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National Scrollathon – Alabama Edition

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The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University is Alabama’s host for artists Steven and William Ladds’ country-wide, collaborative visual arts project which aims to unite Americans in celebration of America’s 250th Birthday in 2026. Pieces produced from all 50 states will go on view at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on Monday, May 26, 2026.

Starting on March 11, approximately 500 invited participants will arrive in Auburn across five days to create a collage in shades of green, ranging from mint to lime to emerald, a nod to Alabama’s timber industry, its national forests and growth in sustainability. The invited groups represent all ages, ethnicities, abilities and socioeconomic backgrounds. The Ladds document each participant’s meaning for their scroll, creating authentic connections around a shared goal. The statewide event culminates in an installation of the piece as each frame is completed, with a final reveal at the museum’s “Spring Fling” on Thursday, May 9 at 5 p.m.

Learn more about the National Scrollathon
Artist Steven and William Ladd hold a frame filled with fabric scrolls, instructing workshop participants.

Steven and William Ladd are New York-based brothers and artists “known for vibrant, highly textural artwork that evokes childhood memories,” working at the intersection of design, applied, and fine art. William discovered beading at 15 and Steven began making clothes while studying at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. After moving to Brooklyn to collaborate, their formal artistic partnership began in 2000 while creating accessories that attracted interest from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, which included their work in a major exhibition. Selected for the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt’s Design Triennial in 2006, the Ladd’s artworks began representing people, places, and memories of their shared childhood, an evolving theme throughout their practice.

Skilled in the traditions of “handwork” of sewing and beading, the artists are always seeking materials to incorporate into their work and are especially attuned to the notion of adaptive reuse. The discovery of a warehouse full of cotton webbing and belt findings in what is now The Invisible Dog Art Center provided them with the impetus to not only delve deeply into the physical aspect of these materials but also as a pathway toward a broader artmaking process. Working face to face across a table, the brothers wound webbing into scrolls.

Throughout their careers, Steven and William Ladd have developed an interactive and hands-on approach to artmaking that melds fine art, design, and craft with their dedication to interactive collaboration, education, and community engagement. In all their work, the importance of meaningful content couched in a visual language of beauty has guided them from small-scale, intimate sculptural objects to what has now become an ongoing, inclusive, and embracing project under the umbrella of what they call Scrollathon. The content of their artworks is often drawn from their own shared memories and experiences, and it is through this lens that they have developed a way to encourage others to do the same, based on the idea of a scroll as an ancient form of communication.

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Exhibition Dates:

October 4, 2014-January 25, 2015
Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Galleries

November 20, 5 pm
Artist Talk: Billy Renkl

JCSM is pleased to present the work of Auburn University alumnus Billy Renkl, ‘85. Prompted by passages in Henry David Thoreau’s journals, each piece in this exhibition begins with the artist’s deliberate, personal reading of Thoreau’s writing. Using found paper and illustrations from myriad sources ranging from used books and postcards to legal documents, Renkl garners meaning from his materials. The resulting object reverberates with Thoreau’s language and Renkl’s experience of thinking about and interpreting Thoreau. Together in the exhibition, the thirty pieces become a visual and linguistic conversation between Henry David Thoreau and Billy Renkl.

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Object Lab: Monument Maquettes

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Students in courses, Sculpture as Space and Themes in Contemporary Sculpture at Auburn University, led by Associate Professor Kristen Tordella-Williams, researched and proposed contemporary monuments in response to the exhibition Monuments and Myths: The America of Sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French. The students researched, proposed, and built maquettes of future monuments that fill in historical gaps and celebrate marginalized communities and spaces.

August 3, 2023

Chris Barraza, “Into Space”

DJ Jihaari mix for The Jule

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DJ Jihaari mixtape for the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, December 2022

Walk though the museum and listen to this mix, it is designed to go alongside the exhibitions on view in December, 2022 at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University.

Start in the Radical Naturalism exhibition with Donny Hathaway “Someday We’ll All Be Free” – D’Angelo “Real Love” – Ramp “I Just Love you” …

Then start listening to the Kinsey Collection with Eugene McDaniels “Freedom Death Dance” through to the track by Sly and the Family Stone “You can Make it if You Try” …

Then listen to the RaMell Ross exhibition starting with J Dilla “Glazed/Give Peace a Chance” alongside the sculpture “Propinquiry; Horizon of the Thing Witnessed” and work your way to the large sculpture “Return to Origin” for the last song by Earth Wind And Fire.

Auburn alumnus establishes fund to collect work by Jewish artists

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Three girls sit on a bed in a silver gelatin print.

Through a major gift to Auburn University, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University has established the Martin Moss Freeman ’77 Fund for Excellence in memory of Shirley and Dr. Alfred Freeman.

IMAGE: Diane Arbus (1923-1971), “Triplets in their bedroom, N.J.”, 1963, Gelatin/Silver on Paper, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, The William Dunlop Collection, 2003.10.

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