Alchemy, Mythology and Magic: Lithographs by Kimberly Arp

The Fletcher Hall Gallery proudly announces Alchemy, Mythology, and Magic: Lithographs by Kimberly Arp, Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University, where he taught printmaking for 38 years. Kimberly was born and raised in Northern Michigan and went to Grand Valley State College for his BFA degree. He received his Masters of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University in 1977. As a master printmaker, his prints have been included in over two hundred exhibitions all over the United States as well as the United Kingdom, South Korea, Italy and Australia. The exhibition is being organized by the Department of Visual Arts at UL Lafayette.

Arp has used his own photographs and sketchbook drawings as a visual resource for his prints over the past 5 years. Often these images are transferred directly from his photographs into his work through Xerox transfer processes, photo lithography, photo intaglio and screen printing as means of incorporating his photographic imagery into his art work. Most recently he has been scanning and greatly enlarging his photographs and printing them out on rag paper as digital inkjet images. Once in that state, he is able to print photo and hand drawn lithographic, intaglio or serigraphic images over the top of them to create pieces that are hybrids of “photo reality and hand drawn invention.” Arps work is often influenced by his studies in Alchemy, the Voodoo and Santeria religions and Folk Art as well as mythology and magic. “My work is equally influenced by a sense of the “spiritual” in a place, be it the Grand Canyon, stone circles in Scotland, a lightning storm or as in the case of many prints, a graveyards and churches in Scotland.”

The exhibition is located in the Fletcher Hall Gallery, Room 207 on the second floor of Fletcher Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. The Department of Visual Arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette offers concentrations in traditional areas of art leading to the professional Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. Fields of study include: animation and computer arts, ceramics, graphic design, media arts, metalwork and jewelry, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture. The department also offers an art education program affiliated with the College of Education. Contact the Department of Visual Arts by clicking here.