CADC Celebrates Creative Scholarship in Extensive SHOWCASE 2025 Exhibition

What is SHOWCASE?

The exhibition, which runs approximately every three years, ties into the university’s Strategic Plan 2035: Grounded & Groundbreaking, highlighting the value of creative work as a form of research.

“SHOWCASE 2025 emphasized advocacy undergirded by the visibility of creative work that raises the profile on campus and the community, collaboration that establishes sustainable, creative partnerships and alignment that articulates the many ways the arts are integral to Auburn’s mission and strategic plan,” said Dr. Jennifer Kerpelman, the university’s Associate Vice President for Research. “The exhibition provides opportunities for the campus community to engage with creative scholarship, enriching the Auburn experience.”

Like many other large undertakings, the work on the exhibition slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but in 2022, an executive committee composed of Interior Design Assistant Professor  Anna Ruth Gatlin in the College of Human Sciences, Theater Professor and Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Chase Bringardner in the College of Liberal Arts and Graphic Design Program Chair and Associate Professor Robert Finkel set out to revive SHOWCASE. The team had three main goals for the 2025 rendition: to raise the visibility of creative scholarship, advocate for the value of creative scholarship and align with the university’s strategic mission.

The executive committee evaluated the work based on its creative process, highlighting the rigor and time required for creative works and the cross-disciplinary opportunities creators have. While constrained by the space of the venues, the committee worked to display as many projects as possible and curate a diverse set of work.

SHOWCASE 2025 opened with a Creative Showcase Kickoff at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in January. Fifty faculty works from across the university will be on display through July 6, 2025. The Student Creative Showcase and Performative Works Exhibition was held in February at the Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center with performances and visual displays.

The exhibition was paired with a hands-on Sketchnoting Workshop, faculty and student panels that discussed the creative process and a Creative Collisions event in which faculty across arts and sciences disciplines presented unexpected research collaborations.

The events were “an opportunity to break down silos of creative scholarship,” Finkel explained.

CADC Faculty Involvement

Researchers and creatives from across CADC showed up and showed out for SHOWCASE presenting over half of the faculty works across the college’s many disciplines and often fulfilling the university’s outreach mission through projects that work to improve living conditions for people outside of campus.

Landscape Architecture Assistant Professors Isaac Cohen and Gwedolyn Cohen, in tandem with Dallas-based landscape architecture firm Studio Outside, presented “The Dallas Water Commons.” The ongoing planning and design project creates a series of wetland ecologies to cleanse storm water and site runoff before it enters the Trinity River in North Texas. In addition to its ecological impacts, the Commons offers trails and places for exploration for researchers and students alike.

Graphic Design Assistant Professor Mario Bocanegra presented his ongoing photography series entitled “Tipográficos.” Using an overhead projector to play and experiment, Bocanegra arranged glass, wood, cellophane, stencils, typography and found objects to create compositions of light, color, pattern and silhouettes.

Industrial Design Associate Professor Ben Bush collaborated with Bow and Arrow manager Zach Teel on over 200 sketches that envision adventures of samurai and pirates between the kitchen and table in one of Auburn’s most popular lunch spots. The collection, entitled “Doodles on Receipts,” offers commentary and satire on the food service industry.

Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor Frank Hu and Environmental Design Associate Professor Robert Sproull teamed up to investigate the impacts of the interstate highway system on Peacock Tract, the first African American neighborhood in Montgomery. In collaboration with Mount Zion A.M.E. Zion Church, they created a 3D-printed topographical city model using high-resolution LIDAR point cloud data and animated the city’s history through interacting mappings in an installation entitled “Montgomery’s Peacock Tract: Unearthing a Spatial History.”

Some of the other featured work includes a series of drawings and materials samples that explore Alabama soil layers also by Gwen Cohen and renderings of an unbuilt renovation for a Depression-era hydroelectric water wheel in Cazenovia, New York, by Architecture Assistant Professor David Shanks. A map of the Selma Bloody Sunday Conflict by Finkel, McWhorter School of Building Science (BSCI) Head Richard Burt and BSCI Professor Junshan Liu is also on display.

CADC Student Representation

But faculty projects weren’t the only work presented by CADC. Nearly 30 CADC students were included in the Student Creative Showcase and Performative Works Exhibition, including 11 Graphic Design students from Assistant Professor Devon Ward’s Biodesign and Advanced Interactive Media courses.

“Both Biodesign and Advanced Interactive Media incorporate methods from the field speculative design, which treats design as a thought experiment,” Ward said. “Students research social, cultural, environmental and technological developments from the past and use these to design new, theoretical experiences and environments.”

Among the submissions were Nick Patterson’s “Bioactive Display”—an augmented reality (AR) interface that allows users to communicate with doctors using AR glasses for an updated telemedicine system—and lanterns composed of bio-composites and Black Needle Rush by Sarrina Muehleisen, Kendra Love and Carly DeSimone. Laven Maginnis presented “My Digital ID,” an app designed to consolidate personal documents into an accessible, secure digital platform.

“Essentially, they are designing scenarios and contexts about what could be just around the corner,” Ward said. “It’s a method to generate very creative and meaningful designs that can support flourishing, growth and innovation.”

Whether through the exploration of something yet to exist or the analysis of a moment in history, the CADC contribution to SHOWCASE 2025 relies on and reflects the breadth of creativity and ingenuity among Auburn’s designers.