Millsaps students often explore partnerships between seemingly separate fields, even within their own majors. For studio arts major Mary Noble Howard, the partnership between traditional and digital arts opened the door for hands-on research through Millsaps’ honors program.
Howard, the daughter of two alumni, grew up in Ridgeland, Mississippi, and was set on going anywhere else but Millsaps. Her older sister Lindsey ’22 encouraged her to sit in on a class, and Howard says she immediately felt known and cared for by faculty and students alike. She enrolled at Millsaps intent on studying the arts.
Millsaps’ art department has felt her dedication. Howard served as a studio and gallery assistant under Department Chair Sue Carrie Drummond for three years and as a Ford Fellow for the art department in her junior year. She also served as president of the art club for two years. Even outside the department, Howard had art on her mind.
“All my classes hold a special place in my heart,” she says, “because they have each contributed something unique to my development as an artist.”
Howard joined the honors program at Millsaps in November 2022, ready to embark on original research and complete a thesis-level project in the studio arts. She chose Assistant Professor of Art Eric Charlton as her advisor.
Throughout her undergraduate education, Howard’s comfort zone was in Millsaps’ woodshop and sculpture studios, using her hands to paint, pour and shape the pieces in her portfolio. Charlton encouraged her to stretch past that comfort zone and pursue digital fabrication in her research, a process often used in the production of large objects, such as furniture. Transitioning to the digital lab and exploring the overlap between traditional sculpture and digital production was a unique challenge—but after 15 months of research, production and review, her finished honors project, entitled “Sit Happens,” filled the Hall Gallery in Millsaps’ Windgate Visual Arts Center.
“As an artist working today, I struggle with the significance of digital technology,” her artist statement read.
“I seek to determine the value of digital fabrication within the artistic process and when the artist’s hand becomes involved…. Where do efficiency and productivity offer assistance or get in the way of artistic expression?”
For her research, Howard produced three separate chairs, cutting out their parts using a computer numerical control (CNC) machine and then assembling the chairs by hand. While working through the challenges as she created each chair, Howard explored how machine and artist may complement one another in the creative process.
Howard learned to use the machine, designing and preparing the parts with the unfamiliar software. She says she learned to lean into the differences she observed between herself and the technology.
In Howard’s practice, the process of creating a piece is itself part of the art. In her artist statement, she wrote: “I enter into a partnership with each of my tools and materials, and in doing so we create a product that would be impossible to fabricate without both parties participating.”
“Sit Happens” puts that partnership and process at its forefront. In addition to the chairs in the center of the Hall Gallery, printed photos hung on the walls, each documenting how the chairs came together. Howard also shared the “scraps” from production: plywood sheets with cutouts missing, cutouts that made up the very chairs in the gallery’s center.
“This body of work is about process,” Howard says. Her research and the artwork that came from it represent Howard’s artistic process, as well as the different art forms, traditional and digital, that allowed her to create “Sit Happens.”
“These processes can work together. You either work with the technology you have, or you work against it.”
In her February 1 artist talk about the show, Howard recognized the challenges she faced in navigating the CNC and its software. The three chairs required strict process and assembly, while Howard’s artistic instincts leaned towards process-based experimentation.
At the project’s end, she was able to follow her instinct in combination with the new skills she had learned. She made a fourth and final piece for “Sit Happens:” a side table called “It Stacks Up,” made of wooden beams, puzzle pieces cut with the CNC, and cut glass she sourced in Mississippi.
The table references the experience of how new and learned skills “fit together” in an artist’s work. The artist may expect things to fit together like a puzzle—but sometimes the work comes together differently. For Howard, those outcomes are an integral part of her practice.
Howard’s passion for the arts and commitment to exploring new partnerships set her up for success at Millsaps and beyond. She has received several awards in the arts at Millsaps, including special recognition for her honors project. In October 2023, Howard was one of six students selected to present her honors research at the Southeastern College Art Conference in Richmond, Virginia.
“There have been countless opportunities that I have had the joy of taking part in,” Howard says, “and they all would not have been possible without Millsaps and its amazing community of faculty, staff, students and alumni.”
As she approaches graduation, Howard says she’s looking for a career that allows her to continue following her artistic pursuits, and to use her creative abilities for the benefit of others. Having studied at Millsaps, she knows that her passion and skill can flourish in many different fields.
“I can say with full confidence that I am prepared for my future career because of what Millsaps has instilled in me.”