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Faculty Focus: John Rudel
VWU professor's latest exhibition displays hopeful works of 84 local high school students
University News | November 18, 2019
By Sandi Billy
On Thursday, November 21, Virginia Wesleyan’s Neil Britton Art Gallery becomes home to “Healing & Hope,” a thematic juried exhibition of 86 works by young Coastal Virginia artists, developed and produced by John Rudel, VWU Professor of Art and Curator of Exhibitions.
“The exhibition theme of ‘Healing & Hope’ explores the notion of art-making as an assertive act,” Rudel reflected. “It’s a way of making something happen that is proactive and expressive. The show acknowledges that art-making allows for a unique kind of process of discovery and opens up a true avenue for change.”
The original idea for this exhibition was in response to the mass shooting at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center on May 31, 2019, and a meeting between Rudel and Dr. Craig Wansink, Professor of Religious Studies and the Joan P. and Macon F. Brock Director of the Center for the Study of Religious Freedom, and Kelly Jackson, Associate Director of the CSRF. It set the project in motion with Rudel reaching out to several local teachers and arts coordinators.
“I’m grateful to [Visual Arts Coordinator for the Virginia Beach City Schools] Chris Buhner,” Rudel said. “He was very supportive of the idea and gave me a lot of good advice, and was instrumental in helping the theme evolve beyond the initial idea into an approach on the concepts of healing and hope. Students clearly have a lot on their minds, and broadening the theme opened up the exhibition to a lot of artistic voices that needed to be heard; as we found out by the very strong response from 80 young artists.”
High school students from the Chesapeake, Norfolk, Southampton, and Virginia Beach school systems, along with students from the Governor’s School for the Arts, Tidewater Collegiate Academy, and Teens with a Purpose have shared their art. Jurors include Philip Guilfoyle, VWU Professor of Art, Allison Taylor, Director of Education for the Chrysler Museum of Art, Truly Matthews, Curator of Education for the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and Dr. Craig Wansink. Four winners will be awarded prizes of $100 each, and multiple merit certificates will be presented.
At the awards reception (November 21, 6-8 p.m.), participating artists will also have an opportunity to create a collaborative artwork.
“We’re going to open up the VWU Virtual Reality (VR) Art Lab to these young artists,” said Rudel, “and create a shared VR artwork to further reiterate the show theme and extend the assertive creative act.”
The University’s Art Department has used Google Tiltbrush software as an artistic medium for several years. Tiltbrush allows one to choose different tools and colors to make brush strokes in thin air, then walk around them and add or subtract additional marks to build a three-dimensional “painting” within the VR space. Zachery Burkhart, an art and education major who is enrolled in VWU’s Master of Arts in Education program, will lead the VR lab at the reception. It will be set up in the Hofheimer Library adjacent to the Britton Gallery.
“We’re happy to provide these young artists a creative opportunity and exposure to this exciting technology” Rudel said. “Each artist will add something to the work created by the student before them, or elsewhere in the VR space, and in the end, we’ll have a shared work created by all the participating artists. At the end of the evening, we’ll create a video ‘walk-through’ of the finished artwork and post it online.”
Rudel is in his 13th year at Virginia Wesleyan and earned the MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Georgia, but when he began his college career on a soccer scholarship at the University of North Carolina in Asheville, he was unsure of his focus. He and a teammate registered for an art class thinking it would be easy.
“On the first day, the professor showed slides of the projects required in the class,” he said. “They were amazing, but obviously looked time-consuming to complete. I got really excited and turned to my teammate to say something, but he was already gone.
After taking that class, Rudel declared art as his major, and within a year was devising a plan that would allow him to remain in the world of college art for the rest of his life.
“It seems to have worked out so far,” he laughed, then more seriously added, “and I hope I can get other young artists inspired the way I was.”
Rudel has been commissioned three times by the Norfolk Public Art Commission for outdoor work and has exhibited his art in venues including the Georgia Museum of Art (Athens), the University of Miami (OH) Art Museum, the Lauren Rodgers Museum (MS), the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (Brooklyn), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach), Pink Dog Creative (Asheville, NC), Lorrie Saunders Art Gallery (Norfolk), the Offsite Gallery (Norfolk), the Neil Britton Art Gallery (Virginia Wesleyan), and most recently at the Current Art Fair at Bon Secours Washington Redskin Training Center (Richmond). He has enjoyed eight solo exhibitions in the past 10 years and is represented by the Linda Matney Fine Art Gallery.
Reflecting on this most recent project, Rudel said, “This is the first time I’ve worked on a thematic exhibition for high school students. I’m very proud to provide a venue for these young voices to express the important ideas of “Healing & Hope.’ I’ve been humbled by the response, and thinking back on the way it unfolded, I’m reminded of an important notion when dealing with creative projects, and with life in general—trust the process.”
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"Healing & Hope"
November 21-December 13
Neil Britton Art Gallery at Virginia Wesleyan University
5817 Wesleyan Dr., Virginia Beach, VA 23455
Artist Awards Reception: November 21, 6-8 p.m.
Gallery Hours
Free and open to the public