U professor judges undergraduate artwork
Brian Snapp, a ceramics and 3-D design professor at the University of Utah traveled to Utah State University to judge undergraduate art students who are working for an upcoming student exhibition.
“I am jurying work that I feel should be in shows,” Snapp said. “My job is to select work that I think shows an overall feel for what is going on at USU in the art department and to look at the work for an amount of quality, risk taking and content.”
Dan Murphy, an assistant professor of the art department, said the judging of undergraduate artwork is an annual event.
John Neeley, art department head, said since 1982 the exhibition has been held in the Tippetts Gallery. He said the exhibition has been going on since the art department formed in the 1920s.
“The undergraduate exhibition is organized and ran by students with the help of staff,” Neeley said. “It’s always really interesting to have an outside juror and [the juror] will inevitably have a different take on the artwork.”
He said the exhibition is an opportunity for the public to see what art students create as well as an important opportunity for the art students.
“This is what they’ll do,” Neeley said of the art students after they graduate.
Snapp said he has judged before and said he believes a student art exhibit of undergraduate work is sometimes about assignment or process and sometimes the student is lucky to be given enough lateral movement to really invest their own ideas into their work.
Murphy said he and Neeley chose Snapp, who has artwork in international exhibits, to judge the artwork.
Snapp said he has seen everything from “real beginning work” to upper level senior work and everything in between.
“I am first off looking for work that interests me,” he said. “There has to be something going on [in the piece] that I find intriguing. It must have this as well as quality and presentation.”
He said he saw some really nice work in here but it was not presented well and that is difficult because it takes away from what would have been a really nice work.
Snapp said he is looking to be as diverse as he can be because he knows there are many different disciplines at USU.
“I try to get work from each of those disciplines in the department,” he said.
He commented on a work by Jed Maddocks and said that he liked the medium of the print. He said the piece was “just wonderful” because it was fun and humorous, and it also had a depth and playfulness not often seen.
Snapp said it was a nice scale and was unusual to see childlike drawing at this scale. Being so large, it charged the piece with a different kind of energy and meaning, he said.
“Of all the works I have seen in here it is the most unique,” Snapp said. “I enjoy the work and spending time with it. The challenge of doing something of this scale with a print like this is a pretty great challenge.”
Snapp said if someone walks into a room that has different pieces, they will notice pieces like this one and want to participate longer with them.
“That is ultimately what you want your work to do,” he said. “The main thing about a student exhibition for me is that it is meant to be a celebration for the work that the students are producing.”
As a juror, it becomes less about personal opinions and more about getting a feel for students’ participation of art at the university, he said.
Snapp said ultimately some personal biases can’t be overcome, but for the most part he tries to keep himself out of the judging on an emotional level.
“I love teaching art and being an art teacher it is especially difficult sometimes to keep emotion out of it,” he said. “But I want to give students all the encouragement that I can because they don’t get it much from the outside world.”
Neeley said a closing reception for the exhibit will be held Nov. 14 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Tippetts Gallery.
-kassrobison@cc.usu.edu