Student Output
Art is all about choices. Rebecca Villarreal, for example, decided to teach herself to weld. Using Rice equipment, the graduating senior created her aptly titled floor sculpture, Rebar, from lengths of curved rebar welded together in an open cylinder. Visually, the piece was similar to a sheaf of wheat bound together in the middle and curving outward at the base and top.

by Kelly Klaasmeyer

A Cloud of Kites
Walking into Superabundant Atmosphere, Jacob Hashimoto’s installation at Rice Gallery, was like walking into a cloud. In one of his most striking works to date, the 32-year-old artist filled the gallery with thousands of tiny kites that hung in rows from the ceiling, creating the effect of a cumulus cloud hovering low in the gallery.

by Kelly Klaasmeyer

State of the Arts - Past and Present
When John O’Neil was being recruited in 1965 to chair Rice’s new Department of Fine Arts, he was unimpressed with what he found on campus. In his personal notes about the creation of the department, which chronicle a five-year period and appear in full below, O’Neil comments that, “Interest on campus in the establishment of the Department of Fine Arts seemed unenthusiastic. Some older faculty members actually were hostile.”

by Dana Benson

Beginnings: Personal Notes About the Founding of the Department of Art and Art History (1965–1970)
In spring 1965, I received, in my office at the School of Art of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, a telephone call from Elinor Evans, a recently arrived teacher in the Department of Architecture at Rice University. Elinor, an artist with a master’s degree from Yale, where she had studied with Josef Albers, was calling to tell me that Rice wanted to establish a fine arts department as part of the humanities, and she had been asked to recommend an artist or art historian to be chair. Would I be interested?

by John O’Neil