During the summer season, our school administration plans and prepares for another year of departmental growth. That growth will be impacted by newly-announced leadership appointments from the Georgia State Provost Office and College of the Arts.
This July 2023, Michael White was confirmed as Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Director after a year as interim Director. White first came to Georgia State in 2002. Nationally certified in his fields, he is a registered architect and interior designer in the state of Georgia. He joined the university following an extensive national career in interior architectural practice, most notably as Studio Director of the Atlanta office of Gensler—the nation’s largest interior architecture firm. His more than 20 years of professional experience in commercial interiors include more than one million square feet in projects for national clients including Aetna, the McDonald’s Corporation, Bank of America, BlueCross BlueShield, GTE, and Atlanta’s own legal powerhouse, King & Spalding.
White recently concluded a four-year project as co-principal investigator on two STEAM-centric grants with Atlanta’s innovative Drew Charter Schools sponsored by the Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement and the Goizueta Foundation. Outcomes of that work yielded online professional development modules in art and design, in addition to co-authored articles on the design and implementation of STEAM-centric professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers.
Dr. Susan Richmond, formerly the Associate Director of Art & Design and a professor in Art History, has been tapped to take a new role in College of the Arts leadership as Interim Assistant Dean following Dr. Maria Gindhart's departure. She will work alongside the newly-appointed Interim COTA Dean, Chester Phillips. Dr. Richmond joined the Georgia State faculty in 2003. Her research and teaching focus on material histories of art and visual culture in the United States since 1945, with a specific emphasis on feminist historiographies and the intersections of art, gender, and labor. Her first book, Lynda Benglis: Beyond Process, was supported by a Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center for American Modernism Fellowship and received the SECAC (formerly the Southeastern College Art Conference) Award for Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication. Richmond has been widely published in multiple journals, and in 2021 organized an exhibition of work by internationally acclaimed artist Diana Al-Hadid for the Welch Galleries at Georgia State, with support from a Center for Collaboration and Innovation in the Arts (CENCIA) grant and a Georgia Humanities Grant.
Replacing Dr. Richmond's position in the School of Art & Design, is Principal Senior Lecturer Tim Flowers. Flowers has taught and served within the school for over two decades, most recently as Drawing, Painting, Printmaking Coordinator, Foundations Coordinator, and Undergraduate Coordinator. He has now accepted the role of Associate Director within the school. Tim Flowers joined the faculty in August of 2001. He received his MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1985 and his BFA from the University of Oklahoma in 1983. Prior to his appointment at Georgia State, he taught at Louisiana State University and at the Rhode Island School of Design. In the summers of 1999, 2000, and 2002 he taught a study abroad course, Art in the Outback, through RISD, and the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Flowers’ teaching philosophy stems from a belief in building perceptual skills as a base for invention and self-expression, exploration, and research. His recent drawings and oil paintings are based on observation of the interiors or ‘wrong’ sides of foil masks. He is also inclined to use sketches taken from shadows in cemeteries, French clouds, and other observed landscape events. Choosing visually complex subjects, Flowers discovers power in the incomprehensible.
In August, our school will announce new and incoming faculty as well as those valued faculty who have received emeriti status.