“Stories on My Back,” an installation by Clemson Master of Fine Arts (MFA) alumnus Richard Alexander Lou, ’86 will open the 2016-17 season in the Center for Visual Arts – Lee Gallery on Aug. 22 and run until Oct. 13.  On Friday, Sept. 23 at 5:30 p.m., the artist will give an artist talk about his work with a reception to follow in the gallery.

Lou was born and grew up in San Diego, CA with a biracial family, which was spiritually and intellectually guided by an anti-colonialist Chinese father and a culturally affirming Mexicana mother. After earning his bachelor’s degree in San Diego, CA, Lou continued his education at Clemson University, citing a handwritten note from the Chair of the Department of Art, a tradition that is still practiced today, as the decisive factor that led him to choose Clemson out of almost one hundred potential graduate schools. Lou has exhibited internationally and has over 30 years’ experience teaching in higher education, 20 years as an arts administrator most recently serving as Chair of the Department of Art at University of Memphis in Memphis, TN.

He has been invited back to campus to showcase his traveling multimedia installation that combines photography, found objects and sound walls of tamale husks. The artist writes, “As a contemporary image-maker I am interested in collecting dissonant ideas and narratives, allowing them to bump into each other, to coax new meanings and possibilities that dismantle the hierarchy of images. The work serves as an ideological, social, political and cultural matrix from which I understand my place in this world and to make a simple marking of the cultural shifts of my community.”

“Stories on My Back” art installation was featured in the recently released book, The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Popular Culture by Guisela Latorre, PhD, as a reference to the increasing proliferation of Lantina/o culture in modern American popular culture.

This innovative art collaboration with Richard A. Lou, ’86 is part of the Center for Visual Art’s commitment to support the 2020 ClemsonForward strategic plan to provide educational activities to attract and retain outstanding students by “providing an exceptional educational experience grounded in engagement.” In addition, Richard collaborated with four other artists, three of whom are Clemson University alumni: Chere Labbe Doiron, Jo Carol Mitchell-Rogers ’87, Robert Spencer ’86 and Chris Wallace ’86.

The Center for Visual Arts-Lee Gallery at Clemson University will be open for this exhibit 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays. It is located in 1-101 Lee Hall, 323 Fernow St. The exhibition, artist talks and reception are free to the public because of the generous support given to the Center for Visual Arts. For more information about exhibitions in the Lee Gallery, as well as other Center for Visual Arts galleries and venues, visit www.clemson.edu/cva.

CLEMSON — A Clemson alumna’s artworks will be presented by the Clemson University Center for Visual Arts in the lobby of the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts this fall, from Tuesday, Sept. 8, through Dec. 4.

The seeds of Hilary Siber’s love for art and landscape were planted early. As a child in Ohio, Siber remembers drawing trees and solving jigsaw puzzles. Flash-forward several years, and she found herself exercising those same artistic muscles pursuing a degree in architectural design at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

“I was fortunate enough to work in the design field for several years after graduation, but visual problem-solving soon became a puzzle that pulled me toward creating fine art,” she said. “I am forever challenged by the visual mode of communication. It seems to elude language while simultaneously creating a new one.”

She enrolled in Clemson’s Master of Fine Arts program in the art department. There, she “began to understand that creating paintings is two-fold: I am putting a puzzle together while presenting one to my viewers.”

Those artistic puzzles will be on display with her new exhibition, “Shifting Ground.”

Shifting Ground opens on the heels of Siber’s thesis exhibition, which, she said, “reflected on the grief and emotion of the death of my father.”

In contrast, this oil-on-canvas collection focuses on “universal landscapes that suggest unknown outcomes, unstable grounds and shifting panoramas.” Her landscapes are not literal, but rather subjective interpretations that she believes “model accurate representations of the rational and irrational landscapes of our emotions, experiences and intellect.”

Siber’s work has been exhibited both regionally and internationally: at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston; the Nelson Gallery in in Lexington, Virginia; and the Art Museum of Nanjing University in China, along with several other places in South Carolina and North Carolina.

Susan Kaplar, business manager at the Brooks Center and current Bachelor of Fine Arts student has admired Siber’s work for awhile.

She and Denise Woodward-Detrich, director of the Lee Gallery at Clemson, approached Siber several months ago with the idea of a solo exhibition in the Brooks Center lobby.

“We’ve seen her style and we thought anything she does will be a good fit for our audience,” Kaplar said. The exhibition includes works created since January, including two pieces originally from her master’s thesis exhibition and now on loan from private collections.

When patrons attend the exhibition, Kaplar hopes it will be a time for deep self-reflection.

“I hope it will encourage people to look within themselves, to engage in inner contemplation.”

Siber’s wish is that people see an opportunity to consider both the here-and-now and the everlasting.

“I hope that viewing these paintings conjures up a consideration for the temporal,” she said. “Perhaps by contemplating our finitude and flux, we are more apt to consider what is infinite and never-changing.”

Shifting Ground is open from 1 to 5 p.m. on weekdays and before all Brooks Center performances. An artist talk will be held before the 7:30 p.m. performance of the National Dance Company of Siberia at 6 p.m. Oct. 29, followed by a reception at 6:30 p.m.

A pinching shoulder ache too pa­inful to play through. A dangerous blood clot. ­­­­An urgent four-and-a-half-­hour surgery. A rib extraction, a breathing tube and a week confined to a hospital bed. An arm that would never throw a baseball the same way. A devastating blow to the dreams of a pitcher.

A tragedy.

When Kevin Pohle came to Clemson — anxious to trade snow-soaked St. Louis for the South Carolina sun — he came with a mission: to play baseball. “I wanted to go to the best baseball program I was offered,” he said. “Clemson was the obvious choice.”

After months of rigorous training as a freshman, Kevin earned a starting pitching spot his sophomore year. He led his team through an impressive season, topped with a dramatic Tiger victory over the Gamecocks, who went on to finish second in the college world series. His hopes were limitless, his technique remarkable, his work ethic unparalleled.

He had MLB potential.

But during the off-season, he noticed a stubbornly persistent pain in his throwing shoulder. “There’s only so much you can take until you have to stop and say, ‘OK, something’s wrong here,’” he recalled.

As Kevin was gearing up for what was supposed to be his final year at Clemson — the goal was to enter the Major League draft as soon as he was eligible — he underwent a routine shoulder surgery to prevent further damage to his arm. Typically, recovery time for this type of operation is a quick three months.

To allow some room for error, Kevin redshirted his junior year. If he could rest up and take some stress off his body, there was still the possibility of a senior year comeback.

However, a season dedicated to practice pitches wasn’t enough to end Kevin’s shoulder problems. The morning before an away game at Virginia, Kevin woke up with his arm swollen to twice its normal size. He spent game day in the hospital, where the doctors determined that the swelling was caused by a huge blood clot. They would have to operate.

“When the doctors went in to remove the blood clot, they realized that they would have to take out muscles in my neck and my first rib — it was pinching a vein in my shoulder and stopping the blood supply every time I would throw the baseball,” Kevin said. “Looking back, I think that was the root of all my shoulder problems.”

With just one month to recover from the blood clot operation, Kevin returned to the hospital for his rib extraction surgery. After nearly five hours on the operating table, the grueling procedure left him without the strength to sit up in his hospital bed.

But he still wasn’t ready to give up his sport. With the same tenacity that captured the attention of Clemson scouts, Kevin began his rehab regimen. Although he has come a long way from being unable to move his pitching arm, it’s been an extensive and exhausting process — a process that isn’t over. “I’m still searching,” he said.

Now, just a few weeks into his final season, Kevin has seen himself come full circle: From heavily recruited high school player with star potential to experienced veteran, once again giving his all just to make the team.

“It’s so hard to be in a good place for two years and all of a sudden it’s taken from you,” he said. “Wham!”

But Kevin is determined that his story will not end with a crushing series of surgeries and countless hours of frustration gleaned from physical constraints.

“It has been really hard. I still have bad days,” he said. “But there is a bright side: It made me stay at Clemson longer. It made me get my degree.”

Pressing forward

Although Kevin was best known for his talent as a baseball pitcher, academics never took a backseat to athletics — even when his team was on the road for away games, traveling between two or three states each week.

Off the field, Kevin’s academic expertise is Visual Arts. And though it may be unexpected, it’s undoubtedly the perfect fit.

In high school, Kevin was drawn to the open environment of the art room — a place where everyone started on the equal playing field of a blank page, where mastering technique was key to a successful piece. Of course, it helped that he had an inspiring coach — er, drawing teacher.

At Clemson, Kevin replicated this experience in the print shop, the studio where printmaking students experiment with a variety of processes and techniques to create their work.

“I took my first printmaking class with Syd Cross. She is a master of printmaking, and I really mean that,” he laughed. “Her expertise is never-ending. When she introduced me to lithography, — this process where you’re essentially drawing on stones — I fell in love with it.”

Between baseball and schoolwork, not to mention a physically restrictive injury, staying on top of his responsibilities has been a challenge, but it’s a challenge Kevin meets with unbridled enthusiasm.

“Throughout my art experience, my mindset has always been, ‘There are 24 hours in a day. How much work can I get done?’”

Sometimes, this mantra comes at the expense of catching Zs.

“Our practice schedule isn’t very forgiving. On an average day, after I’ve been up all night working in the studio, I head to 6 a.m. workouts and, more often than not, I fall asleep on the training table in the locker room. It’s a running joke among my teammates,” he laughed.

Despite his propensity for spontaneous naps, Kevin has combined his passions seamlessly. But he credits this in part to the help he’s received along the way.

“My art history professor Andrea Feeser has been such a mentor to me during my undergraduate experience at Clemson,” Kevin said. “She has always pushed me academically, even when things were challenging.”

Now, it’s Kevin’s last semester at Clemson. It’s the last time he will see his name on the Tiger baseball roster. It’s his last year working as a shop intern in the print room. It’s his last semester — his show semester — in the visual arts program. And his pace hasn’t slowed down one bit.

Eight prints and a rib bone

During their final semester in Clemson’s Visual Arts program, senior students are required to put together an art exhibition that is displayed in Lee Gallery.

“The show is sort of your last hurrah,” Kevin said. “It gives you the opportunity to put together an art show displaying all the work you’ve done and all the skills you’ve gained in college. Everyone has their own theme. It’s fun to see it all come together.”

When it came time for Kevin to choose the topic for his show, he knew exactly where to go for inspiration.

“My art surrounds itself in themes from the last two years of my life,” he said. “It’s about the effects that sports have on the body through the lens of my personal experience.”

On opening night, students are given five minutes each to deliver an artist’s statement describing their work and explaining their personal connection to their chosen theme. When the spotlight fell on Kevin, he was met with the support of familiar faces — his teammates, his coaches, members of his church and his family, who came all the way from St. Louis to see the show.

“When I looked into the crowd, I saw my mom crying,” he said. “I didn’t show my family any of my work before the show, so they were really emotional when they finally did see it. My sister came up to me after and said, ‘You never talked to me about this, but now I understand exactly what you went through.’”

The finished product? Eight original prints and one rib bone.

With his gallery show finished and his final season of baseball underway, Kevin is looking forward to what will come next. Granted, it’s not the future he saw for himself when he first arrived at Clemson, but it’s a future that he wouldn’t trade.

“I’ve grown up at Clemson, and I’m very thankful for that. I’ve met a lot of great people — influential people — and I know that’s not everyone’s experience,” Kevin said. “It’s easy to slip, but when you have so many people encouraging you, always trying to cheer you on, it’s hard to stay down.”

A triumph.

Fast-forward seven months. Kaplar, who first developed an affinity for visual art in college, is now enrolled at Clemson as an art major while remaining the Brooks Center’s business manager. She credits Tempos with giving her a “nudge” to pursue her degree, and she has joined with Woodward-Detrich once again on a new exhibit: “Echoes: Decoding the Shape of Future Recollections.”

The new exhibition features abstract art from different artists and eras.

“Initially it was Denise and I deciding on what type of exhibit to have for fall semester,” Kaplar said. “Jackie Kuntz was Denise’s graduate student assistant, and so Denise assigned her the task of researching the available artwork from the Clemson Advancement Foundation, which is held in storage within Lee Hall. I also mentioned that Brooks Center Coordinator Sarah Edison expressed an interest in being involved with the project.” The exhibit’s mission is to prepare young children for encounters with abstract art later in their lives, and to help them think imaginatively and critically about what they see.

The title “Echoes” stemmed from the fact that the artwork spans four decades but remains relevant: Echoes of past generations of artists still speak to new generations of viewers.

“We want children to be able to make sense of and enjoy abstract art when they visit art galleries as adults,” Kaplar says, “which is why the subtitle is Decoding the Shape of Future Recollections. We want them to be able to engage with this genre instead of automatically saying, ‘I don’t get this.’”

The exhibit, now on display in the lobby, is the result of months of planning. Work began in July, when Kaplar and Woodward-Detrich started sifting through abstract work in the Foundation’s collection. They came across work that was decades old and had been in storage for years. South Carolina artists such as John O’Neil, Edward Yaghjian, Carl Blair, and David Freeman are represented here, as well as two artists, Bill Seitz and Robert Hunter, who were art professors at Clemson University.

The most difficult part was finding a common theme from the available artwork, Kaplar said. After she and Woodward-Detrich earmarked around 40 pieces, they brought in Kuntz to help whittle down that figure to between 15 and 20, and shared their ideas with each other through Powerpoint. Sarah Edison was invited to the next meeting as the group members discussed themes, pieces that really stuck with them, and possible activities. They met at Lee Hall to visually arrange the art and eliminate some due to condition, size, and other factors. The remaining works were transported to the Brooks Center Lobby, where space constraints reduced the exhibit’s number to 11.

Each piece was selected based on the overall theme of shapes. “While abstract art can take many forms,” Kaplar said, “we wanted to choose pieces that were conducive to teaching kids the basic elements of abstraction.”

The exhibit is organized from most literal to most abstract. Viewers begin with a painting in which they may most readily identify physical objects (Supermarket by Ben Shahn) to a work that requires the most interpretation of the artist’s intent (Sophie’s Parlor by David Freeman).

There have been two children’s activities in conjunction with the exhibit so far. One was an art creation exercise using shapes to build original works of abstract art. The other was a movement exercise, conducted under the direction of theatre assistant professor Kerrie Seymour and her acting class. They led children who attended a Bill and Donna Eskridge Tri-ART Series event in a movement-based exploration of the art pieces using the children’s own interpretations of the work.

“Viewpoints,” the name of the method Seymour used in the activities, “is a physical approach to theatre and staging,” she said. “So much of what I teach in my acting classes is a more inside-out or psychological approach, examining the objectives, needs, thoughts, history and relationships of a character.”

Therefore, the “physical approach” to theater often does not receive as much class time. This activity was a perfect opportunity for her students to explore physicality.

“I find that when you start to play around with ‘Viewpoints’ and other physical entryways into the work, it does open up a new window of creativity and freedom for many actors. Suddenly, the work can go beyond words and that can really allow many actors to play in a new way.  It forces them out of their literal minds and pushes them to explore uncharted territory.”

Not only is this beneficial for college theater students, but for young students as well. Seymour believes “Viewpoints” is a valuable way to respond theatrically to artwork “because so much of the experience of looking at art, for me at least, calls up so many of the viewpoints: spatial relationship, shape, repetition. Sometimes you look at a piece of art and it just seems still, other times a still image can give the sensation of movement, and suddenly you are thinking about the concept of tempo, whether you know it or not.”

Seymour and her students will reconvene on 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, the lobby for more movement work.

“I find that both my students and the children that have responded to the art in the Brooks Lobby have enjoyed the liberty of creating with fearlessness, and have experienced that wonderful moment of giving yourself permission to play and move and respond,” she says. “When work can go beyond words, I think many of us are loosed from that fear of not ‘saying the right answer.’ Suddenly you are just working with an organic response within your body, and how can that sort of response be wrong?  It just can’t.”

Also occurring this month is an activity hatched by Brooks Center Coordinator Sarah Edison. Through Monday, Dec. 1, young students may participate in an exciting activity called “Art Detective” during Box Office hours (Monday through Friday; 1 to 5 p.m.), and before and after Tri-ART morning performances in the Brooks Center Lobby.

The idea for the activity came to Edison while deciding on a title for the exhibit. “We were talking about the title and the word ‘decoding’ came up,” she said. “I thought about the theme of educating kids, and said, ‘Well, who decodes things?’ I also remembered pretending to be a spy or detective when I was younger and thought this would be a fun concept!”

Students’ mission, should they choose to accept it, is to check out book bags from the Box Office containing supplies for various activities listed on a “Secret Mission” objectives sheet. Among these objectives are drawing and writing assignments in response to the displayed artwork.

“We often underestimate children as an audience for any type of art,” Edison says. “The kids are so creative. They come up with 50 different responses to the works. We kind of lose that as we get older, so I hope the whole family, not just children, finds different ways of looking at art.”

Kaplar has been overwhelmed by the positive response from patrons, employees, children, parents, and students. “I’m pleased we have another successful exhibit in the Brooks Center Lobby,” she said.

List of pieces/artists on display:

• “Supermarket” by Ben Shahn
• “Landshark” by Antoine Predock
• “Master Cleaners” by Edward Yaghjan
• “Summer Landscape II” by A. Stanick
• “Summer” by Walter Hollis Stevens
• “Signs of the Treegarth of Orthanc” by John O’Neil
• “The Secret of a Guilty Cloud” by Bill Seitz
• “Metamorphosis De Crigo” by Manley
• “Unknown” by Robert Hunter
• “Barron Briar II” by Carl Blair
• “Sophie’s Parlor” by David Freeman