Lamar Dodd School of Art

08/21/2026

For nearly a decade, Dodd photo faculty Blake Jacobsen has been returning home to photograph his family’s truck repair business in Southwest Florida. “Through Service We Grow” is a new body of work by Jacobsen opening in the Mills Family Gallery next Thursday.

For his first solo exhibition since joining the faculty at the University of Georgia, Jacobsen's latest project turns the camera away from his own family and onto the mechanics who work at the shop.

Following the recent passing of his grandfather, who started the business with the slogan “Through Service We Grow,” the work reflects on labor and service as paths toward self-determination and belonging. As the only male in his family who did not become a diesel mechanic, Jacobsen uses the camera as his own mechanical apparatus to document the shop as a site where masculinity is built, performed, taken apart, and never fully repaired.

Jacobsen's exhibition is one of five new shows opening at the Dodd Galleries. See you at the Fall Exhibitions Art Party next Thursday from 5-7 pm!

08/19/2026

Join us next Tuesday for our first Visiting Artist Talk of the year with graphic artist Kelli Anderson at 5:30 pm in room S151

Kelli Anderson uses handheld revelations to reconnect people with the depth and possibility of their world. Her books force readers to touch paper. She created This Book is a Camera (MoMA)—which transforms into a working camera—and This Book is a Planetarium (Chronicle)—which houses paper devices (including a planetarium) and has sold more than 100,000 copies. Alphabet in Motion, an interactive book about typography and technology was published to wide acclaim in the Fall of 2025. Other projects include a viral paper record player and—with The Yes Men—a utopian counterfeited New York Times, which won the Ars Electronica Prix. Doctors without Borders have used the award-winning Tinybop Human Body app she illustrated to communicate illness and treatment nonverbally to their patients in remote areas. Clients include NPR, the New Yorker, the Guggenheim, MoMA, Apple, and the New York Times. She has been nominated for the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award twice and teaches at NYU, SVA, and Cooper Union.

08/18/2026

Calling all students with a creative side! Submit an original design to the 2026 Spotlight on the Arts Student Design Competition for a chance to be seen campus-wide! The prizes: $500 for 1st place, $125 for 2nd place and $75 for 3rd place.

Sponsored by the UGA Arts Council and the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the competition will select an original design to be featured on the 2026 Spotlight on the Arts festival t-shirts and other promotional materials, which could include stickers, magnets, mugs, tote bags, etc.

Spotlight on the Arts is the University of Georgia’s annual celebration of the literary, visual and performing arts. Held each November, the month-long festival highlights the arts and humanities on campus with dozens of events and exhibits. Visit arts.uga.edu to learn more.

How to enter: create an original design that captures the creativity of the festival and submit your design through art.uga.edu/spotlight-on-the-arts-design-competition. The deadline to submit designs is 11:59 p.m. Friday, September 4. All students submitting artwork must be current attendees at UGA, and a maximum of two entries may be submitted.

08/18/2026

We're on the back page of Flagpole Magazine ! See us next week for an artist lecture with Kelli Anderson, an art talk with Victoria Dugger, five new exhibitions opening Dodd Galleries and two openings The Athenaeum 🥵

08/06/2026

Art is going to be your thing this year. Trust us. See you at 30+ exhibition openings, talks, markets and more this season.

Curate your outings in our Franklin Fine & Performing Arts brochure hot off the presses. Digital link here: https://issuu.com/ugamusic/docs/franklin_fine_and_performing_arts_brochure_26_27?fr=xIAEoAT3_MzMz

or scope art.uga.edu for event and exhibition details.

Season kicks off the week of August 24 with two art lectures and six exhibition openings.

Artwork: Victoria Dugger, “Sugar Coat It,” 2024. Garden chair, tutu, nylon stockings, pearl, and fabric trim. Sugar Coat It, 2024, garden chair, tutu, nylon stockings, pearls and fabric trim, 34 x 22 x 14 inches. Courtesy the artist and Sargent’s Daughter, New York, copyright the artist.

07/17/2026

07/17/2026

Read the full announcement here!

https://art.uga.edu/2026/07/17/victoria-dugger-receives-2026-margie-e-west-alumni-prize-and-presents-exhibition-runner-up/

We are pleased to announce Victoria Dugger MFA ’22 as the recipient of the 2026 Margie E. West Alumni Prize and featured artist in the accompanying solo exhibition “Runner Up” in the Margie E. West Gallery from August 27 through November 20, 2026.

The public is invited to a Visiting Artist Lecture with Dugger in conversation with Benjamin Britton, associate professor of art, on August 27 at 4 pm in room S151 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art. The lecture will be followed by an opening reception from 5 – 7 pm for “Runner Up,” alongside four additional exhibitions in the Dodd Galleries.

A lifelong resident of Georgia and living in Athens since the completion of her MFA at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in 2022, Dugger consistently examines her experiences of Black girlhood and disability through the lens of the Southern Gothic. Dugger’s visual language—with imagery often exaggerated and fantastical—remains largely autobiographical and grounded in her embodied experience.

Read more in the link in our bio 🔗

07/06/2026

Our final summer class for adults marries jewelry making with found materials. Sign up before Saturday for this three-part workshop at the UGA Community Art School with recent MFA graduate Larissa McPherson!

06/29/2026

Metal and coral — match made in heaven?

Attention artists and art curious adults, we have seats remaining in our upcoming 3-part workshop taught by innovative jewelry and metalwork artist

A week from Saturday, you're invited to explore mixed media jewelry with natural objects for our final Community Art School summer offering of 2026.

Learn more and register in our bio. 🔗

Instructor Bio
Larissa McPherson is a metalsmith and jewelry artist from Adairsville, GA who recently completed her MFA at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Larissa’s work explores ideas and issues related to the accumulation of microplastics and waste in the environment, specifically in animal bodies. Microplastics are now found in every being and Larissa’s work imagines how this might visually appear in the bones animals leave behind. The presentation of her work is inspired by Natural History Museums. Natural collections are an important way to study evidence we find by comparing unaltered bones, found plastics from the environment, and where those two meet in the animal body. During the creation of her work, Larissa embodies a natural historian who is discovering the “evidence” of specimens that are the result of these environmental conditions.

06/17/2026

Oh, the (mini) Looms you will Weave! Samples of UGA Summer Art Campers playing with color and composition in the fiber studio with Camp Director Andrea Trombetta.

Teens will install work from their 4 studio classes in photography, drawing and painting, printmaking, and fiber this Friday.