Andrea Price and her artwork, “Not My Art History,” 2019.

The UToledo Department of Art is proud to feature our alumni who are supporting inclusion and diversity in their careers and artistic activities.

Artist Andrea Price, BFA ’19, resists an accepted Eurocentric perspective of art and beauty that represents people of color in positions of oppression. In her opinion, historical images of slaves that are considered beautiful are nothing more than the representations of black people created by those who colonized and enslaved them. Seeing these images in an art history class awakened a passion in Price to contribute to a new vision. “My heart literally broke, and I got angry because,” she asked, “why is the esteem that we hold in art attached to European views of what art should look like? That really began my journey to decolonize, to think … how can we create art that involves everyone; where I see myself in a piece of art; where other people of color can see themselves and know that they’re beautiful; and it’s not through the perspective of our white comforts?” Price told SHELOVES Magazine.

“Get You Some Sensitivity, Thanks” 2019, Andrea Price

Price creates art that denies those representations and introduces a different perspective that celebrates artistic diversity. Using drawing, painting, printmaking, photography and fiber art, Price weaves a new image of the African American experience through these media, focusing her work on social justice in relationship to people of color.

SHELOVES Magazine’s interview with Price features her art piece, “Not My Art History,” a powerful fiber-based work that reimagines history’s views of black art and black beauty.

“I hope that you can search your heart and see this piece and think: Huh, is art history really completely Eurocentric? Is what I’ve been taught from a very young age very Eurocentric, and why is that? Why are we not talking about all of the indigenous cultures that create beautiful things that we like to label as savage, as lesser-than, but not understanding the level of intelligence it takes to create something because they’re doing it with meaning?” Price says.

“Rug of Equality,” hand crocheted 4’m 2020, Andrea Price

Price advocates for the recognition of black artists, such as one of her favorite artists, Carrie Mae Weems. “Even throughout my whole educational experience, I think one thing that gets brought up so often is Kehinde Wiley. And I love Kehinde Wiley, but he is not the only person of color that is creating art about people of color,” Price told SHELOVES Magazine. She says that it’s necessary to backtrack through decades of the works of other artists and cultures that are “equally beautiful.” She says the writers of our history books are not telling the full story.

SHELOVES Magazine video interview.

Instagram: @andreaandherart

The UToledo Department of Art is proud to feature our alumni who are supporting inclusion and diversity in their careers and artistic activities.

Alicia Disantis, BA ’08, combines a set of artistic and entrepreneurial skills that have led her to establish a successful design and marketing firm, 38th & Kip, in Denver, Colorado. She also serves as brand manager at Aux in Lakewood, Colorado, where she develops and executes brand strategies that drive company recognition and profitability.

Her writing, graphic design and marketing expertise come together in marketing campaigns that include website design, print collateral, videos and trade show materials. Disantis’ own company provides creative pieces in various industries that include professional services, manufacturing, non-profit, technology and more. In the non-profit sector, Disantis has volunteered pro bono design services, including developing a targeted infographic for the Feline Foundation of Greater Washington, an animal welfare organization.

She founded 38th & Kip in 2010 with a mission to provide “exceptional, fairly priced marketing and design services to improve people’s lives.” Disantis’ business philosophy aligns with living in a just world, where fairness and equality are the norm, and the injustices of racism and bigotry are not tolerated. She says on the 38th & Kip website that her company is “committed to a better tomorrow.”

Disantis, who earned her bachelor’s degree in Studio Art, New Media, at UToledo, said about her professor, Deb Davis, “You know, I think of your classes often. You were challenging but your principles and passion for art stuck with me.” Alicia also earned a master’s degree in Arts, Entertainment and Media Management at Columbia College in Chicago. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from both colleges. She notes that she is inspired by retro design, Scandinavian minimalism, street art and bold colors. As an avid backpacker, she has traveled through many countries, stopping to visit as many museums as possible.

Product Promo Illustration Client: CU Service Network

Illustrations and type are hand-drawn, then scanned and colored.

Create concept and illustrations for product ads and a series of educational events that focus on specific services.

Aux Rebrand Client: CU Service Network

All rights 38th and Kip.

The UToledo Department of Art is proud to feature our alumni who are supporting inclusion and diversity in their careers and artistic activities.

Caroline Jardine, BFA ’17, BA Education ’16, identifies with art on a variety of levels — her personal artwork, the community-driven, public mural projects she leads and the creative expressions of her young students.

As a teenager, Jardine was introduced to place-making while she apprenticed for the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo. Through her passion for community-based art, Jardine became further engaged with local residents and arts practitioners, creating and leading mural projects, installations and other collaborative projects for organizations, businesses, schools and community events.

Caroline Jardine working on a mural in downtown Toledo with muralist Maya Hayuk.

Her 2020 work includes a collaboration with fellow muralist Maya Hayuk, whom Jardine assisted on a mural highlighting the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Maya Hayuk has been my favorite muralist for years, so this was so meaningful to

me to be able to not just meet her, but work with her,” says Jardine. The year also saw Jardine working on a project for local business owners of the Stubborn Brother pizza restaurant, a project in which she hand-lettered all of the text.

Two additional Toledo projects from 2020 include a board-up mural at 1105 and 1109 N. Huron, and an interactive spray chalk mural on the grounds of the Toledo Museum of Art. Caroline was also the lead designer for the first Community Collaborative artwork for the Arts Commission Momentum ’20. The “art-by-number” pieces that were broken into smaller 6″ X 6″ squares completed by the community and placed within a larger installation on Adams Street.

Images: Caroline Jardine

Jardine, who teaches 6- 12th-grade art at St. Ursula Academy, blends Ukrainian symbolism into her personal, mixed media artworks to represent themes of identity, connection and history. “When working on personal artwork, I allow my own voice to guide the process,” says Jardine.

Voice is a significant distinction between her personal and public artworks, she says. “I believe that when leading a community mural, the mural must be informed by the members of the community; my voice should not be the loudest in the room. In creative place-making, community members lead the direction of the artwork. My role is to listen, ask questions, and facilitate the creation of an artwork that is representative and reflective of the voices of the community.”

BCAN video features the community mural work of artist/educator/muralist, Caroline Jardine.

The UToledo Department of Art is proud to feature our alumni who are supporting inclusion and diversity in their careers and artistic activities.

Jym Shipman is currently the Member Experience Coordinator for the Sylvania YMAC/JCC at YMCA of Greater Toledo.  Jym Shipman, BFA ’04, reaches thousands of readers every week all over the world with his LGBTQ comic strip, “Diamond in the Rough.” Shipman launched the comic strip on his birthday, May 25, 2013, intending to expand the audience for stories about LGBTQ people. “My goal was to produce an LGBTQ comic strip that was family friendly,” says Shipman. When he decided to share his storylines, most LGBTQ comic strips focused on adults and many were sexualized.

“I want my readers to leave my strip with the ‘warm fuzzies,’ he says. “Even though many of my storylines are serious, I try to spin them in a way that uplifts the readers. It’s what I look for and read in the strips I follow.”

Two fellow cartoonists, Bart deGraaf and Tom Batiuk, offered Shipman support and nudged him to put his art out there for the world to see. He took their advice. While “Diamond in the Rough” began on Facebook, it now is published on Webtoon, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Flickr, Reddit, Boredpanda, Tapas, Ello, and Tagpacker.

In the past, Shipman’s strip appeared in print, but most of the traditional print publications are either obsolete or transitioned to online only. “Universal Click and Comics Kingdom are the two all-in-one big players of the day,” says Shipman about current sites featuring LGBTQ comic strips. “It brings me joy knowing that the voices in my head that brought me comfort as a gay child and now as an adult are being viewed in physical form via “Diamond in the Rough” — not just locally or in the United States, but all over the world.”

Creating “Diamond in the Rough” helps heal the tough experiences of living an LGBTQ life, says Shipman, as does the feedback from his audiences. “Being LGBTQ is not a curse. It’s a blessing.”

Deborah Orloff, Associate Chair, Photography Coordinator, Professor of Art, New Media Studies – Photography

Deborah Orloff, professor of photography and associate chair of The University of Toledo Department of Art, has received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council for her body of work, “Elusive Memory.”

According to the Ohio Arts Council website, the excellence awards “are peer recognition of artists for the exceptional merit of a body of their work that advances or exemplifies the discipline and the larger artistic community. These awards support artists’ growth and development and recognize their work in Ohio and beyond.”

Orloff said the $5,000 grant will be used to expand her “Elusive Memory” series and to exhibit it nationally.

The work was inspired by an experience she had following the death of her father in 2007 when she was preparing a eulogy for his funeral. While drawing upon specific memories, she realized all of them were directly connected to photographs, causing her to wonder if she remembered the moments, or if the pictures had created false memories.

“I wanted to make work about this phenomenon, but the project didn’t actually take form until many years later,” Orloff said.

“About five years ago, I inherited thousands of neglected prints and slides that had been in my father’s basement, where they were damaged by flooding. I started photographing them in the studio, not knowing what I would do with the images, but hoping to salvage some of the family pictures for posterity,” she said. “It wasn’t until I saw them enlarged on a computer screen that I recognized their poignancy and greater relevance: I saw metaphors for loss and the fragmentary, ephemeral nature of memory.”

Her new work utilizes the severely damage photos.

“‘Elusive Memory’ explores the significance of vernacular photographs as aesthetic objects and cultural artifacts. The resulting large-scale photographs make commonplace objects monumental and emphasize their unique details,” Orloff said.

The exhibition is on display at Workspace Gallery in Lincoln, Neb. Upcoming exhibitions include Youngstown State University’s Solomon Gallery, Vincennes University’s Shircliff Gallery in Indiana, and Anna Maria College’s Art Center Gallery in Massachusetts.

In addition, Orloff’s project was featured recently online at “Aint — Bad,” an independent publisher of new photographic art.

Samples of Orloff’s work can be seen on her website at deborahorloff.com.

A one-day public program that began in Detroit and finished in Toledo explored the impact of the African-American Great Migration on literary and musical expression in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.

The program, “I Got a Lust for Life: The Unique Words and Sounds of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan,” included panel discussions, poetry readings and musical performances on Saturday, Jan. 20, in Detroit at Wayne State University and in Toledo at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library and Toledo Museum of Art.

The program began in Detroit with panel discussion at Wayne State University’s Schaver Music Recital Hall. The panel included Ben Blackwell, co-founder of Third Man Records and official archivist for the White Stripes; John Gibbs Rockwood, Toledo author of the 2014 book “Can I Get a Witness” that features his photographs of iconic rock, pop, blues and folk musicians performing in the region during the early 1970s through the 2000s; Ramona Collins, Toledo-based popular jazz singer; and Oliver Ragsdale Jr., president of the Carr Center, a community hub for African-American artistic expression in Detroit.

Detroit morning event (Schaver Music Recital Hall, Old Main, Wayne State University)

“I Got a Lust for Life” then moved to Toledo, where Tyehimba Jess performed a poetry reading and held a book signing at the McMaster Center of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library. Jess is a 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning poet from Detroit whose work has focused on music, biography and African-American history. He read read from “Olio,” his award-winning collection of poetry that weaves together sonnet, song and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded, African-American performers from the Civil War to World War I.

McMaster Center, Main Library, Toledo Lucas County Public Library

The program  concluded with a panel discussion in the Glass Pavilion of the Toledo Museum of Art with Jess; M.L. Liebler, a Detroit-based, award-winning poet and editor of the anthology “Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond”; Frances Brockington, associate professor of voice at Wayne State University; and Dr. Lee Ellen Martin, jazz vocalist and Jon Hendricks scholar.  Mack and Duchan moderated the discussion, which was followed by a musical performance  by UT Jazz students an alumni.

“I Got a Lust for Life” in the TMA Glass Pavilion.

“I Got a Lust for Life: The Unique Words and Sounds of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan” was sponsored by the Roger Ray Institute for the Humanities at The University of Toledo, which advocates for and supports the study of human culture — from a great variety of fields — at all levels of learning and scholarship. Additional support for the program was provided by UT, WSU, the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, Toledo.com and the Toledo Museum of Art.