Potential future art instructors are presenting their work at UNM’s Masley Art Gallery for their 70th annual All Graduating Art Education Student Exhibition.
Many of the art program’s graduates plan to become art instructors, possibly in the public school system, so it’s beneficial to show they’re practicing artists, said Meredith Chapman Graduate assistant for the Masley Art Gallery.
“I think people kind of misconstrue ‘if you can’t do, you teach,’ which isn’t true especially as an art instructor,” Chapman said. “I feel like a lot of them are really talented artist.”
The exhibit features the work of undergraduate and graduate students that are graduating either spring 2017 or fall 2017.
Students in the program can bring up to two pieces of their portfolio, although some students who brought in smaller pieces were able to bring in a little bit more.
“The work is completely up to them as well so they can either bring in pieces made while they were in class during the program,” Chapman said. “Or they can bring in stuff from their own practice.”
Chapman is the curator of the exhibit and is in charge of collecting, hanging and ensuring the art returns to participants, but the faculty has a very strong voice in terms of all of the Masley Gallery’s shows in terms of the schedule they have, she said.
“Usually we have to track down everyone that has to graduate which can be a struggle,” Chapman said. “We’re a fairly small program; we have about forty-odd-number of grad students, and I believe a little bit less undergrad.”
Artists within the program have to participate as part of their graduation and through the professors and the councillors, the Masley Gallery tends to know who’s going to graduate, Chapman said.
“This is the first time that we’re going to have an opening and a closing, because usually we do one or the other, and usually it’s the closing, because that coincides with graduation,” Chapman said. “The opening is going to be great, because we’re also going to have the grad students who graduated come back and give a quick presentation on what their Master thesis was on.”
The Masley gallery will be open this Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to the public for the exhibit.
“We try to coincide with schedules that are happening like our closing is on a Thursday which is the same day that they are graduating,” Chapman said. “So they can go to graduation in the morning and then come here.”
George Evans’ art is on exhibit in the gallery. He is a graduate student in the art education program, graduating this semester.
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“The majority of the work going into there is work that we’re doing on our own time, for our own purposes, not for a grade, and it sort of represents what we want to see in the work that we teachers choose to produce,” he said. “And so it comes from a totally different place, and that gallery represents that very well.”
Evans submitted two pieces with very different characteristics. He said one of them, a motorcycle piece, is a visual exploration of the personality of motorcyclist and the bikes they ride and build.
“That particular one was built for me by a friend,” Evans said. “I feel like, just like with people and their pets, the bike and the owner stylistically tend to resemble each other”
The All Graduating Art Education Student Exhibition will end with the closing Reception and graduation party on Thursday, May 11 from 12 p.m. until 7:00 p.m.
Nichole Harwood is a reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Nolidoli1.
