Last week, the gallery was filled with paintings –
abstract oils of blended colors, a still-life of a bottle of Resolve cleaner, a self-portrait of the artist in a laundry room. This week, the gallery is part of the art, and the black robot painted in stark contrast with the white-washed walls as it stomps away from a city skyline is an example of the gallery’s perpetual alteration.
The only constant in the LaVerne Krause Gallery in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts’ Lawrence Hall is the inconstancy. Each week, there’s something different.
The gallery brims with eclectic displays of University art students’ best work. And the work is varied, indeed: charcoal portraits, black and white photographs, gigantic cupcakes painted on the walls in all their sprinkled grandeur. This week’s gallery includes “3mechanical.paintings,” an indisputable title if there ever was one. Artist MacKenzie Schubert displays three interactive art pieces that have pull tabs on the sides so viewers can manipulate the artist’s subjects into performing actions. One man maniacally brushes his teeth while another liberates some long-holed-up ear wax with a small army of Q-tips. Personal hygiene is rarely this entertaining or full of culture.
Another display this week, Ashley Sloan’s “Cupcake Escape,” which is “brought to you by the cute institute,” looks at women and their cupcakes. Tyrone Swanson’s “Wanted” (intricately abstract drawings detail a futuristic wanted man’s criminal status), and Jennifer Jacobs’ untitled paintings of robots round out the group. Half of Jacobs’ paintings are composed on three pieces of glass stacked about 1/4 inch apart from each other. Each piece of glass has different details; the overall picture is the sum of its parts.
The gallery, which gained its present name and incarnation during the school’s 1989-1991 building project, is an opportunity for students to show their work as they would in any professional gallery, said Karen Johnson, the art school’s assistant dean for external relations and communications. Named in honor of a longtime printmaking and painting teacher at the University who died in 1987, the gallery is a key component to the art school’s curriculum for its students, Johnson said.
The goal is for the students to gain real-world experience in how they approach getting their art from the studio to the marketplace, said Rani Robison, a graduate teaching fellow and the gallery’s coordinator. “This is a real gallery on campus,” Robison said, “and we have real art in it.”
“It’s a continuous regeneration of shows,” Johnson said. “We have the reputation for being the most active gallery in Lane County.” The shows are entirely composed of student work, with media varying from painting to photography, sculpture and digital arts.
The students submit their work to the gallery’s committee for selection. Once the pieces are chosen, the rest of the show is in the students’ hands – hanging paintings, manipulating the gallery’s walls to incorporate them into the art itself if the artist so desires, and receiving public criticism, Johnson said. The artists lose the familiarity of their professors and classroom peers’ criticisms, and the critique instead comes from the public and potential buyers.
The gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. An opening reception is held every Monday night from 5 to 7 p.m. Upcoming shows include an MFA digital arts group show from Oct. 16 – 20, an MFA painting group show from Oct. 30 – Nov. 3, and an MFA photography group show from Nov. 6 – 10.
Many of the school’s BFA students show their terminal projects in the gallery, as well. The gallery is free to the public.
[email protected]