Cragin Art Gallery

06/16/2026

David Andree's, Unstable Ground, is open through August 4!

Explore this photo album by Missouri Southern on Flickr!

06/12/2026

The MSSU Cragin Art Gallery is pleased to present Unstable Ground, a solo exhibition by artist David Andree featuring paintings, drawings, and mixed-media works. The exhibition will be on view from June 15 through August 4, 2026.

In Unstable Grounds, painting becomes a record of forces that cannot be held. Wind lifts painted fabric into fleeting aerial formations. Water and cold freeze paintings into precarious sculptural volumes that collapse as they thaw. Each work occupies a brief interval between becoming and unbecoming, emerging through conditions that cannot be fully controlled.

The exhibition brings together David Andree’s Kite Works and Freeze Casting, presenting both the paintings themselves and photographic traces of their transformations in the landscape. These works move between painting and sculpture, object and event, image and residue. Their most charged forms occur in collaboration with weather, terrain, gravity, and time.

Rather than depicting landscape, the works are shaped by it. They register pressure, temperature, movement, resistance, and collapse. What remains are traces: marks carried by fabric, images preserved by photography, and memories of events that can no longer be fully recovered. Unstable Grounds considers how landscapes, histories, and lives are shaped by the continual tension between presence and disappearance, reflecting on instability as a condition of being in the world.

04/10/2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MSSU Cragin Art Gallery Showcases Faculty Excellence in Per Unitatem Vis
The Missouri Southern State University (MSSU) Cragin Art Gallery invites the public to experience Per Unitatem Vis (“Through Unity, Strength”), a dynamic exhibition highlighting the creativity, innovation, and professional excellence of the MSSU Art & Design faculty. The exhibition will be on view from March 30 through April 16, 2026.

Bringing together a diverse range of media and approaches, Per Unitatem Vis showcases the depth of talent among faculty who are not only accomplished artists and designers but also dedicated educators shaping the next generation of creative thinkers. Their work reflects both individual vision and a shared commitment to artistic exploration, mentorship, and innovation across disciplines.

The exhibition’s title, drawn from the Latin phrase meaning “Through Unity, Strength,” speaks to the collaborative spirit at the heart of the MSSU Art & Design program. It underscores the idea that creative practice thrives through connection between artists, students, disciplines, and the broader community- resulting in work that is both personally meaningful and collectively impactful.

The Cragin Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and all events are free and open to the public. Visitors are encouraged to experience this inspiring showcase of faculty achievement and the strength of unity in art and design.

03/03/2025

The MSSU Cragin Art Gallery is pleased to host Drawing is Magic a solo exhibition by artist John Hendrix. The exhibition will run from February 24 – March 25, 2025, with a reception/artist talk on March 25 at 5 PM. Additionally, the MSSU Spiva Library will host a book reading and signing from 2:30 pm- 3:45 pm on March 25.
The artist talk will also be available live on Zoom:
https://mssu-edu.zoom.us/j/85720328542
John Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator. His books include The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hi**er, called a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, Drawing Is Magic: Discovering Yourself in a Sketchbook, The Holy Ghost: A Spirited Comic, Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus, and many others. His award-winning illustrations have also appeared on book jackets, newspapers, and magazines all over the world. His most recent graphic novel, The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis was named a Best Children’s Book of 2024 by The New York Times. John is the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

From the artist, “As an artist, I aim to communicate clear ideas using both words and images in concert. Made with pen and ink on paper, the heart of my practice has always been—simply—making drawings. But, I have come to realize the core activity lies beyond the drawing, but in the act of translation. In all my works, I aim to make complex concepts more legible. Beyond mere adaptation, a visual translation transforms the existing content. An image that is paired with text is not simply a “caption” in visual form. Instead, the act of illustration is a ‘gestalt’ (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.) Illustration fuses both word and image into a new whole; a third thing that is neither purely word nor purely image. I hope that my work can create new paths for accessing ideas, learning history, describing experiences, and communicating stories.”

The artist can be contact on:
X: Hendrix Art
Instagram:
The artist’s website: www.johnhendrix.com