STARKVILLE — Starkville Area Arts Council and Mississippi State are hosting exhibits this month.

SAAC recently announced its next Art in Public Places (AiPP) Exhibit, which features works by Starkville native, Ralph Null.
The exhibit will be on display in-person and online on the SAAC website (www.starkvillearts.net/ralphnull/) from Tuesday to Nov. 1, in the lobby of the Greater Starkville Development Partnership in downtown Starkville.

Featuring 30 works, the exhibit will include nature- and floral-inspired watercolors and abstract pieces.

Null is a mostly self-taught painter who enjoys expressions of nature both realistic and impressionistic. He taught at Mississippi State University and retired as a professor emeritus in 1992. He specialized in retail floriculture and floral design.

A reception will be held at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 21, in the partnership lobby. Central Station Grill will cater the event. SAAC and Scotty’s Wine and Spirits will provide the wine.

As part of SAAC’s AiPP series, works may be listed for sale. SAAC collects and pays sales taxes on behalf of the artist for any work sold, and the artist keeps 80 percent of the proceeds.

MSU exhibit
An emeritus professor at Mississippi State University who taught for 36 years in the Department of Art, Brent Funderburk is featured in an exhibit that spans 40 years of his studio life.

Here and There — Brent Funderburk —Paintings and Drawings 1981-2021 is on display in the Cullis Wade Depot Art Gallery in the university’s Welcome Center through Friday.

“More than half of the artwork is from the past three years,” said Funderburk, who combines watercolor, acrylic, and oil paintings, along with drawings, pastels and mixed media works, to show explorations of media and themes, beginning with his family’s arrival in Mississippi from his native North Carolina in the early 1980s. “Since jumping away from teaching, I’ve been in a ‘one-person class,’ traveling to New Mexico and the west, to the Appalachian Mountains, and, mostly, into the backyard, studio and woods where I live in Mississippi.”

Funderburk taught painting, drawing, research, and thesis at Mississippi State University, and served as department head in art for seven years.

He is married to Deborah Wyatt Funderburk, a dancer/choreographer and retired MSU Kinesiology faculty member.
Proceeds from sales will benefit the Mississippi State University Department of Art.