Art grad students present work in annual exhibition
Each year, graduate students studying in USU’s Master of Fine Arts program present their work in a mixed-media exhibition.
Filled with a diverse array of pieces the students have recently created in their studios, this year’s exhibit will consist of pieces of sculpture, ceramics, drawing and painting, printmaking, photography and graphic design, according to USU printmaking professor Kathy Puzey, who also oversees use of the gallery space to be used in the exhibition.
“At a show like this you get variety. You get all of them coming together,” Puzey said. “It is a nice merging of all the different mediums.”
Puzey said the exhibit, which opened to the public on Oct. 21 in Gallery 102 of the Chase Fine Arts Center and will be open each day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. until Nov. 1, provides graduate students a valuable chance to gain experience preparing every aspect of an exhibition-style display.
“It’s a great opportunity for the graduate students. They actually are in charge of every facet of this exhibit,” Puzey said. “It’s a great opportunity for them to have that experience, basically installing that exhibit on their own.”
Each graduate student is expected to put on a solo exhibition at the end of their studies within the program in which they must fill the entire gallery space with their own work. Puzey said this annual exhibit helps them to prepare for their individual thesis shows.
“An opportunity like this actually gives them a taste of what filling the entire gallery space with their own work will be like,” she said.
Audrey Shakespear, a second-year graduate student studying sculpture, who will present a selection of her work in the exhibit, said her experience in last year’s show was beneficial to her studies.
“It’s different seeing your work in a professional setting rather than in your studio,” Shakespear said. “It’s wonderful to get feedback from other disciplines about your work.”
Shakespear said among the pieces of work she may put on display in this year’s show are a marble sculpture, a stone carving and a geometric “wall piece.”
Puzey said the exhibit not only offers many opportunities for the graduate students whose work is on display, but also for those who visit the show.
“This is a chance for the public to see the strong work of our graduate students,” she said.
Differing from the completed package of work students display in their thesis exhibit, Shakespear said this show offers a glimpse into the ongoing process of creation that is currently happening in the various art studios on campus.
“It’s fun to see the different ideas everyone is working with at the time,” she said. “Usually everyone is still working on these ideas, they are still developing them. It’s pretty exciting to walk through a show like that.”
After the graduate exhibit is over, undergraduate students in the fine arts program will put on a similar showing of their work, Puzey said.
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