“The Greatest Graduate Student Art Exhibition in the History of the Universe… Ever, Ever! Wow!”
With a title like that, the School of Art’s annual exhibition for graduate students has a lot to live up to.
The doors of the Foster Gallery opened Monday morning, welcoming visitors to see pieces that first-through-third-year graduate students have selected as their best creations. Assistant Gallery Director Meg Holford said she believes the dynamic pieces invite students to challenge themselves with art.
“You can touch this,” Holford said of a precariously balanced, egg-shaped sawdust and bronze sculpture in one corner. “It moves.”
Spread across two rooms, the exhibition showcases dozens of the University’s own. The exhibition features everything from sculptures and watercolors to paintings and prints to an abstract, three-dimensional installation covering an entire gallery wall.
“Even the first years in this show are strong,” Holford said. “The artwork is really well-crafted and thought out well.”
Santiago Pineda, a third-year graduate student featured in the show, said he looks forward to this exhibition as a chance to show people what he has been working on and to see how his fellow graduate students have grown as artists.
“Bringing everyone’s work together is exciting,” Pineda said. “It’s good for the LSU community … It gives people from other programs an idea of what the graduate students are doing.”
For the many undergraduates who know graduate students like Pineda as professors, the exhibition may bring a new perspective.
“I think for those students it would be interesting to take a look at what the professor’s doing,” Pineda said. “What does he make? He’s always talking about this stuff in the classroom, but what’s his work about? How do his ideas in the classroom relate to his work?”
Holford, who has organized the exhibition for the past five years, said students outside of the art program can enjoy the exhibition just as much.
“Seeing artwork is inspiration for any subject at LSU. If you’re writing a paper even in a science class or history, it helps your mind,” Holford said. “Just seeing visual art helps everybody.”
The exhibition will run until Oct. 19, and doors are open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. A free reception will celebrate the showcase with food and wine on Oct. 5 in the Foster Gallery.
