Angela Piehl
Associate Professor / Area Head, Painting & Drawing
Department of Art & Design, Peck School of the Arts
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Exhibitions and Projects
Brushwork
Designed as a biennial exhibition inclusive of current UWM Painting & Drawing students of all levels, recent alumni, graduate students, and faculty, Brushwork is an exhibition curated by Piehl and 2 graduate students as part of a special project in ART 543G.
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Brushwork offers community building between student cohorts, as well as an opportunity to showcase the Painting & Drawing area students' work to local curators, the campus and larger community, and donors.
Friday Figure Drawing
Friday Figure Drawing is a supplementary extracurricular program through the Painting & Drawing Area, offering open figure drawing sessions to all Art & Design students. Designed to make the human as observational subject more accessible in a pressure-free, ungraded environment, the Friday Figure Drawing sessions are highly popular and well-attended each semester. There are plans to expand the program to alumni, through an annual subscription, as well as offer portrait painting sessions with the public at a future date.
ArtsECO Pre-College
Mixed Media Collage Class
A summer course for students (grades 8-12) focused on a range of 2D media techniques, including watercolor, collage, acrylics, paper weaving, and other activities, culminating in a student exhibition in the UWM Student Union Gallery. Partnering with UWM Studio Art and Art Ed students, as well as high school interns, and the broader ArtsECO program at UWM.
Red Grooms SURF Project
Creative Histories:
Examining Mulit-Media Pop Artist Red Grooms'
1972 Portrait of UWM Students & Instructors
Co-Sponsored by Angela Piehl and Joseph Mougel, with painting students Barbara Wilson and Dora Peregrine. The project entailed contacting and working closely with faculty emeritus and alumni who participated in the mural in 1972, and was supported by a $2500 grant to the SURF students. Students documented the mural, interviewed participants and were able to identify most of the individuals depicted in the mural, a piece of the historic legacy of the Art & Design Department.
Painting & Drawing Alumni Exhibition
This alumni exhibition during Kenilworth Open Studios, 2022 gave participating painting and drawing student alumni who graduated during the pandemic in 2020-2021 with an online-only exhibition the opportunity to showcase their work in an in-person exhibition during a well-attended public facing event.
Solidarity Hours
Designed as a community-building event for students, Solidarity Hours were held throughout 2016 at OSU Department of Art to promote visibility, equity, and discussion among students. Students design messaging for lazer-cut stencils and created t-shirts, bandanas and totes donated by local businesses and campus organizations. (Lead faculty, lead fundraiser)
Collaborative Drawing Event
Students were given prompts to perform a series of interactions, including stages of texture-building (frotage), visual element connection, mapping, and game design. The large-scale drawing was produced by art students alongside visiting artist Sarah Schneckloth in the Student Union, with art students engaging the larger campus community in the process of creating the final piece.
(Co-Author, lead faculty- Visiting Artist Workshop, funded by departmental grant.)
Live Mural Painting Event
Created as a 1credit, semester-long special course, painting students collaborated with the OSU Jazz Ensemble and Visiting Artist Yatika Star Fields to create a concept for a 72 ft mural to accompany Terry Riley's composition "In C" from 1964. The students built the structures for the mural painting, collaboratively designed connecting elements, and then worked in concert with the jazz ensemble and incorporated spontaneous added elements contributed by the visiting artist. The resulting mural was permanently installed in the OSU Music Building.
(Co-Author, Lead faculty- Visiting Artist Workshop, funded by College of Art & Science Grant.)
Family Dollar General Tree
Coordinated as a workshop with Visiting Artist Bob Snead, art students, and local high school students, Family Dollar General Tree was a large scale collaborative project in which students gathered cardboard and packaging from the recycling and trash receptacles of local dollar stores, and then constructed the goods the packing the discarded trash was designed to hold.
Re-creating commercial products and creating conversations about ecology, recycling, and rural/food desert economic conditions, the project created a life-sized dollar store in the OSU Student Union, stocked with items constructed by the students. In order to "stock" the "store", students had to create 3D templates for crafting the objects that community members, high schoolers and other participants could easily follow and construct alongside the participants from the art department.
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(Author, Lead faculty, Visiting Artist Workshop, funded by College of Art & Science Grant.)