March 17, 2005
For Immediate Release
To: News Directors and News Editors
From: Veronika Avery, Assistant Director of Media Relations, 342-5444, vavery@ulm.edu

Adding in their own brand of campus beautification, the University of Louisiana at Monroe School of Visual and Performing Arts installed the first composition to the innovative new Sculpture Garden on Friday, March 11.

The Sculpture Garden is located in front of Spyker Theatre behind Biedenharn Hall.

Originally proposed by ULM Associate Professor of Art Cliff Tresner and supported by Dr. L. Keith White, Director of the School of Visual and Performing Arts, ULM's Sculpture Garden will be a rotating display and sale opportunity for alumni, local artists and other respected artists given the invitation.

"I think it will be a very culturally enriching environment," Tresner said. "I already enjoy this space more simply by placing one work there. With the ongoing installation of other work it will be a pleasant place to visit. I hope that the idea grows, and I for one would like to see sculpture throughout the campus."

Greely Myatt, an artist from Memphis, Tennessee, established the inaugural piece, a 19 foot steel structure capturing a moment in time when the artist happened upon a lightning-struck tree that had managed to cradle its almost severed top-half upon itself.

"When I first started sculpture, I did outdoor work," Myatt said. "I think art comes from an idea."

Myatt, a prolific artist represented in multiple mediums throughout several galleries and exhibitions, currently teaches as a professor of art at the University of Memphis, his home base since 1989. Throughout his artistic journey so far, Myatt's work has appeared in over 25 solo and group exhibitions across the United States, Europe and Japan.

Though he began his undergraduate career as a history major, Myatt mentioned that at the time, he found himself more interested in the paintings of history than the history itself. He discovered art and the joy of transforming basic materials into something that had never before existed.

And yet the practical and artistic worlds constantly meet.

"You have to consider your audience," Myatt said. "You don't pander to them, but it's about communication. The best art is art that other people are allowed to project onto. It's not definitive."

As the ULM Sculpture Garden grows, the constitution and selection of work may change along with the placement and landscaping.

Currently expected to impart the next commission, Durant
Thompson, Art Technician for Southern Mississippi University, should be ready to install this weekend.

For this and other ULM news online visit www.ulm.edu. While there, check out ULM's on-line calendar for all of ULM's upcoming events.

By Sara Palazzo
Palazzo@ulm.edu