Professors As Working Artists: Watkins ’Here / Now’ Exhibition Introduces New Faculty

Gallery showcase gives first look at personal work of new faculty members

The Watkins College of Art recently gained three new faculty members: photographer Jack Latham, faculty fellow LaKesha Lee and illustrator Lauren Lowen. A selection of their work will be displayed in the Leu Center for Visual Art’s Gallery 121 until Feb. 13 to introduce each artist and give a small sampling of their voices and perspectives. As working creatives, their teaching is informed by active, real-world art practice. Splitting time between the art world and academia lets these new faculty members bring a contemporary mindset to the classroom so their students can hit the ground running.

Telling the Truth With Photography

A series of large photos lines the back wall of the gallery next to a book on a stand. These come from Latham’s 2016 body of work “Sugar Paper Theories,” a lens-based inquiry into an unsolved murder from Iceland in the 1970s. Partnering with Professor Gísli Guðjónsson of King’s College in London, Latham published the book as part of a series on disinformation that explores the motivations and methods used in the purposeful spreading of falsehoods. Choosing “Sugar Paper Theories” as his introduction to the University establishes Latham as a thoughtful, patient photographer.

Learning a Material Language

Lee’s hand is evident in each piece she chose to include. As put in in her artist statement, “The act of making becomes an homage to resilience and continuity within the lived experience.” By manually stitching, dyeing, sculpting, firing and layering, Lee seeks to explore the tension of what is lost and what is preserved in her work. Many of her pieces include elements from nature and artifacts of personal significance that work together to explore communal histories and the legacy of place. The piece “Unforgotten Presences” serves as a thesis statement for this act of remembering, featuring a photo of her great-grandmother wrapped in textiles dyed with local plants. With it, she questions her own genealogy while paying tribute to the world that shaped her. As a maker preoccupied with memory, Lee brings her own personal voice to the art of preservation: “I like to start at the center of things,” she said. “To find where it all begins.”

Art Meets Play

Facing these earth-toned pieces is an explosion of color on the opposite wall. Lowen’s vibrantly imagined characters dance across the prints, books, clothes and toys of her section. Using a combination of digital and traditional illustration techniques, Lowen renders worlds for clients such as Hallmark, Scholastic, American Greetings and more. One piece, titled “Poly,” is a large gouache painting with a tiger spanning one side and a crowd of musicians with plants on the other. Intricately patterned linework fills each field of color in the piece, pulling the eye rapidly from character to character. The background is a saturated pink that makes the piece leap off the wall, drawing the viewer into its dynamic world of song, dance and community. Lowen describes her style as “whimsically awkward,” and likes to create intuitively as each piece leads her to its endpoint. 

Together, the works in “Here / Now” offer more than an introduction to new faculty — they offer a glimpse into the ways art is actively lived, questioned and practiced at Watkins today. By inviting students and visitors into their current creative lives, Latham, Lee and Lowen model what it looks like to sustain a practice while remaining curious, responsive and engaged with the world. It’s a reminder that at Watkins, learning doesn’t begin with finished answers, but with artists who are still very much in the process.