Biographical Text
Professor Emeritus of Art Warren Cameron Dennis (September 26, 1927-) was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He received a B.A. degree in art from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg in 1953. In 1955 he received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Mississippi in Oxford. During the summer of 1950, he studied painting at the University of Minnesota in Duluth with renowned Japanese-American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi. While at the University of Mississippi he studied with visiting artists Jack Tworkov, painter, and David Smith, sculptor. From 1955 to 1965, Professor Dennis was the head of the Art Department at Judson College in Marion, Alabama. He was appointed to Appalachian State University in 1965. From 1980 to1984, Professor Dennis served as chair of the Appalachian State Department of Art. He was one of the original developers of the Appalachian-New York Loft Program and was campus director of the Loft for a number of years. In addition, he spent three separate semesters (in 1985, '89, and '93) and the summer term of 1982 in New York City as resident director of the Loft. In 1977-78, he was awarded the first scholarly leave ever granted by the Department of Art. In the summer of 1985 and again in 1987, he organized and directed "Art in Europe," Appalachian's Study Abroad Program, designed to allow students to study the great art of Europe in such places as Florence, Rome, Venice, Paris and Amsterdam. Dennis is an exhibiting artist whose paintings are in public and private collections all over the United States, including the Allan Stone Gallery in NYC, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, the Mississippi Museum in Jackson, and the Hickory Museum of Art in North Carolina. He has had two large one-person exhibits in Appalachian's Catherine Smith Gallery: "A Thirty-Year Retrospective" in 1980 and "1980 Forward" in 1992. His solo exhibitions total well over fifty, and he has participated in numerous group and competitive exhibits throughout the country. Warren Dennis retired from Appalachian State in January 1994, receiving the rank of professor emeritus at that time. He immediately began the full-time pursuit of his art career and has been very busy painting and arranging exhibits. He spent one summer term in 2003 as resident director of the Appalachian House in Washington, DC. In 2002, Dennis was invited to show his painting "The Swing" in "True Colors: Meditations on the American Spirit," an exhibition organized by the Meridian International center, Washington, DC as a response by artists to the events of September 11, 2001. The show opened in February 2002, in Washington, and throughout the next three years it toured the United States and traveled abroad to such places as Berlin, Germany; Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey; Belfast, Northern Ireland; Bratislava, Slovakia; and Tirana, Albania. Warren Dennis's mural "The Park," a 7' x 18' work on three panels, completed in 2001, now hangs in the Burke Mission station in Morganton, NC—a gift of the artists and a permanent installation. Three North Carolina galleries currently represent him: Carlton Art Gallery in Banner Elk, New Elements Gallery in Wilmington, and Art Source in Raleigh. Dennis continues to live in Boone with his wife, Dr. Mary Kate Lowrey Dennis, who has retired from teaching in the Appalachian State English Department. They have four children: Anna Kathryn Sartin of Rock Hill, South Carolina; Warren Cameron III of Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Edwin Lowrey of Clyde, North Carolina; and Martha Rosamond of Athens, Georgia. They also have six grandchildren: Marianna Sartin of Charlotte, North Carolina; Kathryn Sartin of Rock Hill, South Carolina; Ian Dennis of Asheville, North Carolina; Max Dennis of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Andrew and Michael Dennis of Clyde, North Carolina. Sources: Appalachian State University files and long association. Richard Howe
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