Hard at work:
By Sasha Steinberg | Mississippi State University
With a grant provided by Arkansas-based nonprofit Windgate Charitable Trust, Mississippi State’s Department of Art recently established a residency program that is advancing the university’s fine arts programming efforts.
Under the direction of Associate Professor of Sculpture Critz Campbell, the MSU Emerging Craftsperson Residency Program currently is hosting its first two artists, Audrey Bell of North Carolina and Angela Eastman of California.
As part of a five-week stay on the Starkville campus, Bell and Eastman are creating new works of art while interacting with art department faculty and students.
Their residency will end with a 5 p.m. show and reception Tuesday [Sept. 6] in the university’s Howell Building sculpture studio. The event is free to all, and refreshments will be served.
Audrey Bell
A native of Colorado Springs, Colorado, Bell is a studio artist who runs her own furniture and upholstery business, Outline Designs. She earned a bachelor’s in studio art and anthropology from Massachusetts’ Williams College in 2010. From 2013-15, she served as a Core Fellow at North Carolina’s Penland School of Crafts, focusing on woodworking and painting. She also enjoys printmaking, as well as making furniture and textiles.
In addition to the Williams College Museum of Art and Penland Gallery, Bell’s work has been displayed at the Nave Gallery Annex in Boston. For more biographical information, visit www.audrey-bell.com.
Eastman is a native of Albany, Oregon, who holds a bachelor of arts from Colorado College. She has seen her sculptures and installations exhibited at her alma mater, as well as in the collections of Duke University.
Angela Eastman
Currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Cranbrook Academy of Art just outside of Detroit, Michigan, Eastman received metalwork training through her participation in the Penland School of Crafts Core Fellowship program.
Additionally, she has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Oregon’s Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, New York’s Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and Illinois’s Ragdale Foundation. For more biographical information, visit www.angelaeastman.com.
For more information on MSU’s newly-established Emerging Craftsperson Residency Program, contact Critz Campbell at 662-275-1064 or CCampbell@caad.msstate.edu.
Part of the College of Architecture, Art and Design, MSU’s art department is home to the Magnolia State’s largest undergraduate studio art program. For more, visit www.caad.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.
The pair presented an artist talk at 11 a.m. on Aug. 23 in the Robert and Freda Harrison Auditorium in Giles Hall.
They also recently spoke to Gallery Director Lori Neuenfeldt’s Bachelor of Fine Arts research class:
