KU Department of Visual Art

✨ Faculty Spotlight! ✨"Steve Gurysh, associate professor of visual art, has been awarded the KU Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship for the 2026-2027 academic year. Established in the 1980s, the professorship supports faculty in their pursuit of collaboration across disciplines.

Gurysh’s most recent sculptural and research explorations incorporate Mars Global Simulant (MGS), an engineered material that replicates the mineral profile of samples collected and analyzed by NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover." Read more at the link!

KU collaboration on Mars simulant research A visual art professor is expanding extraterrestrial simulant research by partnering with a senior scientist of ecology & evolutionary biology.

💫 Alumni News 💫 Keith Jacobshagen, MFA '66
"From May 15 through Aug. 16, he will be spotlighted in a solo show, “The Shape of the Prairie,” at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art in St. Joseph, Mo. And the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney is tentatively planning a Jacobshagen retrospective in 2027 that curator Karissa Johnson hopes will tour at least regionally and include an accompanying scholarly catalog.

Jacobshagen’s works have a singular look – a low horizon line with sometimes only loosely delineated features across the landscape and big, sweeping skies – delicate white clouds against a panorama of blue or the orange and slate gray of a sunset turning into night.

“Once you see a Jacobshagen, you wouldn’t mistake it for anyone else’s work,” said David Cateforis, a professor of art history at the University of Kansas. “He has a very distinctive style.” Read more via link!

Keith Jacobshagen, famed prairie painter, finds essential and eternal in endless Nebraska sky - Flatwater Free Press Unlike other landscape artists who capture obvious scenic glories of crashing ocean waves or snow-crested mountains, Jacobshagen has devoted his life to depicting what much of the rest of America calls flyover country.

"The postcard set highlights sites that were significant to Langston Hughes while he lived in Lawrence. Each postcard pairs a contemporary photograph of present-day Lawrence with a historic image of the same location. Elise Kirk, KU associate professor of visual art, took the contemporary photos for the project."

New set of postcards celebrates the life of Langston Hughes in Lawrence A collaborative project of KU and community organizations has published 10 postcards about the experiences of Langston Hughes while he lived in Lawrence. Community members can pick up postcards for free at locations on campus and around town.

✨Alumni Spotlight✨Way to go KU Visual Art Education graduates, Akia Miles, (VAE 2025), Bailey Kivett (former KU VAE & Metalsmithing graduate), AND Stacy Ash (former KU VAE graduate pictured on the left in the first image).
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During his first-year teaching at Whitson Elementary in Topeka, Akia was selected as one of two lead teachers for the National Washed Ashore project, with Bailey Kivett. The choice of the monarch butterfly is meaningful, in that Akia learned about its endangered nature and significance to Kansas through VAE and Art Ed Club volunteer work with Monarch Watch, KU's Kansas Biological Survey. Says Akia, "I picked the monarch because it expresses the theme of transformation through the arts.” We're so proud of our graduates out in the world spreading art and knowledge! 🐛🦋

Get • Please join us on Saturday, May 16th from 5 PM to 7 PM for the opening reception of Almost a Body: Not Quite a Thing, an exhibition presented by the current ICRC residents at the University of Kansas, Sunyoung Park and Seuil Chung.🙌

Almost a Body: Not Quite a Thing brings together work from two studio courses, Botanical Form in Clay and Abstract Forms, led by Sunyoung Park and Seuil Chung. Each course approaches form through distinct processes and lines of inquiry rooted in clay-based practice. While the works emerge from different contexts, they share an interest in shapes that resist fixed definition, hovering between body, object, and other states of becoming.

The exhibition proposes a space where objects approach bodies without fully arriving, and where meaning emerges through relation, proximity, and difference.

Almost a Body: Not Quite a Thing will be on view from Saturday, May 16th through Saturday, May 23rd.

Two classes of KU ceramics students learned how to defy gravity with clay bodies and how to install their work without breaking it. Their creations — which astonished even their teachers — will be exhibited at Off-Site Art Space. https://lawrenceks.news/3PiQPNY

Salami Sam sez: Good Luck on Finals!
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(Image features campus squirrel eating a piece of salami outside Chalmers Hall with cartoon text bubble and comic book elements)

Final Weekend for Senior Shows at with another at the Lawrence Rotary Arboretum.
Off-Site will feature three Senior Shows: Grace Billman | "Naturally Adorned", Xochitlh Vargas | "For Those Who Taught Me", and Cheyenne Eckstein (not pictured)
Exhibition: MAY 7 - MAY 9, 4-8PM
Reception: MAY 8, 5-7PM
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At Lawrence Rotary Arboretum, located at 5100 W 27th St, Lawrence, KS, Samantha Bradbury will show "testimony through textiles" with a reception on FRI, MAY 8 from 6-8PM
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Don't forget to join us for the annual Scholarship Show this SUN, MAY 10 from 2-4PM in Chalmers Hall. Come see what our Visual Art students have been working on this year and enjoy light refreshments on a beautiful day. 💐
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