Some of the art pieces created by students, artist featured from left to right: Claire Howerton, Mariah Crisafulli and Ingrid Myers. Joe Addison // AS Review
By Charlene Davatos
Fourteen students unveiled their artwork to the public on Thursday, Nov. 21 in the Viking Union Gallery’s opening reception for the “Estate Italiana” [italian summer] exhibit. The exhibit had been open since Nov. 18, and students were excited for the opportunity to invite family and friends to a formal opening.
“Estate Italiana” is a collection of photos, paintings, drawings, installation pieces, digital media and sketches created for the Arts of Italy Global Learning Course this past summer 2019. The students drew inspiration from the classical and modern art and architecture that were studied as part of the study abroad aspect of the course.
The professor of the course, Cara Jaye, curated the exhibit alongside the student artists. Jaye gave her students the prompts, stranger in the journey, mythical figures and mapping the city for the pieces exhibited.
“Those prompts are pretty carefully considered,” Jaye said. “They’re based on where we go and what we see in Italy. We do a lot of studies of specific pieces and readings pertained in our travel.”
This year, the students were in Italy during the Venice Biennale.
“It’s a really large exhibit of contemporary art that happens every other year in Venice. It’s the world’s largest and oldest art fair,” Jaye said.
Artists featured in the show were not only students in the art studio major, but also students from other majors including speech pathology, business and English.
“It’s a little bit different than other class group shows,” VU Gallery Director Newt Warren said. “It’s not just art students making work to show other art students, it’s a bit of a broader collection of work and therefore invites a broader audience to come see it.”
The exhibit is the first student collection to be shown in the newly reopened VU Gallery, which had its first show featuring Local Artist Hal Turman this past October.
“In past years we’ve usually had it in our own small gallery in the art building, which we call the B Gallery,” Jaye said.
Jaye applied to have the final course artwork be exhibited at the VU Gallery after deciding that it’d be a good opportunity for more students from all over campus to see the artwork.
“It has better visibility,” she said. “I don’t think many people outside of [the art] department go in the B Gallery.”
Emma Bjornsrud, an employee at the VU info desk, came into the gallery during the opening reception, after hearing about the student art displayed.
“I definitely enjoy student art and just seeing the amazing talent of my peers that you’d never even know until you come down and see the examples all on the wall is super amazing,” Bjornsrud said.
She said she’d been in the B Gallery before, but it seemed a bit more separated from the rest of campus.
“This is a lot more accessible to the general students,” Bjornsrud said.
Bjornsrud said she was a particular fan of the agamographs, a type of drawing or painting that reveals different images when revealed at different angles, by Cody Robinson.
Robinson’s agamographs spliced two different photos together, with a color photo being seen from one angle and a black and white photo being seen from another
“I feel like the way that it’s laid out is really cool,” Bjornsrud said. “Just to come in and see it from one perspective, and then have to walk around it and figure out the other way it’s laid out as well is just amazing.”
Robinsin, who is majoring in business, said that the exhibit was exciting for him, as he’d never had the opportunity to appear in a gallery before.
“Given the position of mine, plenty of people are coming in and seeing it, a lot of my friends are, as well as fellow students that were on the trip. There’s a lot of encouragement within each one of us about all our arts,” Robinson said.
The opening reception had a lively audience, with students inviting both friends and family to come see their work on display.
Kenn Bill came to support his daughter Leilana Bill, who both exhibited art in the gallery and played a large role in curating the show alongside Jaye.
“I think there’s a wide variety of art,” Kenn Bill said. “Italy is such a melting pot of artists. You have so many different talents and styles it’s really fascinating. There’s so much talent that these kids have that’s really amazing.”
Leilana Bill also wrote the wall text describing the prompts for the pieces featured in the exhibit.
“I was one of the only [students] that was an art history major, and not studio art,” Leilana said.
She was more excited to see people move around the space than have her art displayed.
“That’s a little nerve racking because I don’t really make a lot of artwork, or artwork to have people look at,” she said. “It’s nice to see people move around the space and like it and be able to follow how it was set up and curated.”
Students in the studio art program came to the show to support their colleagues and draw inspiration.
Megan Wallace came to the show after having just studied abroad for an art course in France.
“It’s a good conglomerate of people [at the exhibit opening],” Wallace said.
Wallace said she really enjoyed the sketchbooks laid out on the table in the middle of the room.
“In many cases those sketchbooks are personal sketchbooks,” Warren explained. “So they are open to pages chosen by the students themselves … as you’re walking through the space, when you get to the sketchbooks, you can see some of the process and some of the drawing studies that [the students] did.”
“It’s a really cool way to show everyone’s work,” Wallace said. “When you have the sketches in preparatory versus the final form on the wall.”
Jaye said that it was exciting to see everything displayed in their final form after having progress critiques and discussions in class.
Most students had at least two works of art in the exhibit, with works only being cut for space or if the students had preferred their stronger pieces in the exhibit, Jaye said.
“I was excited to see many of the paintings and drawings people made, but it’s more about getting everything together and seeing how everything builds on each other,” she said.
One example of a piece that Jaye didn’t see the full effect of until the gallery opened was Claire Howerton’s installation piece composed of almost 400 paper dolls.
Warren said that Howerton had to install each individual doll on the wall herself.
“It was something that no attendant or myself could help her out with because it’s an installation work. I think her piece took somewhere around five hours, maybe four to install,” Warren said.
Warren said that she really wanted to work with the artists showing in order to make their vision come alive and that it’s been a team effort between her, the artists and the VU Gallery attendants to put shows like “Estate Italiana” together.
“The VU Gallery doesn’t only show student work, we also show artists from the community and pretty much everywhere, but I wanted to focus on providing more opportunities for the Western community to showcase their artwork here,” Warren said.
“Estate Italiana” will continue to run in the VU Gallery until Dec. 6.