Ulrich Museum’s fall exhibitions have a common theme

The final three exhibitions of the Ulrich Museum of Art’s two-year celebration of its 50th anniversary have something in common: community involvement.

Located on the Wichita State campus, the Ulrich is hosting a free reception from 5:30 to 8 p.m. on Aug. 28 for installations by Abhidnya Ghuge and Justin Favela, two artists who are known for their large-scale works, and “The Ulrich Co-Lab: Getting Personal,” which features items on loan from the collections of community members.

The exhibitions will be on display through Dec. 6. The museum’s hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays with extended hours to 8 p.m. Thursdays. The museum is closed on major and university holidays.

Abhidnya Ghuge’s I See, I See, I See

With the help of more than 145 community volunteers in July, the Texas-based Ghuge installed the largest site-specific work she’s ever created at the Ulrich, using more than 14,000 woodblock-printed paper plates and rolls of chicken wire.

It took several months for Ghuge, pronounced “goo-GAY,” to prepare and print the plates. She drew and carved henna-inspired designs on multiple 4-foot-by-3-foot woodblocks. Once the ink dried, she boxed up the plates and brought them to the Ulrich’s largest gallery space, where her sculpture took shape during the several days she spent installing the final piece. For two of those days, volunteers helped fold the plates and plug them into the openings of the rolled chicken wire. Generally, Ghuge works with three to four volunteers a day to create her sculptures.

“From young children to young at heart, from all walks of life, they came and folded paper plates or plugged them in the piece. Some were meticulous, some expressed frustration, but everyone had a hand in it,” Ghuge wrote in an email, responding to questions about the installation. “It was so gratifying to see them engaged in it. I was humbled to see the response to the call and to see the power of art.”

The exhibition, on display in the museum’s Polk/Wilson Gallery, opened July 22.

Visitors are describing the resulting sculpture, I See, I See, I See — which is suspended from the gallery ceiling and has a wave-like overall shape — as meditative, whimsical and mysterious, according to Jo Reinert, the Ulrich’s curator of contemporary and modern art.

“It seems to be igniting audience curiosity and fueling imaginations,” Reinert said.

Visitors are encouraged to use the cushioned benches placed around the gallery and bean-bag type seating underneath the sculpture for a fuller immersion.

‘Everything Must Go: Justin Favela’s Closeout Blowout Re-Grand Opening’

For more than a decade, Favela has been creating large-scale installations for major cultural institutions, like Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, in cartonería, the traditional Mexican art of piñata making, that celebrate his heritage and look at the themes of how the Latin identity is stereotyped and misrepresented.

But his installation at the Ulrich almost didn’t happen.

In conversations with Vivian Zavataro, the Ulrich’s executive and creative director who curated the exhibition, he told her he was approaching burnout and was tired of being pigeon-holed.

“He said, ‘I feel like a piñata, empty inside,’” said Zavataro, who suggested that this exhibition could be an opportunity to express where he’s at in his career.

Using the theme of a store going out of business, the exhibition is Favela’s last one before he goes on a two-year creative hiatus. He made it even more personal by asking friends to decorate pinatas of himself in different occupations and times of his life.

The result was 116 “Justin pinatas,” Zavataro said during a recent tour of the exhibition.

There’s a college-aged Favela, a chef Favela holding a taco, an Elvis-impersonator Favela playing off the time the artist dressed up as The King of Rock and Roll and more. All the pinatas have Favela’s self-described uniform of a black T-shirt with a skeleton form and a red cardigan that he wears when creating his installations.

With the help of community volunteers, Favela transformed the gallery walls into the various stages of pinata making, with some walls exposing the brown craft paper and newspaper and magazine pages used to create the paper mâché forms of the pinata and some featuring a mural, using colorful tissue paper.

As part of related programming, Favela will return to the Ulrich in November to host a community celebration called Justin Favela’s Family Fiesta, which is inspired by family barbecues and gatherings from his youth growing up in Las Vegas. He’ll bring his family to the event, happening from 3 to 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 15.

Favela’s exhibition is on view in the Ulrich’s Beren Gallery.

‘The Ulrich Co-Lab: Getting Personal’

Curated by Zavataro, “Getting Personal” features more than 50 objects that hold personal meaning to their owners or have a connection to Wichita. The items are displayed along the museum’s first-floor hallway.

Over the past several months, members of the community ranging from a retired physician to a retired creative executive and others, have loaned the items that comprise the exhibition. The Ulrich will continue to accept submissions until the end of the exhibition on Dec. 6.

For some of the owners, the objects are a sentimental connection to family, like a vintage camera Sonia Greteman loaned that was part of her late father’s collection and another individual’s submission of their father’s pen and pencil collection imprinted with the names of Wichita businesses going back to the 1950s. Other items represent tools of the trade, including an early model of a laparoscopic liver retractor used by a Wichita doctor and a stick that represents 10 years of stirring lacquer in a cabinet shop.

Ulrich Museum fall exhibitions reception

What: a reception for three exhibitions that comprise the final shows of the Ulrich Museum of Art’s two-year, 50th-anniversary celebration. The exhibitions will be on display through Dec. 6.

When: 5:30-8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28

Where: 1845 N. Fairmount, Wichita State University campus, off of 17th Street entrance

Admission: Free

More info: 316-978-3664, ulrich.wichita.edu