College students lives are complicated as it is. They walk to class everyday with their minds full of things like homework, midterms, work, friends and relationships. So, naturally, when on campus they’re not thinking of art. To take a break from daily stresses, stop at the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition at Hopkins Hall Gallery.
Each year a panel of judges chooses the best artwork from undergraduates to be presented at the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition. Hopkins Hall Gallery and Corridor is hosting the exhibition until Friday.
“Hopkins Gallery Space and Corridor area is a great space and a wonderful resource for OSU and particularly for visiting artists, art students and faculty displays,” said Larry Williamson Jr., director of the Frank W. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center.
“The Hopkins gallery and corridor area is one of the few places on OSU’s campus where students, faculty, staff and visiting artists can artistically express their creative genius in a location (specifically) for art.”
Curator Prudence Gill said the mission is to service a gallery within the College of the Arts to show new work each year by department of art faculty. All exhibitions at the gallery are free and open to the public.
Hopkins Hall Gallery has special exhibitions that reach across campus in a cross-disciplinary approach, bringing together departments and institutions within the university.
“The Gallery is used often as a teaching tool, as a laboratory where professors can bring their classes to discuss art and discuss ways of seeing art and ways of understanding art,” Gill said.
While the gallery hosts work by visiting artists, lecturers, newly hired faculty, group and juried student exhibitions, the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition is the only formal show for undergraduate students to showcase their work. Gill said 250 to 300 pieces were submitted this year and 76 pieces were accepted by the jury.
The Student Art League chooses new members for the jury each year. This year it was Joe Houston, curator for the Columbus Museum of Art, Ken Emerick of the Ohio Arts Council and Natalie Marsh, curator of the Columbus College of Art and Design.
OSU senior Ashley Brook has been president of the Student Art League for three years.
For the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, she was responsible for handling the public relations and finances.
The work featured in the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition was created for a show she had at Larry’s Bar in December 2005. Although she is an art and technology major, she used mixed media and collages for the two pieces featured in the exhibition.
Brook said “Until Six” started out as nothing, then she wrote some poems on a canvas, used paint and glued cards, hearts, rabbits and other “random objects.” She said she tried to make an emotional landscape, which existed only in her head.
“Hurricane” was the last piece she did the night before the show. Feeling the pressure of a show at Larry’s, and not enough pieces, Brook started ripping out all of the pages in a book that said “the end.” Each page had drawings of tidal waves and boats, and she started pasting them to a canvas. Among other things, she used hole reinforcers, swimming instructions and a picture she drew in Miami. “Hurricane” tries to show the perceived pressure that people put on themselves.
“(It is the) little things that don’t matter, and that you have no control over, but they bother you,” she said. “It’s like a balancing act that you do in your head.”
She finds inspiration for painting from her life experiences or what is occupying her mind at the time. Her inspiration evolves from a simple drawing or a line. By listening to music when she paints, Brook said she is able to capture a mood with some sort of idea in it.
“I’m so proud of the exhibition because it is such a great show,” Brook said.
While she said she is confident in her art work, Brook said she was surprised at what the jury picked.
“The piece I felt was the strongest didn’t get in,” she said. However, both Brook and Gill agree that all juries are different.
“I think you will see that (there are) works shine regardless, and that there is also a unique aspect to every Juried Exhibition that makes it exciting to see what each year’s jury has picked,” Gill said.
Brook said her future career could be as an art teacher, or in film, or in gallery work.
“I am interested in a lot of things, all I really want is to be able to express myself creatively and make money doing it,” she said. “I don’t have a dream job, it’s more of a dream life, as long as I am happy and supporting myself that is fine.”
