoming Exhibitions for Summer 2024
Windgate Artists in Residence Exhibition
Artists Mind the Heart! and Leandra Urrutia
June 4 – July 27, 2024
Mortin Gallery
Image Credit: Mind the Heart!, Salt of the Earth, 2023, Digital Photography. Courtesy of the artist
Image Credit: Leandra Urrutia, Periphery, 2016, Chinese Stoneware and Wire. Courtesy of the artist
The School of Art and Design at Kennesaw State University is grateful to the Windgate Foundation for choosing to invest in the future of our students. The Foundation’s vision and contribution enabled KSU to develop the Windgate Foundation Artist Residency Program. This program is instrumental in providing our students with an experience of working with visiting professional artists in their field of study and growing as industry leaders. For six semesters through 2024, grant proceeds will be used to host professional artists at KSU, supporting the shared goals of the Windgate Foundation and the School of Art and Design to advance contemporary craft and strengthen visual arts education. KSU is fortunate to be able to offer students unique artist-in-resident experiences of this magnitude as part of their scheduled curriculum. The generous gift from the Windgate Foundation enables KSU to host internationally known artists to lead and inspire students through art-making and to share that art and inspiration with the community at large. Through the Foundation’s continued support of the School of Art and Design, we can offer the highest level of artistic excellence and quality to our students, community, and visiting artists.
Mind the Heart! (est. 2009) is a worldwide art project by Israeli artists Maya Gelfman & Roie Avidan. In the past decade, the project has reached more than 100 cities across five continents: from New York to Bangkok, Delhi to London, from the Israel National Museum and the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. to orphanages in Kenya and Uganda. The project works at the intersection of art and social awareness. It engages the public domain with the aim of getting both the artists and the audiences to be fully present, to ‘be here now’. This is achieved through tangible street artbut expands on that across mediums and disciplines, to temporary installations in the wild, performances, poetry and public actions. The works are made with soft materials that clash with the concrete jungle. They deal with the power of choice, the cyclical nature of things, acknowledging wounds in order to heal, and interconnectedness.
Leandra Urrutia is an object maker and storyteller based in Corpus Christi, Texas. Borrowing parts of the human form, she makes powerful compositions and installations that showcase her wild and unconventional creative sense. Her studio work illustrates compelling female-centered struggles between body and mind, especially as one experiences injury, healing and the aging process. Her Mexican-American heritage, Catholic upbringing, interest in aggressive sports, and visits to China continue to bring an unorthodox influence to the ceramic and mixed media sculptures she dreams up.
Urrutia’s work has been exhibited locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Her honors and awards include a McKnight Residency award from the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an ArtsMemphis Emmett O’Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration, and a National Council for the Education of Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Emerging Artist award. Examples of her work can be found in the Lark Book Series 500 Figures in Clay and 500 Ceramic Sculptures. Leandra is a co-founding member of Studio Nong: An International Sculpture Collective and Residency Program that originated in Nanning, Guangxi Province, PRC. She also creates functional pottery and served as president of the Memphis Potters Guild in Memphis, Tennessee from 2019 to 2022. She taught ceramic sculpture, foundations, and a variety of other courses at the Memphis College of Art from 2002 until its closure in May 2020 and briefly served as faculty at Mississippi Valley State University from 2020 to 2022. Currently she serves on the faculty of Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, Texas, teaching ceramics to undergraduate and graduate students.