Come find your inspiration.

"Lepidoptera," above, is one of many varied and unconventional works on display by University faculty. Courtesy Imi Hwangbo

Sculpture, jewelry and metals, ceramics, painting, photography, fabric design and printmaking mingle with newly surfacing art forms at the art school’s latest faculty exhibition.

“There will be traditional approaches in terms of everything from the portrait to working with a microscopic camera,” said Jeffrey Whittle, gallery director at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. “Something that you couldn’t see with the naked eye, someone will be able to see in the show, as well as things that are from the artists’ imaginations; something completely invented.”

Whittle will be unveiling an animated oil on canvas still life, as well. Also encompassed in this agglomeration of artists are Christopher Hocking, Michael Oliver and Scott Belville.

Though these artists frequent the classroom, their art often does not.

“All of the studio faculty are also practicing artists and a lot of times their work is shown nationally and internationally but not always locally,” Whittle said. “So it’s a great opportunity for the community and especially for the students to see what their professors make who are also artists.”

Variety appears not only in the number of artists, but throughout their styles of art.

“Our faculty is a mix of people who do traditional, kind of figurative, painting and then there are people who are doing more contemporary work,” said Imi Hwangbo, an associate professor. “So it’s a really nice, broad mix of different ways of working in art practice.”

Her third appearance at a University faculty exhibition, Hwangbo will introduce one of her recent three-dimensional drawings.

“I’m really interested in optical effects and how we read pictorial space on a two-dimensional, illusionistic picture plane. And then how we perceive light on form to create a three-dimensional reading,” Hwangbo said. “And so my work utilizes both ways of seeing.”

Titled “Lepidoptera,” her piece consists of up to 30 layers of handcut mylar printed with archival ink.

Layering mylar, a two-dimensional material, to ultimately transform the entire piece into something three-dimensional sounds troublesome, but not for Hwangbo.

“There is something meditative about the laborious process to create something that’s really carefully fabricated,” she said. “These carved wooden doors in this Buddhist temple were a part of a tradition of carving, so I wanted it to have the same kind of heightened fabrication process.”

Korean decorative art, as well as her past semester in Italy, served as the inspiration.

“I really wanted to create that sense of stepping into a threshold of a portal or doorway into another space, a kind of exhaulted space, and then the sense of flight, even a spiritual kind of notion of a flight, relief and escaping into this larger realm,” Hwangbo said.

“Lepidoptera” is only one of over 40 works, created within the past three years, highlighting the two main galleries.

Another artist especially exciting to Whittle is bookarts extraordinaire Eilene Wallace, a new member to the University faculty whose work incorporates handmade paper and print-making processes, creating a delicate result.

Corresponding with the MMXI opening, the Georgia Museum of Art presents a reception comprising of 100 works by Lamar Dodd himself.

“I know that they kind of scheduled their reception in response to ours so we could maximize the number of people,” Whittle said. “But Lamar Dodd as you probably know founded the school of art, so he hired all of the initial faculty that worked here.”

Whittle said it was a coincidence that Lamar Dodd’s work will be displayed alongside that of faculty from the school he created.

Both events’ receptions overlap, allowing viewers to roam between the two buildings on their own accord.

Not sure how the coinciding events will play out, Jeffrey Whittle has high expectations for attendance regarding that of the previous faculty exhibition.

“The larger shows are over a thousand people,” he said. “I think the last faculty show was several thousand.”

The exhibition allows the opportunity to not only view new works presented by artists working here at the University, but to reignite that old creative light bulb.

“I think that the opportunity to show themselves as an artist and to share their artwork is something that everybody here is excited about,” Whittle said. “But I imagine it is going to be a big event. It’s one of those things I think you want to be at.”

MMXI FACULTY EXHIBITION

Where: Lamar Dodd

When: 7 p.m.