Aj Smith, professor of art, celebrates the faces of individuals in small  towns and relatively isolated communities of the Delta in a new exhibit opening Thursday, Oct. 4, and running through Nov. 16 in Gallery II in UALR’s Fine Arts Building.

“In front yards, the local general store, church family centers, on front porches, in living rooms, and kitchens, we ate while I listened to stories of their lives,” the artist said. “Hopefully, in these graphite and silverpoint drawings, I have captured the essence and soul of my subjects.”

UALR’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and Art Department provided support for this project through a Faculty Summer Research Fellowship Grant and Off Campus Duty Assignment (OCDA).

Beginning Tuesday, Oct. 16, through Wednesday, Dec. 5, in Gallery 1, “Photographing the Landscape” will feature the works of four photographers – Jay Gould, Frank Hamrick, Chad Smith, and Luther Smith – with diverse interpretations of the landscape.

Locations vary, but all four present a highly idiosyncratic view of the landscape – conceptually, emotionally, and technically.

Luther Smith uses the large-format view camera, much like the landscape photographers of the 19th century, with traditional color film, which he then scans and refines digitally.

Chad Smith also uses the view camera to construct panoramas of a vast terrain. But instead of large-scale digital prints, his are presented in the original size of the film.

The works by Frank Hamrick are traditional in both process and modest scale. The black-and-white silver gelatin print seems to transform whatever is depicted into a mysterious and haunting view of reality.

Jay Gould also favors the commonplace, but couches his photographic illusions as a form of scientific investigation. He uses digital means to combine graphs, drawings and text with the original image.

An ongoing exhibit in Gallery III continues through Oct. 28 and features works from the UALR Permanent Collection.

Established in 1972, the UALR Permanent Collection includes various artworks that can be seen in offices across campus. Periodically, artworks from the collection are featured in the galleries in the Fine Arts Building.

This exhibit includes two new works recently purchased from the Annual Auction at the Penland School of Craft.  Tom Shields morphs together two discarded chairs from “The Pines” – the Penland dining hall – to create a unique sculptural furniture form titled “In the Pines.” Chris Berti uses a subtractive carving technique to create a miniature teapot on a pedestal out of  a red vintage paver brick, titled “Archetype Series.”

Other artists included in this exhibition include Dietrich Neyland, Alice Baber, Al Allen, John Thompson, Gertrude Tara-Casciano, Robin Woods Lausch, Anthony Jones, William Russell Powell, Joe Phillips, Michael Owens, James Wilbat, and Chris Jenkins