Pickler Memorial Library displays work from Art Club
Pickler Memorial Library is displaying student art work until May 8. Special Collections Cataloging and Archiving Assistant Nikki Hagan said she organized the gallery with Art Club to provide students with gallery and resume experience.
The art is behind the library’s Starbucks hung on the walls or in the windowsills. Hagen reached out to Art Club in December before they put the art up in January.
“Them taking the initiative to make a show bodes well for their future,” said Art club’s advisor Danielle Yakle. “Putting your work out there post graduation, you have to have the moxy to do it.”
Yakle wasn’t part of organizing the show, but she said she admires the students’ effort. The featured artists prepared their work in a month and hung their own work in the gallery space.
Six out of the seven works are for sale through the library. The students priced their art work from $10 per item to $80 for a set of paintings, but most are between $20 to $50.
“Hopefully some stuff sells, and if not it’s still cool to see your work in a public space on campus that so many people go to every day,” said Art Club President Kaden Leath.
Leath said the library reached out to the Art Club about displaying student work before winter break. Most of the club members created new work over break specifically for the exhibit while others used pieces they had made in art courses.
“We try to keep our eyes open for opportunities to let art club students exhibition stuff,” said Art Club Vice President Soup Chintha.
Chintha said the show prioritized art club members’ work, but was open to everyone including art majors and minors. Students submitted paintings, quilts, sculptures, photo projects, and mixed media pieces for the show.
“We created a generic theme,” said Leath. “The concept of the show is altered reality which is a very loose concept that allowed us to really interpret the work radically differently from one another while looking cohesive enough.”
The library usually displays work from the Missouri and Southern Iowa Art Guild in the Fall. MOSI is a collection of artists that meet in Kirksville once a month.
Hagen said she hopes to display more student work, from Art Club or different organizations on campus.
“I think we’ll end up doing this more in the future to keep stuff up in there for students to look at and engage with, and again so that they can have things to put on their resume,” said Hagen.
Special Collections previously showcased some student work in display cases on the first floor or in other parts of the library.
“One of the things I was happy to do in setting this up was just being able to give more room to have these kinds of experiences,” said Hagen. “They have the big art show in the spring, but its juried and not everyone gets work in.”
The Juried Art Exhibition takes place every March when the art department invites an artist to select submitted student pieces to hang in Ophelia Parrish’s gallery.
Art Club also hosts a rejected art show during the annual Juried Art Exhibition. Art Club sends out their applications the day the juried exhibit winners are announced and encourages those who weren’t selected to submit art to their show.
“We really want to do more public facing exhibitions like this, it’s really cool to show off our skills, especially in a place that is not OP,” said Leath.
Leath and Chintha started Art Club three years ago. Leath said the club started with students hanging out or working on projects in Ophelia Parrish before professors, including Yakle, encouraged them to make the club.
“We do a different activity every week that’s vaguely art related,” said Leath. “We just try to learn new skills together as a group.”
Leath said sometimes the club will continue work from art classes or try crafts they haven’t practiced in class.
“We kind of play around and experiment with a lot of different mediums,” Leath said. “Mostly, I wanted to create a community with the art department and share our skills”
