Regional Solo Exhibitions for Two Art Faculty

Art professors Thomas Schmidt and Erik Waterkotte have solo exhibitions of their work in regional galleries this winter.

Schmidt’s “Encoded Surface,” on view at the Dalton Gallery in Rock Hill’s Center for the Arts, opened Jan. 5 and is on view through Feb. 7. Waterkotte’s “Ghosts over Vestiges, Recent Works of Apocalyptic Glamour” will open at Elon University’s Gallery 406 on Feb. 9 and run through Feb. 27.

Schmidt is associate professor of interdisciplinary 3D art in the Department of Art & Art History. He has been exploring the intersection of digital fabrication and ceramics for more than a decade, developing a creative process in which new technologies are integrated with traditional handmaking. “Encoded Surface” includes wall-based sculptures, framed prints and freestanding and pedestal-mounted pieces.

“The exhibition presents the first comprehensive overview of my research into ‘Post-Digital Craft’ – a term describing how artists work after the digital revolution, when technology is no longer new but fully embedded in our ways of seeing and making,” Schmidt wrote in an artist statement. “It highlights how tools such as 3D printing, scanning and computational modeling converge with the tactility and historical resonance of ceramics to reveal new possibilities for seeing, touching and understanding material in a digitally mediated world.”

Dalton Gallery will host Schmidt for a reception and artist talk on Feb. 5. Learn more about the exhibition and event here.

Waterkotte is associate professor of print media in the Department of Art & Art History. His art is inspired by the religious, mythological, philosophical and theoretical narratives that human beings have created throughout history to explain existence and consciousness.

He describes the handmade paper, print and mixed media works in “Ghosts over Vestiges, Recent Works of Apocalyptic Glamour” as “memento mori” that attempt to “dismantle past anthropocentric narratives by integrating the archetypal with the ecological.” Inspired by his religious upbringing and a life-long fascination with the occult, these artworks are populated with an amalgamation of glyphs, icons and archetypes that confront and question viewers’ ideologies.

Elon University will host Waterkotte for an opening reception and artist talk on Feb. 9.

Schmidt and Waterkotte recently collaborated on a major public art installation in the Truist Center Plaza in uptown Charlotte.  Commissioned by Truist Bank, their “Interwoven” is a printed, site-specific mural.