Art show displays Individuality

The “Art by Independents” gallery show reception took place from 4-6 p.m., Friday, in Memorial Hall’s Main Gallery. The show is to remain on display through Friday. It was put on by the seniors of the art department as a way to showcase their art to the public. These seniors include Rob Heckman of Crawford, Christina Ferrero of Bayard, Julya Briseno of Kenosha, Wis., and Macee Kellner of Bucklin, Kan.

The meaning behind “Independents” was to express their individuality pertaining to their artwork, and each of the seniors contributed their own style of art to the show.

The art pieces displayed in the showcase ranged from oil paintings to stain glass works. There were also displays of water color, adobe illustrator, mixed media, and photography. The art show was a salon style display, which means that all works shown were displayed on one side of the room. Despite using only one side of the gallery, the display took 14 hours to hang.

“It was a ton of work,” Ferrero said. “It was a great experience for learning how to hang the artwork and for working with other artists as well.”

Ferrero was responsible for quite a bit of work on display, including some untitled glass works and some oil works on canvas. The majority of her art pieces were done within the last year or two. The newest painting of Ferrero barely had time to dry before being hung for the show.

Briseno possessed the least amount of work out of the four seniors because the course was just a requirement for an internship for her. She described a picture she painted of her friend standing up holding a spider and gave detail of how the picture was be put together.

“I wanted to crop the legs out and just keep the hands, but Mary Donahue said she felt I should keep the whole thing,” Briseno said. “So, she’s kind of the one who inspired me to go through with the whole picture.”

She explained how long that piece took to finish, mentioning that it took quite a bit of time to dry because it was an oil painting.