Department of Visual Arts Professor Organizes Printmaking Exhibition of Nationally Recognized Printmaker

Department of Visual Arts Professor Brian Kelly organized the exhibition "Alchemy, Mythology, and Magic: Lithographs by Kimberly Arp" on July 1st - July 28, 2016 in the Fletcher Hall Gallery. The exhibited showcased 30 lithographs produced from 1987-2016 including many printmaking projects printed by Professor Kelly and printmaking students at the Department of Visual Arts Marais Press from 2005-2008.

Kimberly Arp, a nationally recognized printmaker, is a Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University, where he taught printmaking for 38 years. Arp has a long history of working on printmaking projects with the Department of Visual Arts Marais Press and will also serve as the juror for the Departments’ 2016 Annual Student Juried Student exhibition.

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.

Arps work is often influenced by his studies in Alchemy, the Voodoo and Santeria religions and Folk Art as well as mythology and magic. “Arps’ 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.”