Creative research from College of Arts + Architecture faculty, staff and alumni can be seen in regional galleries this fall, demonstrating vibrant artistic investigations of both nature and technology.
Maja Godlewska at Van Every Gallery, Davidson College
Professor of Painting Maja Godlewska first traveled to Tasmania in 2019 and began her research of the region’s landscape as an artist in residence at the University of Tasmania Cradle Coast Campus. Last winter, funded by a 2025 Artist Support Grant from the Arts & Science Council, she returned to join other artists involved in a multi-year exploration of the saltmarshes in Pipe Clay Lagoon.
Works resulting from that environmental research are on view at the Van Every Gallery at Davidson College through Sept. 27.
The juried group exhibition, “50 Years Later: Davidson National Print and Drawing Competition,” is a survey of contemporary drawing and printmaking from across the United States. From more than 230 submissions, nine artists were chosen to exhibit works.
“Walks, onsite sketches and photo documentation will be part of my process, as well as potential art-actions stemming from the conversations and collaborations with other creatives,” Godlewska said prior to her most recent Tasmanian residency.
Mixed-media works on paper, such as “Włochacz, a Fragile Creature from Pipe Clay Lagoon,” include locally and sustainably sourced materials, such as seaweed, salty water, mud and coastal detritus.
Click here for more information about the exhibition and related programming.
Sabri Gökmen at the Arts Center of Brazos Valley, Texas A&M University
Assistant Professor of Architecture Sabri Gökmen has more than a decade of expertise in parametric modeling, generative art, digital fabrication and software development. His research integrates artificial intelligence and computational design, with a particular focus on analyzing and preserving cultural heritage.
Through Oct. 17, his “Gothic Diffusion” project is on view in “Aberrant Creativity: An International Juried Exhibition on Human Creativity and Artificial Intelligence” at Texas A&M University.
Featuring 35 artists from 14 countries, the exhibition “explores how contemporary artists are redefining the relationship between human creativity and artificial intelligence through experimentation, critical inquiry and creative collaboration,” the gallery explains on the exhibition webpage.
For this work, Gökmen developed a synthetic data training for generative AI based on historical illustrations of Gothic cathedrals.
“This work approaches Gothic architecture not as a style to be reproduced, but as a geometry to be learned,” he wrote in an artist statement. “Historical drawings function as training material rather than representation, allowing generative systems to infer and sample sections, fragments and ornamental details. The resulting forms hover between recognition and distortion, revealing how architectural knowledge shifts when drawing becomes data and geometry emerges through probabilistic inference rather than intentional design.”
Susan Jedrzejewski and Matthew Steele at PROXY, Greensboro
“Burn,” an exhibition at PROXY gallery in Greensboro, features works by art alumna Susan Jedrzejewski ’06 and Storrs Facilities Manager Matthew Steele through Nov. 25.
Since earning her art degree, Jedrzejewski has led a successful career in Charlotte’s art community, with posts at McColl Center, Goodyear Arts and Hodges Taylor, where she is currently an art consultant.
In an artist statement, Jedrzejewski wrote that she “captures makeshift and coincidental encounters within the natural world.” With printmaking at the foundation of her practice, her works “are built up in layers, each transfer and surface shaping what remains visible.” The result “recounts a physical act with nature, but also one’s distance from it.”
Steele is a prominent local artist and a valued staff member in the School of Architecture. His connection to the College of Arts + Architecture goes back to 2013, when his work was featured in an exhibition in Lambla Gallery. Steele joined the COAA in 2018 and has recently enrolled in the M.S. in Architecture degree program.
Steele’s sculptures borrow from the industrialized world, “using the aesthetics of function to portray something altogether more natural,” he wrote in an artist statement. Basalt pillars are rendered as scaffold, while plateaued landscapes are built of trestle, “muddling distinctions between the man-made and the geological.”
By Meg Whalen