The work of six students majoring in art and art history will be displayed in the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art beginning today at 12 p.m. as part of the 2011 Windgate Fellows Exhibition. Artwork displayed in the gallery will only be student artwork and will include an interesting mixture of paintings, prints, sculptures and photography.
The undergraduates participating in the show have received funding to conduct research and produce an entirely new body of artwork solely for this show. In addition to creating the art, the students have also been actively involved in organizing and producing the exhibition.
For the art history majors, their work usually takes on the form of a long research paper.
“The focus of the program is to give students a chance to do something they can not always do,” said Cathy Pagani, department chair of the art and art history department and professor of art history.
Sometimes student may be inhibited by the limitations of their classrooms, financial obstacles or other factors. The Windgate Fellowship provides participating artists and art historians the opportunity to put their ideas in a tangible form, providing support through funds used for both research and production costs.
“The Windgate Fellowship supplied the funds I needed to purchase three enormous canvases, painting supplies and brushes,” said Amanda Barnes, a senior majoring in art and a participant in the Windgate Fellowship. “The fellowship also provided opportunities for research outside of the restraint of classroom assignments.”
Barnes has been working on three paintings for the exhibition, each 4 by 5 feet. She described her paintings as cohesive, but not in the sense of palette or composition. Rather, they are cohesive because she created them with the same mind set. The three palettes are essential, distinction and circumstance.
But students are not just handed this opportunity. They apply for the fellowship and department faculty members use a jury process to select the winners.
“The students write up proposals, and then we as faculty look at them and do anonymous ballots and rank the students,” Pagani said. “Some students talked to their professors about their proposals, so we received some really good, well-thought-out proposals.”
Pagani said they were fortunate this year because all the students were funded. The winners of this year’s Fellowship are Amanda Barnes, Tanya McDavid, Harrison G. Prince, Meredith Randall, Joseph Robertson and Kayleigh Walder. Their artwork will remain on display in the gallery until March 25.
The Windgate Fellowship began in 2007 with a goal of assisting students in creating art that normally may be out of their reach. The first Windgate Fellowship Exhibition was held in the spring semester of 2008.
This year’s exhibition will be the focal point of the College of Arts and Sciences’ annual Arty Party, a fundraiser put on by the College of Arts and Sciences leadership board that raises money for different fine arts departments. This year, Arty Party will raise money for the Department of Art and Art History’s programs and scholarships.
The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art is located in 103 Garland Hall and is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 pm and Thursday evening from 5 to 8 pm. For more information, call the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art at (205) 348-1890.
What: Windgate Fellows Exhibition
Where: Sarah Moody Gallery of Art
When: Monday—Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m.
