Ouachita Stories

Faculty members in Ouachita Baptist University’s Department of Art and Design are involved in a variety of hands-on art projects and activities ranging from Art Club events and gallery exhibits to scholarly papers and lectures.

Among faculty members who are helping set the bar for academic excellence at Ouachita are:

Summer Bruch, assistant professor of Art and Design, is the main faculty sponsor for the Ouachita Art Club, helping facilitate the organization’s recent rebirth. Since the Art Club was revived two years ago, members have sold student-designed T-shirts, bracelets and postcards, as well as volunteered during Ouachita’s semi-annual Tiger Serve Day community service effort, donated art to Arkadelphia Central Primary School’s teacher lounge and made Christmas cards for residents at an Arkadelphia nursing home. Bruch also helps students recruit and schedule artists and art exhibits to visit Ouachita and helps organize Art Club-sponsored trips, such as recent visits to the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.

Donnie Copeland, assistant professor of Art and Design, is displaying a series of paintings at an exhibit titled, “Abstracts,” at the Justus Fine Art Gallery in Hot Springs. The exhibit, which features the work of several artists, currently is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through March 31. The gallery is owned by Dolores Justus, an artist who judged Ouachita’s Student Juried Art Exhibit this spring. Copeland, an abstract painter who used a paper on canvas technique to create his patterned compositions on display in the “Abstracts” exhibit, spoke about his featured artwork during the exhibit’s opening reception earlier this month.

Dr. Raouf Halaby, professor of English and Art and Design, has been invited to present his paper, “The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Silences Snobbish Critics,” at the prestigious Sixth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the Statens Museum for Kunst, the National Gallery of Denmark, on April 22-23. According to the Inclusive Museum’s website, Halaby’s paper “explains the important role the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art plays in providing museum goers the opportunity to view a rich concentration of American art.” Halaby also led a discussion a little closer to home in Henderson State University’s Garrison Center Lecture Hall titled “Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World” on March 11.

Ferris Williams, assistant professor of Art and Design, presented a lecture titled “A History of Still Life” at the Hot Springs Fine Arts Center in conjunction with the center’s February exhibit on “Contemporary Still Life in 2D and 3D.” Williams also served as one of two judges for the sixth annual Hot Springs Regional Art Competition open until March 30, also at the Hot Springs Fine Arts Center.

For more information about Ouachita’s Art and Design Department, contact Donnie Copeland, department chair, at [email protected] or (870) 245-5559.

By Rachel Gregory