Twelve professors from the Department of Art have had the opportunity to showcase their own work during the 57th Annual Faculty Exhibit.
The exhibit began Jan. 30 and will continue until March 3 in the Gaddis Geeslin Gallery. The faculty members being showcased include Jack Barnosky, Kate Borcherding, Chuck Drumm, Rebecca Finley, Michael Henderson, Caleb Jackson, Taehee Kim, Cynthia Reid, Cesar Rivera, Tony Shipp, Mica Smith, and Anthony Watkins. The opening reception and panel discussions took place Feb. 2, where each faculty member spoke about their personal development as artists and answered questions from art students.
Jack Barnosky’s field of art deals with photographs developed in a dark room. His pieces in the showcase are called “Earthman and Pentecostas”. Both works were made for an exhibition in Europe that Barnosky was invited to. His theme was the separation of church and state.
“I don’t normally work with an idea and go from there,” Barnosky said. “I had to challenge myself to make an image that said something about the separation of church and state.”
Rebecca Finley is a digital photographer and professor who showcased three photographs. “Cultural Eutrophication” is her piece from a series about construction in The Woodlands. Eutrophication is an alga that forms from the mixture of heat and run-off from construction.
“The Woodlands has been over developed since Exon came. There are no trees left.” Finely said. “It’s this community planned around nature, and they’re completely destroying the nature. They’re building all these apartment complexes and office spaces, but nobody has come and used them because the oil industry took a nose dive. So now they’re just there.”
Finley’s other two pieces are her responses to the current political climate.
“They’re three different pieces but they all deal with frustration and from feeling like there’s a lot of stuff happening, and I just want to scream.” Finley said. “I don’t have any way to talk about it, so I thought I would use my camera as my voice. They were pieces that I needed to make, and I am still not sure how I feel about them.”
During the panel discussion, the faculty told stories of how they discovered art in their early childhood. Cesar Rivera, a professor of Graphic Design said when he was a child his brother was the one who recognized Rivera’s talent.
“He told my mom ‘He doesn’t realize that not everybody can do what he does.’” Rivera said. “At that point my mom started fostering that ability by purchasing anything for me, such as pencils and paints. It was difficult for her because she was a single mom raising two boys.”
Finley said when she was 8 her mother bought her an Avon camera.
“I immediately started taking pictures of everything. My dolls, the toilet flushing, I even dressed my little brother up and took pictures of him.” Finley said. “I’m pretty lucky that my parents would just take the film to the drug store and get it developed without event looking at it, because I think a lot of parents would have said ‘We’re wasting money, this is a picture of the toilet flushing.’”
Finley said she didn’t think of herself as an artist until she was an undergrad and she had a mentor who helped her see that she was an artist, and she was doing the right thing.
Near the end of the panel discussion the faculty were asked what was the one thing they wanted their students to learn about the most.
“Rules – there are none in art.” Barnosky said. “There’s no box to think outside of because there is no box. No one else can make your work, only you. Be proud of that.”