Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The images below represent a small selection of work by SoAD faculty. To view additional faculty images and profiles, visit our Faculty Directory.

Faculty Stories

Robin Haller

Textile design professor Robin Haller receive a 2018/2019 School of Art and Design Faculty Scholarship Award course release in Fall 2018 to pursue

research on the TC2 hand-jacquard loom. She proposed creating a body of work, utilizing new design techniques on the digital loom that she learned in a workshop the previous summer.

The research for this body of work was centered around a series of photographic

images taken while with family in Italy. Haller combined

traditional Italian patterns and motifs with the photographs for additional layers of meaning and conceptual significance. Working with multiple weft colors, and a process referred to as complex expansion, she pushed the image beyond what most photographic textiles currently explore. The imagery ranged from relatively recognizable Italian landmarks, such the Duomo in Florence, to abstracted imagery initiated from wrought iron fixtures to marbled walls and floor patterns.

She designed painted warps in a variety of colors to correspond with each individual weaving. The dyed threads start out very controlled, but through the process of preparing the loom, the threads can, and do, shift in unpredictable patterns. This adds an element of chance and surprise to the overall plane of the

woven design. In addition, Robin explored with patterned weft known as ikat, as well as supplemental weft insertions to add a third layer of pattern, color, and movement across the field.

Seven of the pieces Haller created were exhibited in “Peregrinations” in the Erwin Gallery at ECU in February 2019.

Mi-Sook Hur

With the support of SoAD Faculty Scholarship Award, metal design professor Mi-Sook Hur completed one of 10 new contemporary projects in The Art of Fine Enameling by Karen L. Cohen, to be released on November 1, 2019 by Globe Pequot Press. Some of the completed pieces are included in three juried exhibitions. The techniques and processes researched in the book will be presented at three national workshops.

Hur’s project includes an overview of innovative enameling techniques by using a detailed step-by-step guide, working tips, and information about materials. The chapter provides an opportunity for both beginners and advanced enamelists to learn how to convey drawings and narrative images on enameled copper using a technique known as limoges, but with modern methods using graphite, underglaze pencils, underglaze crayons, overglaze china paints, and watercolor enamels.

Four pieces created for the book are featured in the following exhibitions:

Jewelry and Metals Survey II, Society of North America Goldsmiths (2020)
Alchemy 5, 17th biennial international juried, the Enamelist Society, Eugene, OR (2019), Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA, and LaVerne Krause Gallery, Lawrence Hall, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
HandCrafted, Maria V. Howard Arts Center, Rocky Mount, NC Merit award (2018)

In addition, Mi-Sook was invited to teach the techniques at the following workshops:

Flora and Fauna, Center for Enamel Art, El Cerrito, CA (2020)
Limoges, the Carpenter Art Enamel foundation, Bellevue, KY (2020)
Inspired by Nature, Westchester Center for the Arts, White Plains, NY (2019)