Associate Professor of Art and Design
339 Fine Arts Center // x3707 // ignatius.widiapradja@drake.edu
Ignatius Widiapradja's website > Moberg Gallery >
Professor Ignatius Widiapradja has been teaching at Drake since 1985. He has taught studio courses in Painting, Drawing, 2 Dimensional Design, and Digital Photography and Editing. In 2001, Professor Widiapradja established an art and design program for Maranatha Christian University in Indonesia. In the first few years since the inception, he returned to Indonesia a couple of times a year to give the faculty workshops in various pedagogical methods about teaching art and design studio courses, advise the college about the academic curriculum, course content, studio facilities, and other matters pertinent to the maintenance and development of the art and design program.
Professor Widiapradja’s current creative works are primarily in painting and digital print. In his works, the articulation of images and spatial construction form a cohesive multidimensional reality that exhibit a state of constant flux. It is the mapping of overlapping memories, future projections and multi dimensional processes of awareness. In our memories, images, events, feelings, desire, and space happen simultaneously and are inseparable and intertwined. They are mosaics of space-time continuum. Oswald Spengler explained in The Decline of the West, that space is “a sign and expression of the most elemental and powerful symbol, of life itself…A deep identity unites the awakening of the soul, its birth into clear existence in the name of culture, with the sudden realization of distance and time, the birth of its outer world through the symbol of extension; and henceforth this symbol is and remain the prime symbol of the life, imparting it its specific style and the historical form in which it progressively actualizes its inward possibility.”
Professor Widiapradja has exhibited his works in competitive and invitational exhibitions nationally and in selected international invitational exhibitions in Southeast Asia, Canada, New Zealand, and Austria. His works have been exhibited in selected museums and galleries such as the Museum of Contemporary Craft, New York City; Kunstlerhaus Palais, Bregensz, Austria; and University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu.
In addition to his paintings and digital prints, Professor Widiapradja has also done graphic design projects for selected clients. His design works range from simple invitations, magazine advertisements and posters to extensive promotional brochures.
Besides his academic and creative activities, from 2001 to 2008, Professor Widiapradja was the founder and president of Srivijaya International, LLC, an importing company specializing in Asian antiques and arts, and owner of Padma Gallery, the first gallery in Iowa featuring Asian antiques and cultural artifacts. He has travelled extensively in Europe, Asia, and Australia. He has also lived for an extended period of time in Italy and Indonesia.
