The Art and Design Department at the University of Indianapolis will be opening up its new art annex with the Ceramics Past and Present Exhibition. The exhibit will be on display from Oct. 6 to Oct. 29 and will feature the work of Assistant Professor Barry Barnes, Professor Emeritus Dee Schaad, alumni and current students, according to uindy.edu. Barnes said students of any major can have their work shown in the exhibition.
The ceramics exhibition will be the event that introduces the new Art Annex, according to UIndy Events. The event will have both functional and sculptural ceramics being shown, according to Barnes. He said the Art Annex will have the name of Schaad, being named the Dee Schaad Student Gallery.
This exhibition is a part of the Indiana Clay Conference, which Barnes said reached out to him asking if he wanted to make the exhibition coordinate with that event. This conference is the second state-wide biennial clay conference and is open to everyone, including non-Indiana residents, according to indianaclayconference.com. Barnes said the exhibition being a part of the Indiana Clay Conference will help spread the word to people from outside the UIndy community. The Indiana Clay Conference took place Oct. 8 and 9, with the gallery reception for the UIndy Ceramics exhibition being on the evening of Oct. 8, according to indianaclayconference.com.
“They approached me over the summer to inquire if I would like to put the show together that would coordinate with the Indiana ceramics conference, which is the same weekend that the show opens,” Barnes said. “So we’ll have people from out of town, people that are interested in ceramics, who will be coming over.”
Schaad worked at UIndy for 38 years while Barnes has been here for eight, according to Barnes. This exhibition will be a way to include the work of students from those 46 years and include work from a variety of different UIndy alumni and current students, according to Barnes.
“It’s really a celebration of ceramics at UIndy over the last 45 years,” Barnes said. “For us in the art department it’s a great chance to celebrate the expansion. This increased more space for the entire art department.”
Barnes said that this exhibition will help the department recruit more students and introduce people to the Art Annex. He says that the exhibition will let people know what work they are doing in the art department.
“I think many people don’t know what this building is yet, like at the beginning of the semester I had students miss the first days because they couldn’t find the Art Annex,” Barnes said. “A lot of it is just publicity and to get the word out that we’re over here, kind of introduce people to what this building is about as well because we started a sculpture program a few years ago so the other side of the space is for that. So it’s really to just let people know what we’re doing over here.”
The new Art Annex will allow students to have more space to do their work, according to Schaad. He said that when he taught at UIndy, students did not have enough space nor were the facilities as nice as they are currently. He said that it is important for art students to have the space to keep their work, and it is difficult for students when they do not have that space available to them.
“In the new annex, space is doubled and you really need that to store your things,” Schaad said. “It’s hard to do a quantity of work without space and it’s certainly difficult to do pieces of any size without space, so this is going to make a huge difference.”
