Art

Department Spotlight

Art Professors' Work Explores Social Alienation

Assistant Professor of Art Scott Kolbo says his work often is the result of soaking up the world and getting angry. Most recently, the usually mild-mannered Kolbo is raising his pencil against the injustices of social alienation through a collaborative drawing project with Associate Professor of Art Gordon Wilson. Funded by Whitworth's Weyerhaeuser Center for Christian Faith and Learning, the project has yielded a series of drawings that explore the ways in which one's environment can reflect or contribute to one's sense of isolation.

"Gordon and I are very involved in the psychology and personality of characters," says Kolbo, who is in his fourth year at Whitworth. "So, we were both interested in developing characters who are cultural outsiders or outcasts and in exploring some of the implications of where those lines are drawn in society."

While the artists share a common interest in subject matter, their modes of making art can be radically different. Wilson usually gets to know his subjects and draws pictures to reflect their humanity; Kolbo employs brooding, caricatured, sometimes hysterical-looking figures, and a cutting sense of satire, to critique society. (See Kolbo's website at www.existentialape.com.) Naaman Dirty, a recent print featuring one of his most memorable characters, was named Best of Show in Printmaking at the 28th annual Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibition.