Faculty

Jack Girard is a Professor of Art, and the Fine Arts Division Chair. He teaches multi-level drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, and travel-related courses.  He received his BFA (1973) and MFA (1976) degrees from East Carolina University, with additional studies at the University of South Carolina and the University of Kentucky.  His primary medium is collage, although he frequently works in paint, assemblage, and installation.  Professor Girard's work has been included in over 300 exhibitions, and is represented in many corporate, institutional, and private collections in the United States and overseas.  He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards.  His work addresses a variety of topical issues, inclusive of aging, discrimination, archaeology, ordnance, politics, and human conflict.  His is currently represented by Chapman Friedman Gallery, Louisville, KY.  Additionally, his scholarship has included publications on the artwork of American assemblage artists Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, and Spanish painter, collagist, and writer Asensio Saez. Cirriculum vitae

Kurt Gohde is an Associate Professor of Art who teaches Photography & Sculpture, while creating works of art that critically engage issues of poverty, homelessness, sexuality and the stereotypes that surround them. He earned his B.F.A. from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and his M.F.A. from Syracuse University. Professor Gohde is interested in the truth & fiction that compete in the narratives of Lexington's and Kentucky's history. For more information visit www.kurtgohde.com

Dr. Wei Lin, assistant professor of art history, earned her B.A. in archaeology from Nanjing University, her M.A. in archaeology from Peking University, and her Ph.D. in art history from The Ohio State University.  Her primary areas of specialization include Chinese art and archaeology and Buddhist cave art and architecture. Her specific areas of research interest focus on Chinese Buddhist cave temples from the Six Dynasties (220-589) to the Tang dynasty (618-907) periods. Dr. Lin’s dissertation study examines the Southern Dynasties (420-589) Buddhist caves at Qixiashan, located in the Nanjing region of Jiangsu province in China. Her current project focuses on the Tang dynasties caves at the site. Dr. Lin’s course offerings include Introduction to Asian Art, Arts of China, Arts of Japan, Chinese Calligraphy: History and Practice, Modern Chinese Art, Buddhist Art of Asia. She also teaches May term travel courses to China.

Zoé Strecker is a sculptor and writer who lives and works on a farm in Mercer County near the Kentucky River with her husband, potter Mike Frasca, and their two young daughters.  She is currently Transylvania University's Visiting Assistant Professor of Art. Strecker has her BA from Grinnell College and an MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She makes conceptually-oriented sculpture and installation in a wide range of media and currently has several projects in progress in the studio for exhibition in the coming year.  Her video documentary about Kentucky's only renewable energy facility, The Mother Ann Lee Hydroelectric Plant at Lock and Dam number 7 on the Kentucky River is in post-production and will be released in 2011 with support from The Kentucky Foundation for Women. In the 1990's she completed a number of large site-specific sculpture commissions for public places like museums, schools, libraries, health clinics, parks, and churches in Kentucky, Colorado, Alaska, and Tennessee. She also makes smaller-scale works for public and private exhibition and collection.

Dr. Nancy Coleman Wolsk is a Professor of Art History, she earned her BA at Mount Holyoke College, her MA at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and her PhD at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Wolsk's general areas of research are French art from 1890-1914 and the history of the city Paris. Her areas of specialization include the world of Pierre Bonnard; representations of women and domestic interiors from 1900-1914; the Nabis (late 19th-century/early 20th-century French, avant-garde artists); and representations of Parisian gardens. Dr. Wolsk regularly teaches Twentieth-century art and architecture, Women in Art, and special topics, such as Italian Women: Representations and Realities, a May term travel course to Florence. Recent published work includes an essay for the Phillips Collection catalogue for the Pierre Bonnard exhibition in the fall of 2002 “Pierre Bonnard: from Thought to Form”, and Pierre Bonnard: Early and Late. Washington, D. C.: Phillips Collection, 2002.