Greenlease Gallery: May Tveit, "Drop Unit"

May Tveit has long been fascinated and inspired by the materials and processes that inform and define industrial design. In her newest work, Tveit selected cardboard as her primary medium for her works because its utilitarian purposes (boxes and packaging) create a conversation that meanders between sophistication and the everyday. In sculptural works that monumentalize this most humble of packaging materials, Tveit cuts, stacks, and joins rectangular sheets of corrugated cardboard to create powerfully minimal industrial sculptures.

Tveit, born in 1966 in Nyack, New York, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, studied in Rome in the RISD European Honors Program, and received her master’s degree from the Domus Academy in Milan, Italy. Her work was featured in Art in America, Art Practical and on National Public Radio.She received a Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Arts Award, an Andy Warhol Foundation Rocket Grant, an American Institute of Architects Allied Arts and Craftsmanship Award, an Art OMI International artist residency and multiple Arts KC inspiration grants. Her work is included in the collections of Hallmark, National Center for Drug Free Sport, Fishnet Security, The MDC Museum of Art and Design, Capitol Federal Hall and private collections. Recent exhibitions include Universal Boxes at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Tveit teaches at the University of Kansas. Works will be on display in the Greenlease Gallery, located between Van Ackeren and Sedgwick halls on the University campus, through March 23. The gallery is open Thursday through Saturday from noon to 5pm. For information, contact gallery director Anne Pearce at 816-501-4407 or anne.pearce@rockhurst.edu. Free parking is available in the garage at 52nd Street and Troost Avenue. and in lots accessed by the campus entrance at 54th Street and Troost Avenue. See rockhurst.edu/map for more.