KU News Release

KU art professor to open first day of classes by video from Finland

Matti Mattsson and one of his students work on a metalsmithing project.

LAWRENCE — Art students from the University of Kansas and in Mikkeli, Finland, will meet via a prerecorded trans-Atlantic video session on Thursday, Aug. 21, the first day of classes at KU.

The international class session was arranged by Carol Ann Carter, KU professor of art, who traveled to Finland earlier this month to work in Mikkeli, and Matti Mattsson, a metalsmith who taught at KU in 2000.

Carter worked with Mark Crabtree of KU Media Productions and Juha Piiroinen, metals instructor, and others in Mikkeli to open her first class at KU this fall from Finland. Carter said she thinks international sessions underscore the value of crossing borders in art and culture and will create interest in an exhibit called “Metals in the Sister Cities: The Lawrence-Eutin Connection” at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire St.

The exhibition runs through Aug. 30 and features metal work and jewelry by KU faculty and students, recent KU graduates and artists from three sister cities: Lawrence and Eutin, Germany, and Eutin’s other sister city, Mikkeli.

The exhibition is a partnership between the Lawrence Arts Center and KU’s departments of art and design. It is sponsored in part by Emprise Bank and artists donating work to the annual Lawrence Art Auction.

The international exchange will continue in November when faculty and students from KU and Mikkeli will exhibit work in Eutin’s Ostholstein Museum.

Marlies Behm, special exhibits organizer for the Ostholstein Museum and program director for the Overbeckgesselshaft, a contemporary gallery/museum in Lübeck, Germany, curated the Lawrence exhibition with Lin Stanionis, KU associate professor of metalsmithing and jewelry, and Carter.

Behm and Glen Brown, an art history professor at Kansas State University, will give a lecture titled “Pioneers in Metals Education — The Work of Alma Eikerman and Otto Kunzli” at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28, at the Lawrence Arts Center.

After Carter returns to campus Aug. 25, she said, she will continue video critiques with the students in Finland. Mattsson also will return to KU this month as a visiting lecturer and will coordinate plans with KU faculty and students for the exhibition in Eutin in November.

Carter and Mattsson have worked collaboratively since 1994 when they met while she was a Fulbright fellow in Stockholm, Sweden. In the past 14 years, they have sought to create an international network to exchange ideas and portfolios between Eutin, Mikkeli and Lawrence.

“Our work has always been about creating links between perspectives and perceptions in the arts,” Carter said. “Today that notion is in the air and increasingly apparent in a world made more accessible by new technologies. It’s an idea whose time has come. This exhibition is a continuation of the many exchanges between Lawrence and Eutin. It expands the relationship of the Lawrence Arts Center and Lawrence by including another partner — Mikkeli, Finland, — another sister city of Eutin.”

KU artists participating in “Metals in the Sister Cities: The Lawrence-Eutin Connection” are Carter; Stanionis; Gina Westergard, associate professor of metalsmithing and jewelry; Jon Havener, professor of design; Olli Valanne, professor emeritus of design; and Taweesak Molsawat, who earned an master’s degree in fine arts at KU and now teaches metals in his home country, Thailand. Former students of Stanionis and Mattsson with work in the exhibit are Jamie Brehm, Lynn Cool, Robert Longyear and Courtney Starrett.

Artists from Germany are Behm, Antje Freheit, Beate Leonards, Gerda Moll, Wilfried Moll, Hannes Kuhn, Ulla Herz, Margarethe Oehlschlaeger, Martin Otte, Caroline Rügge, Anja Schönmeyer, Andrea Wöhler and the late Werner Oehlschlaeger.

Other Kansas artists are Shellie Bender, Grace Carmody, Ron Hinton and Frances Kite, all of Lawrence; and Marjorie Schick, adistinguished professor of art at Pittsburg State University.

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