Faculty Research in Art & Art History

Ronald Binks' forty year career in the visual arts as artist and educator encompasses painting, photography, film and video. The American Academy Rome Prize for painting and the Fulbright fellowship to Berlin,Germany provided him with an international art perspective. Creating a film/video degree program at the Rhode Island School of Design broadened his aesthetic interests and introduced him to academic administration. He has been cited in Art in America, Art News and Aperture, is listed in Who's Who in Art, and has exhibited widely in the United States and overseas. Most recently at UTSA he received the President's Distinguished Achievement Award as well as a Faculty Development Leave that permitted him to travel throughout eastern Germany pursuing a photographic project exploring the Romantic Tradition in art. This work was exhibited in a one-person show. His art experiences inform his instructional contributions to his students. Annually he offers an art course that involves study of and travel to Berlin, Germany. He has offered special courses in experimental video and biennially gives a film history course.

Ruben C. Cordova is an art historian and critic. He teaches Pre-Columbian, U.S. and European modem, Mexican, and Chicano art, as well as film and museum studies. His primary research interests are: Primitivism, Mexican art, Chicano art, and popular traditions (such as Day of the Dead). He has published two articles pertaining to the Chicano art group Con Safo, and has others in progress. Recent publications include Arte Caliente: Selections from the Joe A. Diaz Collection (Corpus Christi: South Texas Institute for the Arts, 2004) and "Homage to Jesse A. Almazan," Aztldn 29 (Spring 2004): 285-292. Ten entries for the Encyclopedia Latina: History, Culture, Society (Danbury, CT: Academic Press) are in press. Current projects include a monograph: Yolanda Lopez: Re-Envisioning the Virgin of Guadalupe and Popular Culture (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicane Studies Research Center Press, A Ver: Revisioning Art History Project). He has curated or co-curated exhibitions featuring Pre-Columbian, Mexican Folk, Latino, and Latin American art. The most recent are: Latino Expressions (San Antonio: Central Library, 2004) sindArte Contemporaneo (San Antonio: Centro Cultural Aztlan, opening July 9,2004). He is on a curatorial committee for an exhibition treating murals in the San Francisco Mission District and he will curate the Joe Diaz collection's national and international tour, commencing at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (Albuquerque) in 2005.

Ken Dawson Little has been a Professor of Art at the University of Texas at San Antonio since 1988. In that capacity he acts as the head of sculpture concentration for the BFA and MFA degrees. He also serves the department as the chairman of the Graduate Faculty for the Master of Fine Arts Program and the Graduate Advisor of Record for the MFA in Studio Art. Professor Little is an outstanding teacher whose students have gone on to receive NEA fellowships, grants, museum exhibitions, university teaching jobs, and so forth. He has also been active and instrumental in founding the Satellite Space, an alternative exhibition space for UTSA graduate students in downtown San Antonio. Ken Little received an MFA from the University of Utah in 1972. He has maintained an active national profile as an exhibiting and reviewed sculptor for over twenty-five years. His work has been featured in over 35 one person exhibitions and 200 group exhibitions. His work also been reviewed in numerous national publications and has also been featured in numerous catalogs. He is the subject of two monographs: Ken Dawson Little: A Catalog of Works, 1983 by Susan Havens Caldwell and Ken Dawson Little: A Bestiary of Damaged Goods, 1986 by Dave Hickey. During 2001, Little was the recipient of the BorderArt/GrensKunst residency fellowship where he spent six weeks in Germany traveling, lecturing, and making artwork for an exhibition there. In 2001 and 2002, Little was named as the first runner up for the Virginia Groot Foundation's National Award for Excellence in Sculpture. Little has been the recipient of many other prizes, honors and grants, including two major individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982 and 1988. A major retrospective and traveling exhibition of his work titled "Little Changes" was originated at The Southwest School of Arts and Crafts this last summer. A major catalogue accompanied the exhibition with essays by Dave Hickey and Kay Whitney. The exhibition will be on tour nationally for the next two to three years. His work is included in many public and private collections around the country. Collections include The Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu Hawaii, The City of Seattle, The Nelson Gallery of the University of California at Davis, Microsoft Corporation, Seattle, and many others.

Constance (Corrie) A. Lowe is an Associate Professor in Studio Art who regularly teaches painting and drawing courses in the BFA/BA and MFA programs. Her work as an artist reflects an interest in the intersecting processes of scientific inquiry and nature. She now creates drawings, discrete objects, and installations, using various strategies of reproduction, framing, containment, mirroring, and doubling. Works from her series of FabCom drawings in colored pencil on drafting film were recently exhibited in Alicia Beach and Constance Lowe: Double Vision at the Phoenix Art Museum. Her solo exhibitions include ArtPace,A Foundation for Contemporary Art/ San Antonio; Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis; Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis; I Space, Chicago; and the University of North Texas, Denton. In 2003 Lowe received an ArtPace travel grant and a UTSA Faculty Research Award. In summer 2003 and summer 2004 she taught courses at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy.

Neil Maurer's work has received recognition in expositions and collections in major national museums. He has had a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C. and has been included in a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas. He was also part of a two-person exhibition in 2000, sponsored by one of the major photographic venues in the United States, FotoFest, Houston. That show was also part of an exhibition which traveled to Argentina in 2000, and Russia in 2003. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modem Art, New York, and in the collections of museums in Belgium and Denmark.

Kent Rush's main studio interests are in printmaking and photography and especially the intersections of these fields. He practices both printmaking in the form of collotype and photography in the forms of silver-gelatin, ambrotype and other alternate forms. Although he does not practice drawing in his current work, he utilizes his substantial experience by teaching at all levels in the curriculum. His work ethic, current practices in the field, and exhibition record make him a strong role model and an experienced practitioner/teacher for students at all levels in the curriculum. He has had solo exhibitions at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (1998); ArtPace, Hudson Showroom, San Antonio, Texas (1995); Dowd Fine Arts Center Gallery, State University (SUNY) College at Cortland, New York (1992); Coke Gallery, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico (1990); Institute Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, Miraflores, Lima, Peru (1990); The Photographer's Gallery, London, England (1990); Galena Del Taller Dc Las Artcs Plasticas,"Rufino Tamayo", Oaxaca, Mexico (1998). He received a Senior Fulbright Fellowship, Research/Lectureship, Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1988; a Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA Artist's Fellowship in Photography, 1991-92; a Partners of the Americas Grant, Lima, Peru, in 1990; an Artist-in-Residence, Tamarind Institute, 1991; a Participating Print Artist, 9th Drake Print Symposium, Drake University, 1990; a Faculty Research Award, University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas, 1994-95; and the President's Distinguished Achievement Award in Creative Activities, University of Texas, San Antonio, in 1990-91

Dr. Judith Sobre received her B.A. from New York University in 1962, and her MA (1964) and PhD (1969) from Harvard. She taught at the University of Oregon in 1968-74, and has been at UTSA since 1974, where she is Professor of Art History. She has published numerous articles, catalogue essays and entries as well as two books on Medieval Spanish Painting Behind the Altar Table (1989 A.S.H.A.H.S Prize 1990), and "Bartolome de Cardenas El Bermejo' (1997). More recently, she has devoted herself to San Antonio's popular culture and history. Her book, San Antonio on Parade: Six Historic Festivals was published by Texas A & M Press in 2003, and received the T.E. Fehrenbach prize from the Texas State Historical Society in 2004. At present, she is working on a cultural history of San Antonio's Fiesta in the 20th century.

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