As a student, Allison Hyde@@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/hyde/56293@@ made her fair share of memories in the LaVerne Krause Gallery.@@checked@@
“I accidentally locked the key in the back room of the gallery once when I was showing there,” she said. “I had to call the director of the gallery at about one in the morning trying to figure out how to get the key out. It’s those really late night bonding experiences that I think is one of the best things of showing in that gallery. You get to work with other students and help each other out.”
It’s this student dynamic that drew her back to campus as the director of the gallery last January, two years after she graduated from the University of Oregon with a Master in Fine Arts. As a former student, she appreciates first-hand value of student art exhibitions in allowing students to develop professional presentation skills and teaching them to appreciate the importance of deadlines, teamwork and critical evaluation.
As an art director, she hopes to offer aspiring artists opportunities for presentation experience that will be invaluable to their professional careers.
“I think having that gallery space is incredibly important … for students to develop their professional skills and professionalism in presentation of their work, and it also helps build their visual portfolios that they might use to apply for graduate schools,” she said.
Since her return to the UO, she has implemented a number of new programs she believes will further advance the opportunities presented to campus art students. New developments include professional skills development workshops, the integration of art history students into gallery procedures, the expansion of student art exhibition into the Broadway Commerce Center@@http://www.beamdevelopment.com/location/downtown-eugene-redevelopment@@ in downtown Eugene and the first ever art show dedicated to graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students this spring, in which upwards of 100 seniors will display their work.
The LaVerne Krauss Gallery hosts weekly openings, allowing approximately 30 student artists to showcase their work each term via a bi-annual application process. Under Hyde’s direction, the application process has been expanded to include art history students as well, giving them the opportunity to direct and curate student shows to gain experience at a professional level.
“They are in the future going to be potential curators in museums or galleries, so (we’re) giving them the opportunity to foster their ideas and to propose an idea for a curated show, creating a dialogue between the art history students and the fine arts students,” she said. “I feel like it’s just the beginning of some of that crossover that can start to happen between the art history and the fine arts departments. It’s great.”
In addition to running the gallery on the ground floor of Lawrence Hall, she is also in charge of the Washburn Gallery @@checked@@in the Ceramic Sculpture Building, is an adjunct instructor of art specializing in print-making and has taught drawing,@@see first link at top@@ painting and print making classes in the Erb Memorial Union Craft Center.@@checked@@
Although as director, she is now subject to frantic calls from students in the middle of the night; however, she believes the stresses of her job are worth the dynamic and innovative environment she gets to work in.
“Every week, I get to be around really inspired student artists, and that’s so exciting for me,” Hyde said. “I think some of the artwork that shown in the LaVerne Krause Gallery is some of the most cutting edge stuff that’s happening in all of Eugene.”