Coming Home: A Retired Faculty Exhibition

Just in time for Baylor’s Homecoming festivities, the Martin will celebrate a group of past Department of Art & Art History faculty. Through their classroom instruction and professional artistic endeavors, the eight faculty highlighted in this exhibition made their mark on the department, Baylor University, students, and surrounding communities. Through work from the John S. Belew Collection in the Martin’s permanent collection, Coming Home seeks to feature just a moment from these artists’ and historians’ vast and meaningful careers.

Artists in the Exhibition

Mark Anderson

Early on, the landscape became an important touchstone to my sense of place, having grown up on the high plains of western Nebraska with its sandstone outcroppings, the Oregon Trail, the North Platte River, and the lingering history associated with Manifest Destiny. Additionally, the varied geography of central Texas along the Brazos River bears rich parallels both historically and visually to those who would intuit its mystery.

Affirmation and encouragement for my artistic efforts came in my elementary years from both my mother and teachers. My high school art teacher, Robert Schweiger, went on to establish himself as a college teacher, administrator, and nationally renowned artist/printmaker. As is often the case when making a choice to study art in college, family, and friends concerned about my ability to support myself, subtly encouraged me in the direction of teaching. Thus, fifty years ago, I began my academic career as an art teacher of seventh through twelfth-grade students prior to pursuing a graduate degree four years later.

A milestone in my life occurred in 1976 when I moved my young family to South Texas to accept a tenure-track university position on the periphery of the King Ranch. Printmaking and drawing occupied my professional life both as a Professor and an artist for the subsequent 34 years at two South Texas universities, both affiliated now with Texas A&M University.

As my academic career comes to a close, I'm particularly pleased to have had the good fortune for the past decade to have served the faculty, students, and Baylor University as Professor and Chair of the Department of Art & Art History.

Dr. William “Bill” Jensen

Bill Jensen earned his B.A. and M.A from the University of Iowa and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He joined the Department of Art & Art history at Baylor in 1976, taught a variety of art history classes, and served as a Director for the Martin Museum of Art.

Jensen’s research was vast and varied, which took him all over the world, and allowed him to impart his knowledge to students for years. He held several important positions within Art History organizations, and he presented his work at innumerable conferences.

Berry Klingman

Berry Klingman, Professor of Printmaking and Drawing, earned the B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting at the University of Kansas and the M.F.A. in Printmaking at the University of Indiana. His work is in many public, university, and private collections. He has had numerous one-man exhibitions and received awards in national competitive drawing and printmaking shows, and he continues to exhibit his drawings and prints nationally. Over several recent summers, he has created prints in studios in London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland.

Read Berry Klingman's Artist Statement here.

John McClanahan

John McClanahan is most at ease with a paintbrush in hand, and he spends his days in his East Dallas studio living out his need to put paint on paper. His paintings offer a collection of bold color and expressive line where sky meets earth. His work has always been about the subject matter landscape with hopes the viewer can feel the earth beneath their feet as they absorb each piece.

McClanahan's career spans over six decades, and his creative work has been exhibited regionally and nationally in more than 200 exhibitions. McClanahan has a rich history of residing in Central Texas and being a part of Baylor University from 1976 to 2010. Professor McClanahan served most of that time as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History. He was also the founding Director of the Allbritton Art Institute.

Prior to Baylor, he held positions at Queens University of Charlotte and Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. John McClanahan received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1964 and a B.F.A. from Bethany College in Kansas.

Read John McClanahan's Artist's Statement here.

Paul McCoy

Paul was raised on Chicago's south side and began working in clay in 1964 at Scattergood Friends School in West Branch, Iowa. He received his undergraduate degree at Northern Illinois University in 1975. He taught ceramics in Chicago-area high schools for several years before moving to Texas to work in the oil fields.

During this period, he enrolled in evening ceramics courses at the University of Houston/Clear Lake, where he spent two years working under the supervision of Professor Nick de Vries, who McCoy credits as one of his most significant influences and mentors. He received his M.F.A. in ceramics at the University of Iowa in 1985. He moved to Waco in 1986 to direct the ceramics program at Baylor University, where he held the positions of Professor, University Ceramist in Residence, and Director of the Allbritton Art.

Terry Roller

Born in the small mountain coal mining and railroad town of Appalachia, Virginia, Terry Roller moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he completed his B.F.A. and M.F.A. at the University of Tennessee. He worked summers for a small publishing firm, approach 13-30, which later purchased Esquire Magazine. Roller completed his graduate studies while maintaining employment at a small advertising agency.

He achieved tenure on the faculty of Eastern Illinois University in Charleston before joining the Baylor Department of Art in 1983. He has received numerous local, regional, and national awards for his graphic design work, as well as awards for his fine artwork.

I adhere to the design adage that the solution is found within the problem. I don't seek to impose a personal stylistic identity on my graphic design work. My goal is an effective unity of content, typography, and image that translate client goals to the intended audience to whom the designer is insignificant. My role is to be invisible other than to provide communication to the audience in as clear and interesting a form as possible. Doing so creatively achieves striking and thoughtful visual results that cut through the clutter of mass visual stimuli. I attempt to involve audiences in ways that require them to participate, much as a person being told a joke must relate the new information with the known in order to make sense of the punch line, thus allowing them to be problem solvers, to "get it," and to feel good about having done so.

Dr. Mary Ruth Smith

Mary Ruth Smith became a member of the faculty in the Department of Art & Art History at Baylor in 1993, bringing with her a teaching career in two fields of higher education. She traveled from home economics to art education to fine art. While at Baylor, Smith created a studio concentration in fabric surface design. Key course topics include dyeing and printing fabrics, screening techniques, weaving, non-woven fiber/fabric structures, and construction methods. She holds a Ph.D. in Art Education from Florida State University and an M.F.A. from the University of Georgia. Smith is Professor of Art in the Department of Art & Art History.

Smith's hand-stitched artwork has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally in Canada, England, France, Italy, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Romania, Costa Rica, Argentina, and China. Recent exhibitions include the 12th International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, Ivano-Frankivs'k, Ukraine, and Small Format Textile Art Salon, 7th World Textile Organization (WTA) Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, Montevideo, Uruguay. Her work has been illustrated in Fiberarts Design Books Six and Seven, Surface Design Journal, Fiber Art Now, Embroidery Magazine, Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot, Textile Forum, 500 Art Quilts, The Art Quilt Collection: Designs and Inspiration from Around the World, and, most recently, in Art Quilts Unfolding and the SAQA Journal.

Karl Umlauf

Karl Umlauf was born in Chicago but moved to and was raised in Austin, Texas. His parents were both artists, so Karl was exposed to and appreciative of the art displayed in his home from an early age. Even though he was fascinated with his hundreds of drawings, at age 8, he was being trained to become a musician. He studied at the University of Texas Saturday Classes, which led to solo performances at the University of Texas, The Aspen String Festival, and the All State Orchestra.

When he entered high school, his teacher was very impressed with his art and suggested that he attend the Saturday classes at the University of Texas. As a result, his eyes were slowly opened to a new visual world. After high school, he enrolled as an art major at the University of Texas and graduated with his B.F.A. With many offers to study for his M.F.A., he chose to attend Cornell University with a full scholarship.

Following graduation from Cornell, he accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania. From there, he taught at the University of Northern Iowa and then at Texas A & M, Commerce. His last position was at Baylor University, where he was offered the title of Artist in Residence. He retired from Baylor in 2015 and continues to create and produce his work in his private studio in Waco.

Read Karl Umlauf's Artist Statement here.