Recipient of the 2024 Educator Award
For 25 years, Christopher McNulty, director and professor in the School of Art at the University of Tennessee, has examined the fragile equilibrium between humans and their surroundings. With rhythmic abstraction and a complex range of formal and material vocabularies, his sculptures, drawings, and videos are intellectual reflections on the fragile transmutation of ecological and social webs. As an artist, McNulty brings poetic intimacy and attentiveness to material form, and his dedicated studio practice has never been more impactful than in our current cultural environment.
Michelle Grabner: During your graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, your interest in conceptualism, Cartesian abstraction, measurement, mark-making, and craft came into remarkably mature focus. As an assistant professor at UW, I vividly recall our conversations in the wood studios, where you were working alongside colleagues who made functional furniture. If I remember correctly, you were also thinking about furniture, but as an idea and not as design. Do I have that correct?
Christopher McNulty: Yes, but not initially. I entered the program without having studied art as an undergraduate, thinking that I wanted to pursue a career as a studio furniture maker, but gradually I became more interested in form and ideas rather than function. . .
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