In this RC Art Gallery exhibit, Residential College and Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design Professor of Art Susan Crowell presents, among other works, a series of wall plaques depicting endangered species. In Professor Crowell's effort to, "...question our interactions with the animal world and our impact upon it," she has installed images of elephants and donkeys as protagonists and antagonists in political struggle, and polar bears as victims of global warming.

"Animal/ Vegetable/Mineral presents an occasion to speak about my most compelling interests—plants and animals--within the mineral rubrics of clay," she says.

This event is free and open to the public. Masks are required for all attendees. Vaccination is not required but highly encouraged. All attendees must complete a short questionnaire at https://responsiblue.umich.edu/sign-in before entering East Quadrangle.

Susan Crowell is Professor of Art at the University of Michigan, where she teaches ceramics and holds a joint appointment in the Residential College and the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design. A Fulbright Scholar, she studied architectural ceramics at Centro Internazionale di Ceramica in Rome and directed and taught in the University of Michigan’s Program in Florence. Prof. Crowell conducts research and exhibits her work locally, nationally and internationally. She has presented projects and exhibitions in Canada (at Banff), Japan (at Shigaraki and Miyazaki), Italy (Rome, Venice and Florence), Taiwan, Denmark and China, as well as in France and the United States, and she has participated in a variety of international venues and residencies. In 2005 Crowell published I Compianti Sul Christo Morto: Lamentation Groupings in Northern Italy to illuminate the distinguished history of ceramic materials in Quattrocento devotional and didactic sculpture, and to bring an understanding of their use and potential to contemporary ceramics practitioners. In April of 2016 Prof. Crowell exhibited her work in the conservatories of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens at the University of Michigan, and in May of 2017, at the Alden Dow Gardens in Midland, MI. In 2018 she conducted residencies and research at the Jean Noble Parsons Center for the Study of Art and Science in northern Michigan, and at A.I.R. Vallauris in Vallauris, France, where she exhibited her work in La chapelle de la place Lisnard that October.

For ten years, Crowell’s research and artistic practice has focused upon pollen forms and the process of pollination. Deploying her appreciation of the role of technology in revealing the natural world, she applies the science and aesthetics of botany and apiculture toward the creation of ceramic sculpture, using cast and hand-built forms. In doing so, Prof. Crowell presents an expanded view of pollen within the problematics of industrialized honey production, global commerce in apicultural products, and genetically modified crops.. More recently, she has created Thinning the Herd, an installation of animal forms that addresses endangered species, and Oppositional, a commentary on contemporary political behavior in the United States.