X-rays from Cort Savage's installation "Canons," including human skulls holding Tanakh, Holy Bible, and Qu’ran. (Davidson College photo)

The new school year’s first exhibit opens Thursday at Davidson College’s Belk Visual Arts Center (VAC), featuring new works by faculty artists. The show includes installations by sculptor Cort Savage and printmaker Rebekah Tolley, and the fairy tale-inspired oil paintings by visiting professor Nathaniel Rogers and drawings. Meanwhile, in the Smith Gallery is an exhibit of drawings of American skylines by visiting British artist Ewan Gibbs.

The exhibits run Friday, Aug. 27, to Oct. 6, in the Visual Arts Center, at Griffith and North Main streets. An opening reception is planned Thursday, Aug. 26, from 7-9 p.m., with a gallery talk by Professor Rogers at 7:30.

Here’s more about the exhibits:

DAVIDSON STUDIO ART FACULTY EXHIBIT

Art professor Cort Savage will debut a major kinetic installation entitled “CANONS.” Three large steel towers, suggestive of gallows, fill the main space of the Van Every Gallery. Held by thick metal cables, each tower suspends from its core a large, black rubberband ball––a reference to Savage’s Inevitable Form series and Scattered Man installation. Buried within the center of each ball is a bronze cast of a human skull. Clamped within the jaws of each skull is one of three major religions texts: the Holy Bible, the Tanakh, and the Qu’ran.

Still image from Rebekah Tolley's installation "Carapace." (Davidson College photo)

Faint white outlines of each skull (and respective canon) appear in backlit X-rays displayed on adjacent walls. As each ball is slowly lifted and dropped, a dull rumble (like thunder or distant cannon fire) permeates the gallery. The foreboding sound and formidable structures encourage the viewer to contemplate, in part, the inevitability of one’s own mortality in contrast the eternal life promised through one’s diligent adherence to holy doctrines.

Rebekah Tolley is an associate professor of printmaking at Davidson College. Her installation “Carapace” is her first project at Davidson since summer exhibitions in Beijing and in Zibo, Shandong, China. Tolley’s multimedia installations incorporate dual interests in animation and printmaking. The resulting artworks are as organic and fluid as the aquatic life forms that inform them.

Nathaniel Rogers' oil painting "Reach for the Sky" (Davidson College photo)

Nathaniel Rogers, is a 2002 Davidson grad and the new visiting assistant professor of art. Often staged in theatrical, if not apocalyptic settings, Rogers’s narrative, small-scale oil paintings are meticulously rendered and filled with playful detail. Inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Rogers seeks to reveal the more unsavory aspects of human nature. By masking his characters’ sadistic acts within childish roleplaying scenarios, Rogers effectively mitigates the truths that belie their degenerative behavior.

Ewan Gibbs' graphite on paper work "New York," from 2005. (Davidson College photo)

EWAN GIBBS: AMERICA

British artist Ewan Gibbs will present a collection of drawings that feature iconic skyline views of American cities such as Austin, Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. Gibbs deconstructs the “psychology of place” through a series of self-made, formalist systems that exploit the very nature of visual perception and comprehension. His process underscores the order and logic of the built environment – a complex matrix of opposing and complementary forces. A fully illustrated catalogue will be available that includes an introduction by exhibit organizer Brad Thomas and an essay by Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design, SFMOMA. In addition the book will feature a months-long correspondence between the artist and noted art historian Richard Shiff, the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art and director of the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas at Austin.

Gibbs will give a lecture about his work on Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 7 p.m. in Semans Lecture Hall in the Belk Visual Arts Center.

WANT TO GO?

The exhibits run Aug. 27 to Oct. 6. The Belk Visual Arts Center is at Griffith and North Main streets and is open weekdays 10-5, weekends noon-4.