November 6, 2023
Geraldine Craig installation at Chapman Art Gallery
The art department welcomes back one of its own leaders, Geraldine Craig, professor emeritus of art, whose installation, "Shop for Skin," is on display in the Chapman Gallery of Art in Willard Hall. A reception will take place from 4:30-6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6, and the exhibition will run through Friday, Nov. 10.
In this new work, Craig asks, "What does it look like when we die? What happens to the energy of a life, when no longer contained by our skin? The architecture of skin is a threshold for so many desires and projections, from inside out and outside in. A membrane of intimacy, joy, and pain. Yet how do we forge a partnership with grief, when the vessel of skin is gone, and dissipation of matter isn't physics theory? Find the forgotten corners, breathe in the dust, shop for skin outside time."
Craig's studio work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, Mexico, Morocco and Japan. She completed a large art commission for the University of Kansas Medical Center-Salina with Nelson Smith in 2018. Her awards include the 2018-19 Artistic Innovations Grant by Mid-America Arts Alliance and National Endowment for the Arts; an international fellowship, Women's International Study Center, Santa Fe; Dorothy Liesky Wampler Eminent Professor, James Madison University; Individual Artist Grant, Michigan Council for the Arts; and James Renwick Senior Fellow in American Craft, Smithsonian Institution.
Craig was assistant director at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 2001-2007. She was associate dean of the Graduate School from 2014-2018 and department head of art from 2007-2014 at Kansas State University. She retired in 2022 and is associate dean/professor emeritus of art.