Exhibit to feature the artwork of former UIndy students
Coming soon to the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center Art Gallery is a unique display of paintings featuring University of Indianapolis Department of Art and Design alumni. The exhibit, which opened Feb. 21, will continue through March 18 and is free to the public.
The exhibition will include the paintings of former UIndy students who are currently living and working as artists. Those featured will include Brian Bundren, Elizabeth Guipe Hall, BiLan Liao, Quincy Owens and A.J. Nafziger.
This year is the first year for the Emerging Artists exhibit. The idea was originally proposed by Dee Schaad and came to fruition from there.
“Dee Schaad, chair of the department, thought it would be interesting to do an exhibition of emerging artists, all of which are alums of our department and the university,” Jim Viewegh, associate professor of art and design, said.
Viewegh hopes that there is an ongoing interest in this sort of exhibit and that the University of Indianapolis Department of Art and Design will continue to showcase an exhibit like this every few years.
“Our hope is to be able to do this exhibition every two years or so with a different group,” Viewegh said. “It wasn’t based on anything other than that we had a large number of names over a wide range of years that we could choose from.”
For the last few years, the Department of Art and Design has rotated different types of exhibits.
“We send out perspectives across a region, which is usually Indiana and all of the surrounding states, and invite artists to submit work,” Viewegh said. “We then jury and decide which pieces should be in the exhibition at the time.”
According to junior art major Valerie Wilson, all of the exhibits that are on display in the gallery provide a great deal of inspiration to students who plan to pursue careers as professional artists.
“Its inspiring to see the works of past students and to see where some of us may be headed in the future,” Wilson said.
According to Viewegh, deciding which artists to display was a somewhat difficult task because there were many great artists from which to choose.
“There were a lot of great choices. What we tried to do was get a variety of artists over a period of time,” Viewegh said. “Most of the artists are from the last few years.”
The exhibit will feature paintings and drawings that will not only be unique, but will bring a great deal of variety to the show.
Each artist that was selected uses a slightly different medium and brings their own personal perspective to the artwork that they create. The styles range from abstract to realistic, but all are what would be considered a contemporary style.
“All of the artists in this group are painters of some kind,” Viewegh said. “We just tried to get a nice eclectic look. Some are more representational; some are non-objective.”
According to Viewegh, three painters featured in the exhibit live and work in the Indianapolis area. The other two artists are now faculty at other universities after completing a master’s degree program at the University of Indianapolis that allowed them to build a portfolio of work to further their career in art.
“This shows that our graduates are very successful in both teaching and being professional artists,” Viewegh said.
Viewegh also hopes that the show will inspire other artists around campus and the community to create their own works of art.
