Students display talent, creativity during art exhibition

As the spring semester draws to a close, senior art majors are showing the culmination of their college education thus far in art exhibitions held in the gallery of Kleinpell Fine Arts.

The exhibitions are the main project of Art 309 (Senior Exhibition), a class that is meant to teach art students everything they need to know in order to design, prepare and promote an exhibition of their own material. The class is a requirement of all art majors pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Students going for a BFA are required to major and minor in two different art media and are encouraged to use the exhibitions as a means to display their best work.

“Basically, you would choose the best works you feel represent your skill and what you learn throughout the years.” art student Judith Wickham said.

Wickham’s exhibition was focused primarily on fabrics.

Morgan Clifford, the course instructor, said how the exhibition process at UW-River Falls may differ from larger colleges.

Other campuses may opt to have group exhibitions, demonstrating the work of several students at once. However, UWRF instead has each student go individually so they may worry only about their own displays and not have to work around others.

Insofar as planning the exhibits, students must consider much more than one may think.  Among the things that must be taken into consideration are lighting, label, placement and arrangement. 

The promotional and preparation side of the process is equally rigorous. The gallery space is reserved on a first-come, first-serve basis and the space is not used expressly by students, so slots may be reserved as soon as a semester in advance. Students must also select three teachers to critique their work, make a press release, make postcards, write a statement for the gallery and plan an opening.

According to Clifford, it is largely up to the artist’s discretion how to approach the opening.

Despite having teachers lined up to critique work on display, their evaluations have no bearing on the final grade.

According to Clifford, the BFA degree is one of the most work intensive and rigorous of the degrees offered on campus and that historically, students who get the degree go on to graduate school to further their education in art.