CONWAY — Sandra Luckett describes herself as a painter rather than a photographer, yet it’s a series of her digital photographs that has led to her latest honor.
Luckett, an assistant professor of art at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, is one of four women whose works have been selected for the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ biennial state exhibit, Arkansas Women to Watch: 2016. The tour will open Dec. 3 at the Arts and Sciences Center for Southeast Arkansas in Pine Bluff. An opening reception will be held from 5-7 p.m., and Luckett plans to attend. There is no admission charge for either the reception or the exhibit.
Luckett’s 12 photographs in the exhibit are from her series Sexy Puddles, which she created by placing pieces of vintage lingerie in puddles of water, watching them float and interact with the water, then photographing them.
“The water is so beautiful,” she said. “It’s transparent and reflects the colors.”
Luckett said the series contains more than 3,000 images.
“Courtney Taylor (tour curator and assistant director and curator at the Arts and Sciences Center for Southeast Arkansas in Pine Bluff) chose the ones she liked best,” Luckett said.
“At some point in my life, I wanted to be a photographer,” said Luckett, 62. “But I don’t consider myself a photographer … never did. I am trained in painting. … I photograph [objects] with the eye of a painter.
“Photographs are easy to understand and accept. If I did this series as abstract paintings, they would not work as well.”
Luckett was born in Rosamond, California, “in the Mojave desert in a chicken coop,” she said with a smile.
“My father was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base, and they had no married housing,” she said. “The only thing my parents could afford was a chicken coop. I spent my first days in the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers.”
Luckett said her family moved to New York, and she was raised in Laurel Hollow, New York, which is on Long Island. She graduated from Cold Spring Harbor High School in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
“I’ve lived in 14 states since then,” she said.
She attended four colleges but never graduated from any of them.
“I transferred too much to ever graduate,” she said, “but when I was 44, I went back to college as a freshman and started over.”
She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2001 and with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2003, both with an emphasis on painting.
“I always was interested in something in the creative vein,” she said.
Luckett’s first teaching job was at New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs, where she taught and was chair of the art department.
“I taught everything there,” she said. “It was a small
program. I introduced whatever I felt they needed.”
After two years, she moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where she taught for two years at Germanna Community College.
“I taught and was chairman there, too,” she said.
Luckett came to Conway and UCA in 2010.
“A grad-school peer of mine, [Jennifer Rospert], is a drawing teacher here,” Luckett said. “She contacted me and said there was a job opening here that would be a nice fit for me.
“She said she thought I would feel a sense of purpose being in the art program here. She was right.
“I love my job here. My peers, the students, the program … are wonderful.”
Luckett teaches painting and installation at UCA.
When she first moved to Conway, she became involved with the annual Conway ArtsFest. She now belongs to Culture Shock (formerly the Show and Tell Art Collective), which is a group of Arkansas female artists that meets monthly to critique each other’s works and provides exhibition and networking opportunities.
“It’s really nice to be recognized,” Luckett said of inclusion in the Arkansas Women to Watch: 2016 exhibit. “I
received recognition when I lived in Virginia, but when I moved here, it was like starting all over again. It’s just in the last year or so that people have begun to notice I’m here.”
Additional 2016 venues for the Arkansas Women to Watch: 2016 exhibit include the Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale, June 29-July 28; the South Arkansas Arts Center in El Dorado, Aug. 4-Sept. 1; and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Department of Art Galleries, Sept. 8-Oct. 20; and the Argenta Branch Gallery of the William F. Laman Library in North Little Rock, Dec. 8-Jan. 12, 2017.
The 2017 venues include the Stephens Fine Art Gallery at the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Jan. 19-Feb. 16, and the Arkadelphia Arts Center, Feb. 23-April 6.
Luckett said she plans to attend as many opening receptions for the tour as she can.
For more information about future host venues and tour options, contact Barbara Satterfield of Conway, Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts member and tour project manager, at barbarabdesign@yahoo.com.
For more information on the Arkansas Committee NMWA, visit www.acnmwa.org. For more information about the National Museum of Women in the Arts, visit www.nmwa.org.
In addition to being chosen for the Arkansas Women to Watch: 2016 exhibit, Luckett said she has been selected to represent Arkansas in the 2016 Four by Four Midwest Invitational Exhibit that will open next year at the Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri.
“It will open in the fall of next year and feature artists from the four neighboring states to Missouri,” she said.
Luckett is currently taking a little time off from her job at UCA to serve as an artist-in-residence at Harvester Arts in Wichita, Kansas, where she is creating her installation Sandyland. The exhibit will open Friday.
When she is not working, Luckett said, she enjoys road-tripping.
“I travel all over the United States. I have my Honda Element set up with a mattress in the back where the backseats should go. I spend the night wherever the road leads me,” she said.
“My love for this country is different than being patriotic. I watch the country geographically transform from place to place,” Luckett said.
“I stop and talk to the locals. I usually initiate the conversation. I’m all about meeting people. It’s amazing,” she said.
“I love road-tripping,” she said. “I am never afraid.
“I used to ride a motorcycle. Then when I was about 45, my vision began to change, and I decided it was time to give it up.”
Luckett has one son, Vance Barber, 30, who lives in New York.