Iterations: School of Design + Art Faculty Exhibition
November 14, 2025 – January 24, 2026
Panel Discussion and Reception, Wednesday, January 21, 2026:
- Panel Discussion, 4-5pm, Ballston Center Auditorium
- Reception, 5-7pm, Cody Gallery
The School of Design and Art at Marymount University proudly presents “Iterations,” an exhibition of works by faculty who teach in our Art and Design, Fashion Design, and Interior Architecture and Design programs. Faculty artists featured in the exhibition include Bill Allen, Amanda Buckley, Moira Denson, Susan Hergenrather, Joe Hicks, Heather McMordie, Ally Morgan, Sal Pirrone, Mary Proenza, Tianette Simpson, and Richelle Soper.
Visible or not in a final art or design piece, we all work through iterations of process and concept to achieve our strongest work. Within the exhibition, we’ve broadly interpreted this theme. Bill Allen’s hand-beaded Wedding Dress Ensemble is one in a series of over 60 evening wear garments he has designed and constructed to date. Amanda Buckley offers a group of three early spring oil paintings that share subject, palette, and a sense of surface, highlighting her painterly sensibility. Susan Hergenrather’s two abstract ink compositions are so symbiotic that she placed them in a single frame to best communicate their content. Integral to the power of Moira Denson’s works are her prolific sketchbook practice and ongoing engagement in workshops. Together, Joe Hicks’ ceramics pieces create a composition demonstrating “the iterations of carbon trap shino glazes across different clay bodies and slips.” Heather McMordie compounds printmaking’s iterative nature as an art of multiples and variations through her “screenprint assemblages” and a six-woodblock print. As a pair, Ally Morgan’s related gouache paintings emphasize her “reverence for the natural world and humanity’s complex relationship with it.” Sal Pirrone includes Tennis Ball, a 2014 sculpture, and Circles of Memory, a 2025 memorial project, each marking an evolution in his practice of cast imagery and the relationship of materials to memory. Through numerous work sessions and thousands of brushstrokes, Mary Proenza investigates linked imagery to varied expressive ends in three paintings referencing her studio space. Tianette Simpson’s lively iterations seemingly include every visual and conceptual interpretation of keys. Richelle Soper’s wall and floor sculptures explore implications of two- and three-dimensional space and combinations of traditional materials and unexpected, found objects.
Banner image: Detail from Amanda Buckley’s Stems, oil on linen
