FACULTY

Michael Brakke - Professor
Office: A+A 413A
Telephone: 865.974.9393
Email: mbrakke@utk.edu
Education: Yale University - MFA

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"My work means nothing. My work is unreasonably beautiful. It is about remembering by forgetting; it is a reconstruction of what is flamboyantly lost, homesteading wholeness from the desiccated remnants of our repression; it is La Dolce Vita. My work supports the presently desired identity. It is about me and it is about culture and it is about nature.

My cast resin sculptures, and the computer-altered photographs they spawn, are movie scenes from our outtakes: Private Ryan as Frank Sinatra. Beauty demands completion of the narrative, it displaces that which is less beautiful.

Like the Oscars, Technicolor never fades. Details really, these images dispute their specific location, creating more scenes for other movies with happy or sad endings. My work is unreasonably beautiful. My work means nothing."

Michael Brakke received his M.F.A. from Yale University. His work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The High Museum, Atlanta; and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. His work has been the subject of reviews and articles by Jack Burnham, Judith Russi Kirshner, Peter Frank, and James H. Beck, in publications including Art Forum, The New Art Examiner, Arts Magazine, Art News, and Art in America. He has received several grants including a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. His current work uses materials ranging from cast polyester resin to computer modified or generated images output as Iris prints which have been included in group shows at the Bill Maynes Gallery, New York, and have been the subject of a solo exhibition at the Santa Fe College of Art.



Marcia Goldenstein - Professor
Office: A+A 435C
Telephone: 865.974.9398
Email: mgoldens@utk.edu
Education: University of Nebraska - MFA

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"My work resides within the rich tradition of landscape painting and the variety of ways in which our environment is experienced and perceived. I vacillate between paintings that capture specific moments in time and space, and paintings that offer composite views with multiple images that reflect a more complex response. Extensive travel continues to increase my repertoire of personal places, but I often return to my roots in the Great Plains where the sky and prairie dominate. Another native of the plains, Willa Cather wrote, “It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.” Painting the immensity of the space intrigues me as much as the precious details, giving substance to the layers of atmosphere and air. Within each painting I acknowledge both the historical context of the genre and my personal sense of place and belonging."

Marcia Goldenstein received her M.F.A. degree in Painting at the University of Nebraska. She has taught drawing and painting at the University of Tennessee since 1976. Her teaching experience also extends to summer programs at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN and Summervail in Colorado and as a visiting artist at numerous institutions, including the National Academy of Fine Arts, Bratislava, Slovakia; Tudor Hall, Banbury, United Kingdom; Arts Council, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; University of Texas, San Antonio; and University of Indianapolis. Her paintings have appeared in many solo and invitational exhibitions in the United States, Europe and China and are included in a variety of museum, corporate and private collections.

Whitney Leland - Professor
Office: A+A 413 E
Telephone: 865.974.3215
Email:
Education: University of Tennessee - MFA

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"Abstract."

Whitney Leland has participated in more than 190 exhibitions and won many competitive awards, including an NEA/SECCA Fellowship Grant. His work is represented in the collections of the Huntsville Museum of Art; Huntsville, AL; The Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, TN; The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AK; Chase Manhattan Bank, NYC; Knoxville Museum of Art; Knoxville, TN; Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, MO; and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. His work has been written about in Contemporary Art/Southeast, Smithsonian Magazine, and Art Voices/South.

Thomas Riesing - Professor
Office: A+A 413D
Telephone: 865.974.9396
Email: triesing@utk.edu
Education: University of Nebraska - MFA

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"Since 1985 my landscape paintings and drawings have been site-specific and directly related to my travels. Travel is an essential component in how I define myself. Paul Theroux referred to travel “…as an experiment in space,” a statement that resonates for any landscape painter. My recent panoramic pieces evolve greatly from workday to workday. The horizon constantly shifts, as does the relationship between sky and ground. Often times in the same piece I shift from place to place: at one point the painting is of China and at another, perhaps, it changes to Tennessee. I like this state of flux, eventually coming to a conclusion, but only after trying many scenarios, making comparisons, and ultimately being faced with new situations."

Thomas Riesing began teaching at UTK in 1973 after receiving his M.F.A. at the University of Nebraska. He has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, at the National Academy of Fine Art in Bratislava, Slovakia and at ten different universities and academies in China, including the Central Academy of Fine Art, Sichuan University, Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts, Guangxi Normal University in Guilin, and Fujian Normal University. He holds the position of Guest Professor at Sichuan University where he has been active in establishing an exchange program with UTK. He has been the recipient of numerous Professional Development Awards and an NEH Endowment Grant to facilitate his work in China. He received the Berry Award (1999-2002) from the School of Art and a Lily Post-Doctorate Teaching Fellowship (1978). Riesing has exhibited his work extensively nationally and internationally, recently participating in the 1998 Asia-Pacific Contemporary Art exhibition in Fuzhou, China. His work is in many collections, including Coca-Cola; T.V.A.; Opryland, Inc.; Northern Telecom Corp.; Zhongyin International Industrial Corp.; Miami University and Miami Fine Arts Gallery; Davidson College Art Gallery; and Sichuan University.

Jered Sprecher - Professor
Office: A+A 435A
Telephone: 865.974.3219
Email: jsprecher@utk.edu
Education: University of Iowa- MFA

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"My work is based in an eclectic aesthetic. My paintings extract elements from the high and low of visual culture. This culture and crush of images is in constant flux. My paintings hold no single allegiance, but are constantly shifting from one form of representation to another. The paintings function as sources of both inductive and deductive image making processes. In our day-to-day life, one is seldom afforded the time to comprehend what one is viewing under the barrage of images produced by humankind. I try to grasp a single moment, a glance, a small epiphany. The paintings are haptic documents of these remnants of communication as each one follows its trajectory.

Jered Sprecher received his MFA from the University of Iowa. Sprecher has had previous solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York, Wendy Cooper Gallery in Chicago, OSP Gallery in Boston, ADA Gallery in Richmond, and the Art Gallery of Knoxville. Exhibition reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe and The Chicago Reader. His work will be featured at the Drawing Center’s fall 2007 group exhibition, Non-Declarative. Sprecher has participated in the Artist Residence Program at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Space Program of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in New York.

David Wilson - Professor
Office: A+A 426
Telephone: 865.974.9402
Email: dwilson@utk.edu
Education: University of California, San Diego - MFA

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"I strive to create situations where transformation is possible – transformation as a way of probing, moving, and thinking about the world. A sense of open play is essential. I want the work to be matter-of-fact and obvious, and yet mysterious. I want to trust imagination."

David Wilson works primarily in installation and wall drawing. Using non-traditional media and approaches, including collaboration and performance, he creates large-scale temporary artworks. Wilson has shown his work internationally at Kunsthalle Basel and Kunstlerhaus Boswil in Switzerland, the Experimental Art Foundation and Performance Space in Australia, and the Robert McDougal Gallery in New Zealand. He has had solo exhibitions in the United States at a number of sites, including the Southeastern Center For Contemporary Art, Old Dominion University, Auburn University, the Florida Center for Contemporary Art, and the Dietrich Jenny Gallery. He has participated in many group exhibitions including ones at the Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Spaces Art Gallery, The Mint Museum, Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, the University of California (San Diego), and Wake Forest University. His work has been featured in periodicals such as Schweizer Kunst and Art Papers and reviewed in newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and Newsday. Wilson has been artist-in-residence at the International Artist Exchange, Basel, Switzerland and the Academy of Fine Art, Bratislava, Slovak Republic. He has also designed sets for the National Theater of the Deaf Children’s Theater that toured the U.S. Wilson received his M.F.A. from the University of California at San Diego where he studied with Allan Kaprow, Italo Scanga, and Manny Farber.

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