Collegium

About the Exhibition

Collegium brings together new work by the studio faculty of the Department of Visual Art at Georgia Southwestern State University — Laurel Robinson, Keaton Wynn, Charles Wells, and Justin Hodges. Painting, glass and metal sculpture, ceramics, and photography share a single gallery, offering an overview of the diverse creative practice of a program that describes itself less as a set of colleagues than as a family.

This exhibition provides an overview of the diverse creative practice of our faculty. The title of this show describes well the community and culture of our program: seeing each other more as family than colleagues, we are able to nurture, challenge, and encourage each other in both the classroom and studio. As productive professional exhibiting artists, we share a philosophy that values skill development, conceptual curiosity, and a profound respect for the mystery and meaning of the materials we explore.

The Department of Visual Art at Georgia Southwestern State University maintains a tradition of providing high-quality training in studio art across an array of disciplines, including Ceramics, Digital Art, Drawing and Painting, Glass, Photography, Printmaking and Sculpture. An area of distinction is the glass program, which started during the birth of the American Studio Glass movement in the early 1970s, making GSW’s glass program among the oldest in the country. Further, GSW is the only state university in Georgia that offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts in glass.

Along with this great respect for studio traditions, we embrace the most current possibilities now being developed in our digital maker’s space. Each studio discipline has sent graduates on to careers in art in diverse fields such as museum directors, arts entrepreneurs, and studio artists, while many K–12 art educators in this region are our alumni. With 24/7 access to well-equipped studios, small class sizes, and accessible faculty mentorship, students have the freedom to not only succeed, but to pursue excellence.

We hope you will enjoy this exhibition in the spirit it was created, as a sincere effort to bring to light in the world what is possible for the benefit of the common good. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are not ideas we project onto the world, but are recognized around us every day. As you reflect on this work, you are a part of this — we welcome you into our expanding Collegium.

Laurel Robinson / Charles Wells / Keaton Wynn / Justin Hodges August 2026

Inside each sculpture, I use non-objective forms to represent a “factor.” Metal plates obscure these forms, partially or fully concealing them from the viewer. These plates act as barriers that prevent us from perceiving information. In creating these works, I invite viewers to consider the unseen influences on their own understanding, questioning what lies behind the surfaces they cannot fully access.

Charles Wells

Florilegia: literally “a gathering of flowers,” used to describe an anthology of excerpts of important ideas. A painting, still and silent, communicates meaning, usually not in a linear narrative sequence. My paintings are not illustrations of stories. Perhaps better, they are collected excerpts from my research, reading, history and news of the day. The imagery hints at medieval fables and stories, but robots and missiles appear, asking new questions.

Laurel Robinson

Our present moment is as complex and frightening as our past. Perhaps excerpts of ideas from this past combined with hints of the now, a gathering of flowers, can assist in formulating our problems correctly.

Laurel Robinson

Biographies

The Artists

Four studio artists and educators from Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, whose combined careers span painting, glass, ceramics, photography and decades of teaching in South Georgia and abroad.

Artist Laurel Robinson seated in her studio in front of her paintings Painting & Drawing

Laurel Robinson

A painter whose recent series, A Florilegia, gathers medieval fable, contemporary news and AI-generated imagery into dense, gilded collages — made with lots of digital help from Justin Hodges.

Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Laurel Robinson earned a BFA (1974) in Painting and Drawing and an MFA (1977) in Painting with an academic concentration in Paleontology from the University of Cincinnati. She was an artist-in-residence on the Outer Banks of North Carolina before coming to the Department of Visual Arts at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Georgia in 1978.

Laurel has been teaching drawing, painting and assorted interdisciplinary studio courses over her long career at GSW, and served as chair of the Visual Arts Department from 2006 to 2026. During summers and leaves, she has taught at The Centre of the Arts at the University of Tasmania, Australia (1986) and the University of Tel Aviv Overseas Student Summer Program (1988–91); studied a wide array of courses from paleoecology, Hebrew language and scientific illustration to literature and math at UCLA, the University of Tel Aviv and GSW; and for twenty years was the art director at Camp Ramah Darom in Clayton, Georgia. She had the honor of providing private painting instruction to President Jimmy Carter.

Laurel is represented in the permanent collections of the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum and the HUC/NYU Skirball Museum in New York City, and the Macon Museum of Arts and Science. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

On the Work

“I digitally collaged at least three AI-generated images to create each composite. Every prompt began, ‘A medieval painting of….’ The process is similar to cutting out imagery from photocopies and gluing them together to create a physical collage. Thick oil paint, pieces of canvas, Egyptian papyrus, wood veneer and actual metal leaf — aluminum, pure palladium or 23K gold — have been applied as distraction from the illusion: things that are ‘real’ and have ‘value.’”

Work in the Exhibition
Ceramic artist Keaton Wynn throwing a large vessel on the potter's wheel Ceramics & Art History

Keaton Wynn

A ceramic artist and art historian whose research into indigenous materials has taken him from South Georgia to the Silk Road.

Keaton Wynn is a Professor of Art teaching both Art History and Ceramics at Georgia Southwestern State University. He earned his BFA in Ceramics at Missouri State University, his MFA in Ceramics from Kent State University, and an MA in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University. Wynn works as a practicing artist exhibiting widely in regional, national, and international exhibitions. While teaching at GSW he has received the President’s Award for Excellence in Service in 2010 and the Faculty Excellence in Scholarship award in 2016.

In recent years he has directed and co-directed study abroad programs to China, Africa, and Nepal. Wynn has given workshops and presentations nationally and internationally and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Art in Xi’an, China, The Dunhuang School of Art, Northwest Normal University and Shanghai Normal University.

Since the fall of 2012 Wynn has been the Director of the Dunhuang Creative Center — now called the Lanzhou Ceramic Residency — which he helped establish at Lanzhou City University. Under his direction LZCU has developed the only academic ceramics program in Gansu province, now the largest program of its kind in western China. Recently, Wynn completed a multi-year research project in Gansu into the use of indigenous materials for ceramic production. The residency program encourages Western artists’ responses to Yellow River culture, the Silk Road, and the Dunhuang Buddhist Grottoes.

Work in the Exhibition
Glass and metal sculptor Charles Wells at the glassblowing bench holding a blowpipe Glass & Metal Sculpture

Charles Wells

A sculptor who pairs blown glass with fabricated steel, using metal plates as barriers that hide the forms behind them.

Charles “Chuck” Wells is a glass and metal sculptor and professor who lives and works in Americus, Georgia. Wells received his BFA from Midwestern State University in 1997 and his MFA from Texas Christian University in 1999. His teaching history includes Baylor University, Midwestern State University, and Georgia Southwestern State University, where he has taught since 2002.

Wells also served as President of Mobile Glassblowing Studios, LLC, a company that manufactures small-scale and portable glassblowing equipment, from 2015 to 2024.

Artist Statement

“Inside each sculpture, I use non-objective forms to represent a ‘factor.’ Metal plates obscure these forms, partially or fully concealing them from the viewer. These plates act as barriers that prevent us from perceiving information. My work is a direct response to my personal sensitivity, aligning the materials and form to communicate ideas. I strive to ensure that each piece is visually engaging, thought-provoking, and entertaining. It is my hope that the viewer will enjoy the formal playfulness and seek deeper meaning.”

Work in the Exhibition
Portrait of interdisciplinary artist and photographer Justin Hodges Photography & Digital Media

Justin Hodges

An interdisciplinary artist whose work for this exhibition turns the gallery’s own furniture — chairs, pedestals, frames — into the subject.

Justin Hodges (b. 1985, Alabama) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Georgia Southwestern State University in 2012 and a Master of Fine Arts in photography from the University of Cincinnati in 2015.

Hodges lives and works in rural South Georgia, where he currently teaches photography and digital media at Georgia Southwestern State University. Hodges’ works are held in storage closets throughout Georgia.

In This Exhibition

Hodges’ contribution includes Gallery Furniture, a set of built chairs and tables shown alongside their exploded-view drawings, the single-channel video Slow Recline, and A Guide to Working with Gallery Furniture, a twelve-page book in an edition of fifty, free to visitors.

Work in the Exhibition