New Faculty Exhibition: Connecting Flights

JANUARY 18–FEBRUARY 22, 2024

As our first exhibition this spring, New Faculty Exhibition: Connecting Flights includes recent works from four new faculty members — Eric Andre, Amy Kim, Amelia Mendelsohn and Elizabeth Rose — who engage a broad range of media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking and photography. The works cross boundaries and challenge conventions through a journey into contemporary art, which show resilience and passion from multiple perspectives of their own practices. Throughout the exhibition, the collected works are recontextualized in the gallery, so it is a unique platform for defining art practices in the full expression of its interpersonal, social, domestic and global context. Programming in conjunction with the exhibition will highlight artist talks and studio visits in the Department of Art and Art History.

Artist Bios

eric andre

Eric Andre (b. 1985, Akumadan, Ashanti Region, Ghana) holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and a BFA from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. He became a teaching and research assistant and a principal lab/studio technician in the ceramics department at KNUST. Eric was concurrently an adjunct professor (foundation, 3D design and ceramics) at the University of Arkansas and a curator at Art Ventures Gallery. He also worked as a visiting assistant professor and the head of the 3D studio art area (ceramics and sculpture) at Stetson University, DeLand, Florida. He is a visiting assistant professor of studio art (ceramics and sculpture) at Hope College, Holland, Michigan. He is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, and his practice explores immigrants’ experiences of displacement, vulnerability and negotiation of place, challenging the ubiquitous and complex sociocultural, sociopolitical and socioeconomic control systems.

Amy Yeminne kim

Amy Yeminne Kim is an assistant professor of photography at Hope College. She holds two MFAs (studio art and art administration) from Texas Tech University. She exhibited at the CICA museum in Seoul, South Korea, and the Ping-yao Photo Festival in China. As TPS’s National Award winner, her Wolfcamp Catalogue was exhibited at the 2022 Houston Fotofest Biennale as a solo exhibition. Her chapter “Photographic Arts and Fake News” appeared in Teaching About Fake News (2021). Her artwork and related essay “Taming Taste: The CaribBasin Recipe Cards” was published in the edited volume Nourish and Resist by Yale University Press (2024). Prior to Hope, Amy was part of the art faculty at the University of Texas Permian Basin. An American-born Korean, Amy has lived in South Korea, France and Texas before returning to Michigan, her birth state.

Amelia Mendelsohn

Currently based in Michigan, Amelia Mendelsohn holds an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in studio art and art history from Sweet Briar College. Her current practice is grounded in figurative paintings that explore family dynamics and conflict within the home through a feminist understanding of the domestic sphere.

Elizabeth claire Rose

Elizabeth Claire Rose grew up exploring natural areas of the midwestern United States, which helped cultivate her creativity and interests in ecology, biogeography and the ecological importance of varied landscapes. Rose received her MFA in printmaking from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University and a BA in fine art with a minor in wilderness studies from the University of Montana. In 2023, Rose was the Goodall Visiting Fellow at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina; a studio resident at Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York; and a resident at the Grand Marais Art Colony, where she was selected as the printmaking residency fellowship winner. Rose is an alumna of the Fulbright Program in Poland (2019–2020), where she was awarded a research grant in printmaking.

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