Saturday, March 16 was the opening reception of the Student Juried Exhibition, a collection of artwork submitted by Houghton students and selected by visiting artist Kevin Shook. Shook is an Associate Professor of Art & Art History at Birmingham-Southern College, and specializes in printmaking and digital media. In addition to selecting which of the submitted artworks would be displayed in the show, Shook also chose at least ten pieces to be awarded with between $25 and $200. Additional awards were given by President Mullen, the First Gentleman, and various art faculty members.
Each student was allowed to submit up to five works, and many took full advantage. In the days preceding the show, canvases and prints could be seen through the windows of the gallery piled against walls and pedestals, awaiting Shook’s judgment and the skilled hands of Gallery Director Renee Roberts and her assistants to arrange the show. Submission was not limited to art majors; any students on campus interested in art could submit their pieces. The tremendous response from students, as well as the open submission policy, resulted in a full, vibrant, and incredibly diverse show.
Unlike Ortlip Gallery exhibitions in the past, including previous Student Juried Exhibitions, this year’s show possesses very few common threads throughout the pieces. The color schemes are varied and disconnected. The mediums range from woodworking and ceramics to painting and drawing, and from book-making and textile art to printmaking and graphic design. And the pieces vary in size; they are sketch-pad sized and teapot-sized, they are teeny tiny and they are monumental. So perhaps it is fitting that the central focus of the room—the movable wall containing the title of the show—is painted in flashy fuchsia, a color not found in any other piece in the room. And that hanging upon that wall is a lovely abstract oil painting by Lindsay Burgher, which is made up of greens, yellows, blues, pinks, and oranges—representing in one work the splashes of color seen in different works throughout the room.
The medley of submissions is also accurately represented by the array of awards presented. The Presidential Purchase Award and the First Gentleman’s Purchase Award went to pieces of two different media, Katelyn Kloos’ woodblock print Misty Morning in County Cork and Megan Loghry’s ceramics piece Great Balls of Fire, respectively. The Moss Award for 3rd Place went to a colorful oil painting entitled Bad Company by Kelly Ormsby. Rebecca Dygert’s sweet and wistful litho The
First Dance took home the Alumni Award for 2nd Place. Art Gallery, the witty watercolor by Megan Tennant, received the Paul Maxwell Memorial Award for 1st Place. And the Ortlip Award for Best in Show was presented to Alexandra Hood’s beautiful and elegiac litho, In Time. Several other awards were given, representing a small percentage of the assortment of submissions from package design all the way to photography.
The Student Juried Exhibition will be on display in the Ortlip Gallery until April 18. All students are encouraged to take the time to swing by and check it out. Find out which other submissions won awards, take in the beauty of all the pieces of art, and appreciate the talent and hard work of fellow Houghton students.