The Department of Art’s 2002 Alumni Exhibition runs from Oct. 9-24 and contains artwork from 17 Mississippi State art alumni. The show contains work from several disciplines, including pottery, multimedia hangings, fabric pillows, paintings, some graphic design work and photography. The result of the wide array of work in this exhibition is an exciting mix of medias and textures. Alexander Stelioes-Wills is the gallery’s curator as well as a professor in the art department. His gallery management class positioned and hung all of the artwork in this exhibition.
“It’s a very attractive show,” Stelioes-Wills said. “In order to hang and curate the show, I have to like every piece of art. You have to be able to hang every piece to its advantage; you can only do that if you can put yourself into the shoes of each of the artists.”
The majority of the show’s artwork consists of oil paintings, ranging from landscapes to portraits, most of which show realistic human figures or still lives.
“It is somewhat surprising that the show is so dominated by painters,” Stelioes-Wills said. “Graphic designers’ careers are less geared toward this kind of thing; submitting works to competitions and exhibitions are not a normal part of graphic designers’ professional lives.”
Some of the aforementioned paintings are abstract color relationships while others contain abstract elements mixed with figure studies or loose suggestions of human figures. The paintings are predominantly oil-based and have a wide variety of textures. The strongest pieces in the show include Bart Galloway’s portraits, Cecily Hill’s abstracted figure and Amie Oliver’s wall hangings. These materials in these artists’ paintings range from glossy and glazed oil to thick and almost crudely crafted color swatches to transparent mixtures of black and metallic paints.
The three sets of photographs are also quite strong. They consist mainly of black and white photography and nicely contrast the bright colors contained in the show’s paintings. The arrangement of these paintings and photographs adds a great deal to the show by challenging the eyes to adjust to each piece and to read it in its own setting. While the arrangement seems arbitrary at places, it adds to the overall idea that the show is a body of work from many artists who have different styles, media and themes that they wish to communicate through their artwork.
The placement of two sets of pottery and one set of fabric pillows create a nice sense of physicality in juxtaposition with the hanging paintings and photography. The pottery is especially nice. Both sets of this work are in earth tones or muted primary colors, but Gammill’s work is glazed and Rood’s works are not.
Stelioes-Wills complimented the variety of works within the show.
“This exhibit is interesting for art department students to see because they get to see what the alumni are up to,” Stelioes-Wills said. “This show is also interesting for alumni to see because working in the fine arts is not something you can usually explain when catching up with old classmates on their careers. You generally can’t show people your artwork at college reunions or explain your work like lawyers and business people explain theirs. This show is a different picture of people pursuing a different type of success.”
The opening reception for this exhibition occurs at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 11 in honor of the alumni and the juror, Professor Michael A. Dorsey of East Carolina University. Dorsey taught in Mississippi State’s art department from 1973 to 1991 and was the department head from 1982 to 1991. He will give a slide lecture entitled “Life, Death and Redemption in the Beauty Salon” in the McComas Hall Art Gallery at 4 p.m. on Oct. 10, and will also announce the exhibition’s award winners at 8:15 p.m. on Friday night, during the reception. Both the slide show and the exhibition are free of charge and open to the public.