WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Summer 2006

Shock Art

art by Marc Bosworth Straight Arrow
Marc Bosworth ’93


A Wichita State printmaking  graduate, Friends University adjunct faculty member and graphic designer with the Greteman Group in Wichita, Bosworth says his recent works are explorations of “issues of both personal and social identity by presenting a dialogue between childhood perceptions and a more grown-up reality.”

Inspired by sources as divergent as automotive repair manuals, comic strips and children’s drawings, Bosworth works with collage, found objects and mixed media in a range of styles.

“I try to create a rich visual experience that imitates the confusion and ambivalence that I feel toward social and gender politics,” he says. “I employ a cast of characters in my works as a way of addressing certain social perceptions. Plastic cowboys, Indians and soldiers are participants whose roles as ‘good guy and bad guy’ are well defined only in their idealized toy-state.”

 

 

 

 


 


art by Richard Moses

UNTITLED
Richard Moses ’62

A participant in more than 300 exhibitions and the recipient of 36 art awards and grants, Moses creates collage-assemblage, which has been called “the most representative art form of the 20th century.”       

“My works of the past 20 years have focused on small scale reliquary images depicting the life and life rhythms of the people of the Great Plains region,” he explains. “Their attitudes, practices and  values are represented by found objects  and other materials from our agrarian and industrial past. I find such images compelling as reminders of our cultural roots amid a rapidly evolving multicultural society.” His works are represented in 15 public museum collections and numerous corporate and private ones — including that of Tony Curtis. 

A veteran art educator, Moses is professor emeritus at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he taught painting, drawing and design, and served as chair of the Foundation Art Program.


 Overwatering

Two vines of her plant hang like sinews
torn from muscle and bone. Discolored
leaves, the dryness of razor burned legs
and this that he has done. Water drips
from his umbrella in beats of two
where the vines meet their body, the plant,
defiled with overwatering.
 
"Suspending the umbrella from the window
goddammit, saves stains getting on the carpet,"
he inveighed when she objected for the sake
of the plant, needing water but once a week.
Rain had descended for nine tenebrous days
since she'd refused seduction, underwear ripped,
thrown on the plant, and because she was
   his wife.
 
Kent Downing ’93


SHOCK ART

Shock Art

A gallery of both literary and visual art, Shock Art showcases work by Wichita State University alumni, faculty and students.