The College of Architecture, Art and Design at Mississippi State University has a Faculty Exhibition at the Visual Arts Center Gallery on 808 University Drive. The gallery will run from Aug. 30 to Oct. 28 and is open to all visitors Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
The Faculty Exhibition showcases a large variety of mediums and styles of art from professors at MSU.
Further, the Gallery is free to attend and centrally located between campus and the Cotton District. The Exhibition is next to the walking bridge, so students walking to or from class can stop by to check out some of the interesting art MSU professors have made.
Set in a creaky old house in the Cotton District, the gallery is a perfectly quaint location for a show. When I was there, two students were running the gallery and showed me around. When asked about the exhibition, one art major, Jordan Anderson, said, “It’s a small show, but there is some really powerful stuff here.”
And indeed there was a lot of powerful work. There are chairs with antique shotguns for arms, political commentary on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, ceramic sake sets and at least a dozen other pieces equally interesting.
Another student working at the gallery, interior design and art major Sarah Kilpatrick, was particularly struck by Brent Funderburk’s watercolor painting.
“Brent’s are always magical,” she said, “That’s the only way I can describe them.”
Among other pieces at the gallery is a charcoal drawing by Tim McCourt that, at first glance, looks like a photograph of a night sky. I later found out McCourt’s piece was actually a sort of map of Los Angeles, or a representation of what the stars look like positioned above the city.
Another work that caught my attention was the muslin soft sculpture that is sewn together in a quilt pattern. Robert Ring, the exhibit coordinator for the art department, said he likes the way the textural element of the sculpture and the way it seems to pull in the light.
When asked what he hoped students or visitors take away from the gallery, Ring said, “I hope visitors get to see the diverse work that the faculty do. There is such a rich variety of work here.”