The Cress Gallery of Art announces the opening of its first
exhibitions of the 2004-2005 academic year:

Danger / Desire:   Photographs by Jane Calvin
"Pet"  and other New Work:   Michelle Dussault
Social Landscapes:  Ann Tyler

September 02 - October 14, 2004

Gallery talk by artist Ann Tyler on Thursday, Sept. 09, 5:15 pm
followed by a public reception to 7:00 pm

Three artists, three exhibitions, three visual investigations into
difficult issues that face us today.

The work is strong in concept and mature in content and has broad
interdisciplinary appeal.  We encourage you and your students to
visit the Cress.  Brief descriptions of the exhibitions of each
artist are below.   For more information please feel free to call the
Curator at 425-4600 or email [log in to unmask]  Class visits are
welcome!

Prof. of Visual Communications at The School of the Art Institute in
Chicago, Ann Tyler creates digital prints and  limited edition books.
Conceptually her work addresses the violent victimization of members
of minority groups by those of a majority who choose to see
difference as amoral and they who are different as less than human.
While powerful and chilling, most of her imagery is metaphorical,
with references to animal faces, trees, and rural landscapes which in
turn refer to romantic pastoral notions of nature, the violence
within nature, and the larger, difficult complexities of the nature
of mankind.

Photographer Jane Calvin, also of Chicago "makes" photographs rather
than "takes".  She constructs  room sized installations filled with
found objects and projected images and text which are documented
photographically.  The scenes created are inventive and disjointed
and the photographs formally tend to compress and rearrange space.
These photographs are contextualized  by being paired with passages
from ads, storybooks, pulp romance, poetry, and novels that have been
selected by the artist and range in source from James Joyce's Ulysses
to the lyrics of performance artist / musician Laurie Anderson.
Thematically they explore  the dichotomous relationships between
mystery and menace, danger and desire, love and sexuality, male and
female..  The exhibition as a whole creates a poetic documentary that
contemplates the evolution of the roles of gender in American society
during the 20th Century.

Michelle Dussault, maintains a studio in Tampa, Fla., where she
teaches drawing at the University of South Florida and painting and
art appreciation at Hillsborough Community College.  Michelle
presents two series of paintings and a video installation in an
exhibition titled "Pet"and other New Work . "Pet" looks at the
domestication of animals in our urban society, the dogs and cats,
symbols and badges of their owners identity  and programmed through
breeding and training to the loss of their natural and instinctual
existence. In the second series of paintings titled "Welcome to
Fabulous" Dussault continues to question, through visual association,
the effects of urban  sprawl and development upon all: we, the
two-legged animals who walk upright, and the environment for which we
have assumed the role of caretakers.

Hope to see you at the Cress!!

The Gallery is located in the lobby of the Fine Arts Center at the
corner of Vine and Palmetto.
GALLERY HOURS:  9:00 am - 5:00 pm Monday - Friday.
Admission is free.
The Cress Gallery is open to the public during all Patten Series perfomances

Thanks for your support.

Ruth

Ruth Grover
Curator Galleries and Collections
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Department of Art #1301
615 McCallie Ave
Chattanooga, Tn  37403
423-425-4600
[log in to unmask]
fax 423-425-2101