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An exhibition of works by Erle Loran will show from Jan. 18 through April 14 in the Griffith Fine Arts Gallery on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University.

Loran (1905-1999) was a California abstract expressionist, painter, printmaker, author and teacher. “Erle Loran (1905-1999): A Modern Artist of the American West” will feature a retrospective of more than 60 works in diverse media, including oil paintings, watercolor, gouache, mixed media drawings and charcoal studies.

“These works show the changing styles that the artist explored over a period of some 60 years,” said Dr. David Lewis, professor of art history in the SFA School of Art and curator of the exhibition. “Styles range form Regionalism of the WPA era, semi-abstract landscapes, abstract expressionism, to what might best be called abstract impressionism as well as abstract formalism. Whatever style he worked in, Loran always maintained a high level of sophistication and craftsmanship.”

Loran was a key figure in the so-called “Berkeley School” of modernism in the Bay Area of California, which thrived during the late 1930s through the 1950s. Under Loran’s leadership as chair in the early and mid 1950s, the Art Department at Berkeley rapidly gained recognition and was ranked among the top three art schools in the country by the College Art Association.

The inspiration for the Griffith Gallery show came after Lewis saw an exhibition of WPA era art at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. At the time, Lewis knew Loran as the author of a famous book, “Cézanne’s Composition,” which was first published in 1943, and remained in print for over 60 years. Lewis had not known of his work as an artist before seeing a landscape in that exhibition.

“I soon began researching his work and life, and the more I looked at his life and work, the more intrigued I became,” he said. “I was surprised to learn that he had won numerous honors and distinctions as an exhibiting artist, and that he had played an instrumental role in negotiating a gift of some 45 paintings by Hans Hofmann for the University of California’s permanent art collection – the largest collection of its kind anywhere.”

Lewis explains that Hofmann was a key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement and is generally acknowledge as the single most influential art teacher of the 20th century. The UC-Berkeley faculty adopted many of Hofmann’s ideas in developing its curriculum during the 1930s and 1940s.

“Of course, I was also taken by the consistent quality of Loran’s work,” Lewis said, “and I also enjoyed the way he used disguised symbolism, sometimes inspired by the petroglyphic art of ancient Native American cultures of the Southwest and later from designs found in Northwest Coast totem poles and Haida artifacts.”

Beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s, Loran exhibited in most of the major national competitions and invitational shows of his day, including The Whitney Annual (several times), the Carnegie Annual, The San Paolo International (three times), as well as other major exhibitions held at the Chicago Art Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, among others.

A gallery talk will take place starting at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, in the gallery, with Lewis discussing Loran’s artwork at about 5:30 p.m. Admission is free.

The exhibition also features a few example of work by Loran’s fellow UC-Berkeley artist John Charles Haley, who is considered the “founder” of the “Berkeley School.”

Gallery talks and receptions are sponsored in part by the SFA Friends of the Visual Arts, Nacogdoches Junior Forum and The Flower Shop.

For more information, call (936) 468-1131.

Faculty and staff members in Stephen F. Austin State University’s Department of Kinesiology and Health Science have taken the concept of student-directed learning and applied skills to heart.

Through the use of various state-of-the-art labs, hundreds of SFA students have the opportunity to conduct research by using high-tech equipment, practice concepts learned in class in a lab setting and train with equipment they will use in their future professions.

“In this department, we believe that without doing, learning is a bit remiss. Being able to put students in a lab and have them use equipment, run tests, analyze data and more is vital to the learning experience,” said Dr. Eric Jones, professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Science.

Students studying kinesiology, health science, or fitness and human performance have access to various labs, including the Human Performance Lab, Movement Analysis Lab and Exercise Biochemistry Lab.

When building the labs about 10 years ago, Jones asked, “What can we offer students that they can’t get anywhere else?” With this question in mind, Jones began to acquire equipment and funds to establish labs to enhance learning and research opportunities.

“We wanted to ‘create’ a student that no one else was creating. We wanted our students to have a marketable skill set,” Jones said. “Larger institutions sometimes don’t come with the applied skill set, and our applied-skills approach teaches students how to do a job.”

Whether they want to teach physical education in public schools, be a personal trainer or fitness instructor, or work in a clinical setting as an exercise physiologist or in cardiac rehabilitation centers, students have various opportunities to work with the same equipment at SFA that they will one day use in their careers.

The Human Performance Lab, tucked inside the Education Annex, offers equipment designed to measure innovative physiological and psychological determinants, responses and performance across numerous interests.

The equipment includes a hydrostatic tank to measure body fat through underwater weighing, treadmills with programmable controls, metabolic carts, body composition analysis tools, an electrocardiogram and more. Students also can gain experience working with a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry machine, which measures body composition such as body fat and bone density.

A room inside the lab is dedicated to thermoregulation and environmental physiology research. This room allows users to control the temperature and monitor the effect environmental changes such as heat and humidity have on one’s body.

“Our labs facilitate hands-on learning and practical application. Students are able to turn their book knowledge into something they can disseminate and apply in the real world,” Jones said.

A unique addition to the program is the Exercise Biochemistry Lab, which Dr. James Rowe, assistant professor, established. Dr. Dustin Joubert, assistant professor at SFA, said this type of lab is rare for a university of SFA’s size. In this lab, students can draw and analyze blood for intervention research, which can include looking at metabolites in the blood and measuring the blood for glucose, triglycerides and insulin levels.

The Movement Analysis Lab offers students a place to analyze movement on a computer by using the Dartfish biomechanics analysis system. Additionally, there is a small weight room for strength training and research or exercise testing purposes. The room is equipped with a bench press, squat rack and basic exercise equipment.

“Having access to this equipment prepares students and gives them a well-defined master skill set that makes them employable,” Jones said.

For more information about the labs and SFA’s Department of Kinesiology and Health Science, visit sfasu.edu/kinesiology/.

By Kasi Dickerson, senior marketing communications specialist at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Stephen F. Austin State University’s SFA Gardens will host the monthly Theresa and Les Reeves Lecture Series at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, in the Brundrett Conservation Education Building at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center, located at 2900 Raguet St. Danny Carson, director of gardens at Moody Gardens in Galveston, will present “Behind the Scenes at Moody Gardens: Why 1,100 Employees is Never Enough.”

Carson, a native of Houston, started employment with Moody Gardens in 1986 as an assistant horticulturist. He is responsible for 142 acres of grounds and wetlands, including all of the landscape, irrigation, hardscape, Rainforest Pyramid, interior plants, green houses, gardening programs and events, horticulture therapy and special projects. Carson is on the board of the International Oleander Society.

The Theresa and Les Reeves Lecture Series is held the second Thursday of each month and includes a rare-plant raffle after the program. The lecture is free and open to the public, but donations to the Theresa and Les Reeves Lecture Series fund are always appreciated.

Parking is available at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center and Raguet Elementary School, located at 2428 Raguet St.

For more information, call (936) 468-4129, or email sfagardens@sfasu.edu.