Exhibition Showcases the Work of 45 Faculty and Staff at GW’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design

A diverse array of talent across disciplines is on display in the first exhibition to showcase the work of 45 faculty and staff members at the George Washington University's Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, housed in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. The exhibit, on view in the Flagg Building until the end of fall semester, is titled "to free this dream." The show's organizer, Michele Carlson, head of the studio arts program and associate professor of printmaking, borrowed the title from "American Wedding," a poem by Essex Hemphill.

"A lot of Hemphill's work as an AIDS activist was thinking about how the government at the time had turned its back on, especially, the gay community," Carlson said. "What I took from 'American Wedding' was this idea that even if the government turns its back on a community, there are still all these things it will underestimate about how that community will move through that abandonment. Communities will still come together, they'll be critical, they will still make art together."

Among the many reasons for organizing the show, Carlson said, was the fact that opportunities to exhibit work seem to have dwindled since the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Another is the chance it will give students to see the work of faculty and staff members they normally encounter only in class.

"We don't always have time or space or opportunity to show up as our full selves," Carlson said. "One of the things we focus on is showing students that being artistic and creative-being critical thinkers and writers-is a very holistic experience."

Especially in the current moment, Carlson said, it seems necessary to remind audiences of the importance of creative expression.

"Critical thinking, flexible thinking and being resourceful are skills that artists deploy every day," Carlson said. "What we do is super important in helping to support this new generation of citizens and critical thinkers."

Encouraging community members to see the show, Lauren Onkey, director of the Corcoran School and professor of music, stressed that the work will be on exhibit all semester.

"I'm very excited to showcase the great work created by our staff and faculty artists and scholars in the Flagg Building's newly-renovated galleries," Onkey said. "The scope and ambition of the work is remarkable. I urge everyone in the GW community to visit and see the work."

The show includes representation from every Corcoran program, Carlson said. Some faculty members contributed books and articles, which are displayed together. In addition to the visual artworks displayed on the gallery walls, there are recorded video and audio performances of music and theater.

Some contributors revealed unexpected sides of themselves. For example, Carlson said, Clement Akpang, assistant professor of art history, is also a visual artist and sculptor. People who know him as an art historian will see another side of him in his sculptural relief wall hangings made out of reused and refigured plastic materials.

"The folks that we are working with, who are all around us, are so much more complex and have so much to offer," Carlson said. "For instance, our studio manager, Kaitlin Jencsois an amazing photographer. Visitors will see some really beautiful hanging frames that are double sided, and she also has this kind of collage wall installation. All her work feels like the moment right before or in between-there's a tension between melancholy and calmness. There's something about how she captures light and how she photographs where it feels like something is either just about to emerge or has just happened."

A different mood is embodied in the work of new faculty member Bella Varela, coordinator for the International Arts and Culture cohort of GW's Women's Leadership Program, Carlson said.

"She has these really incredible wall hangings where she's refiguring these cheesy fleece blankets showing symbols of the nation such as bald eagles. She cuts things out and re-sews them to remind us of the ways we all perform the idea of belonging to a nation. Her work is kind of brash, and also kind of funny-these objects bring forward that kind of absurdity."

GW Today asked a few contributors to the show to comment on their work. Responses are shown below.

"Tap Water" is one of several sculptures by Isaiah Aladejobi on display. (Contributed photo)

Isaiah Aladejobi, instructional lab associate, Digital Fabrication Lab

As a first-generation Nigerian American and D.C. native, I bridge childhood wonder with adult responsibility, inviting visitors to explore how heritage and imagination shape identity. I create innovative, culturally inspired structure using Kole building blocks. Kole's modular forms become instruments of expression and connection, turning play into a canvas for cultural dialogue, healing and shared possibility. I see this work as a way to reclaim play, as a powerful act of self-discovery and community-building, particularly for Black men who are often pressured to put childish things aside.

These images show some of the elements of Douglas Boyce's composition, "Sails Knife-bright in a Seasonal Wind." (Contributed photo)

Douglas Boyce, professor of music (composition)

"Sails Knife-bright in a Seasonal Wind" is a transition from wakefulness through dreams of dance and energy to the moment before sleep. This cinematic captureof a recording session features the ensemble counter)induction, with audio engineering by Ryan Streber and cinematography by Kristjan Thor. The work draws upon the multiple worlds and layered references that characterize Derek Mahon's poetry, where personal longing intersects with mythological landscapes and contemporary displacement. The title draws from Mahon's poem "Achill": "And I think of my son a dolphin in the Aegean, / A sprite among sails knife-bright in a seasonal wind, / And wish he were here where currachs walk on the ocean / To ease with his talk the solitude locked in my mind."

This is a detail from "A Score of Ways," a series of cut paper collages by Marc Choi. (Contributed photo)

Marc Choi, assistant professor of graphic design

"A Score of Ways" is an ongoing series of collage studies made from a deconstructed, 16-volume set of books titled "New Pictorial Encyclopedic Guide to the United States" that was published the same year that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed. The legislation, which eliminated the existing race-based national origins quota system, ultimately transformed the demographic landscape of the United States. The books, neatly organized by states and territories, are filled with histories, statistics, lore and images depicting Americans "in a score of ways, some obvious and some exceedingly subtle." Through these studies, I am interested in examining the interplay between formal and conceptual "material" and how those materials can be taken apart and reconfigured to offer new narratives.

This is one of 16 drawings included in Nick Hemenway's "D.I.Y. Sexual Satisfaction" project. (Contributed photo)

Nick Hemenway, program administrator, Museum Studies

"D.I.Y. Sexual Satisfaction" is a 16-print project of items I drew that were anonymously submitted to a single-question survey I posted on a variety of social media platforms. The question respondents answered was, what is the strangest thing you have used to masturbate? Conceptualized during conversations with friends and acquaintances about sexual curiosities and ingenuity during youth, in a world with limited internet access, these 16 items unveil an intimate look into people's creative way of experiencing and experimenting with sexual self-care.

James Huckenpahler's "Magic Fire Chevrolet" (12" x 12") is a detail from "Assisted Living Suite," 2023. (Contributed photo)

James Huckenpahler, professorial lecturer and instructional lab coordinator, digital studios, Studio Arts program

I've been making drawings (with a little collaboration from generative AI) that are a sort of misremembered fever dream of what I wish Washington, D.C., could be, that mashes up past, present and future. The suite on display is selected from a much larger, ongoing body of work. Most of the pieces reference D.C. artists and cultural history. "Magic Fire Chevrolet" was the title of a book of poetry by Doug Lang, one of the D.C. Language Poets, and it was my first introduction to concrete poetry. Not the lame, cutesy stuff, but real, punk-rock rage on the machine. I'm psychically channeling the typewriter that his reincarnated soul will be banging on in five hundred years.

"A memorial to October 17, 1961, in Paris, France" by Anna Jayne Kimmel. (Contributed photo)

Anna Jayne Kimmel, assistant professor of dance

My contributions to the show include a description and excerpt of my forthcoming monograph, "Legal Moves: Choreographies of Race, Law, and Empire" (Stanford University Press, expected fall 2026); my photograph (above) from July 2022, from a separate chapter, with the caption: "A memorial to October 17, 1961, in Paris, France. The steel cut outs were added in 2019 alongside the plaque from 2001 which reads, "à la mémoire des nombreux Algériens tués lors de la sanglante répression de la manifestation pacifique du 17 octobre 1961"; and a separate but related summary of a forthcoming special issue I'm co-editing for "Performance Research."

The volumes in this stack contain work by art historian Bibi Obler. (William Atkins/GW Today)

Bibiana Obler, program head and associate professor of art history:

In my first book, "Intimate Collaborations: Kandinsky and Münter, Arp and Taeuber" (2014), I argued that the flourishing of abstract art in the early 20th century cannot be understood without taking into consideration the proliferation of artist couples. Instead of giving up their careers when they met a man, women increasingly continued to pursue their professional careers, leading to new minglings of personal and public living and making. This research led me to ask how more recent artists have drawn on craft traditions as ways to celebrate the past, even as they seek change for the future. To give a few examples, I've looked at how Al Loving referenced quilting as a way to wrestle with racism in the 1970s New York art world (see my essay in "Boundary Trouble"), how Lynda Benglis made Abstract Expressionist ceramics her own in the 1990s ("American Art"), and why various artists are drawn to craft as a response to war (in "Nation Building").

The exhibition, located in the second-floor galleries and on the bridge of the Corcoran Flagg Building (500 17th Street NW), is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday, from 1 to 5 p.m. The building is accessible to the GW community via tap access.