Released October 7, 2005

HATTIESBURG – The Department of Art and Design at The University of Southern Mississippi will present art works by its own faculty in an exhibition Oct. 18 through Nov. 19 at the Museum of Art on the Hattiesburg campus.

An opening from 4 to 6 p.m. on Oct. 18 also introduces new faculty members Susan Fitzsimmons, Miranda Grieder, Ping Xu and Chris Wubbena to the area.

Other faculty artists include William Baggett, Carley Causey, Barbara-Ann Carver-Hunt, Tommy Conner, DeAnna Douglas, Janet Gorzegno, John House, Jason Kimes, James Meade, Laura Prange, Betty Press, Mark Rigsby, Traci Stover and Jennifer Torres.

As the new department chair, Fitzsimmons came to Southern Miss from St. Louis, Mo., where she served as an administrator for more than six years at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. There, she taught in the Honors College and art department.

Fitzsimmons brings an extensive exhibition record to Southern Miss, including several one-person shows at the Just Above Midtown Gallery and St. Peter’s Church in New York City and more than 80 group shows at Hofstra University, Albright Knox Museum, State University of New York at Plattsburg, Munson-Williams-Proctor and Albany Institute of History and Art Institute, to name a few.

Her current work focuses on performance, combining words and images. She is interested in the biological sources of creativity.

New adjunct instructor Grieder was the recipient of the Women in Architecture Scholarship, a Goldwin Goldsmith Scholarship, and a Tinker Field Research Fellowship Grant to conduct research on the architecture of the indigenous Garífuna of coastal Honduras.

An avid traveler, Grieder’s primary passion has been discovering and recording, through drawing or photography, landscapes around the world and the people who inhabit them.

For the Southern Miss faculty exhibition, Grieder will share photos from her time living in Wampusirpi, Honduras in 2003, juxtaposed with a collage of the view looking out the window of a friend’s apartment in New York City in 1998.

From advertising agencies to universities, assistant professor of graphic communications and design Ping Xu has worked in the United States and China.

At Southern Miss he teaches courses at foundation and senior levels as well as visual communication classes in print and Web bases. Xu joins the faculty after teaching at Kansas State University for three years.

Wubbena, assistant professor of 3-D design and sculpture, teaches all levels of sculpture as well as foundations courses. His work navigates across disciplines, employing the use of sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing, and creative writing.

“The concepts and forms that make up my artwork generate from an interest in melding physical and cultural history into compositions that exhume, analyze and challenge issues from yesterday and today,” the artist explained.

In addition to public and private commissions, Wubbena has shown in numerous indoor and outdoor exhibitions in California, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, and Mississippi.

The Department of Art and Design at Southern Miss is one of the largest and most diverse art departments in the state of Mississippi. In addition to undergraduate and graduate courses in drawing, painting and three-dimensional design, the department offers classes in metal casting, traditional and computer aided graphic design, ceramics, art education and art history.

The Museum is located in the Fine Arts Building at the southwest corner of the USM campus. Admission is always free, and hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, please call (601) 266-5200.

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