The art exhibit “Second Time Around,” curated by University of Rhode Island students with Professor Erin McCutcheon, is on display at the Jamestown Arts Center.
The exhibit itself sprawls throughout the Jamestown Art Center, presenting a variety of mediums. Pieces took the form of quilts, photographs, garments and more. The white walls of the gallery were adorned with heritage works, from weaving to needlepoint.
The exhibit was done as a capstone assignment for 10 art history and studio art majors, curated and completed in only three months. A typical exhibition takes one to two years to develop, according to recent URI graduate Taylor Moss (‘23). Moss currently works at the Jamestown Arts Center.
The name “Second Time Around” is a testament to the sustainability themes present throughout the exhibit, as well as the concept of recycling ideas, McCutcheon said.
“This notion of how our ideas that we think are from the past, are they still present today, or how we can revive ideas from the past,” McCutcheon said.
The class poured over 450 works from 150 artists, working with exhibit’s juror Ella S. Mills. Of hundreds of applicants, 26 artists made it into the show with a total of 37 art pieces.
“We were really impressed with the caliber of artists included and just how interesting and different the variety of participant’s subject matter was,” McCutcheon said.
Mills is a professor at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom. The juror typically comes in to make what McCutcheon called “hard line decisions,” staying out of discussions between curators. In atypical fashion, Mills said she made the effort more collaborative.
“As a curator, she wanted it to be a communicative process with the students,” McCutcheon said.
McCutcheon has put together exhibits with students before, but nothing to this scale, she said.
“The end product was much more true to the student’s vision in the beginning, because the ideas had time to cook during the semester,” McCutcheon said.
The differences in medium are a testament to both history and sustainability.
“Works cross temporal boundaries to highlight colonial histories and assert the visibility of diverse cultural inheritances ,” said the Jamestown Art Center’s website .
The exhibition also explored art’s ability to heal, which is present in one of McCutcheon’s favorite works, she said.
“I’m really loving how a piece by a Houston-based artist, he’s Filipino, is working in the space,” McCutcheon said. “His work is about these Filipino traditions of mourning and grief.”
The artist’s work reflects the loss of his mother during the COVID pandemic in 2020, McCutcheon said. His art is a way to mourn her when he couldn’t physically be there.
The diversity in mediums made the exhibit easier for audiences to connect to, Moss said.
“We tried to make it a theme that you can approach from so many different angles,” Moss said. “We have photography in the show as well as people reusing old materials to make a new dress reflective of traditions passed down matriarchally.”
While the exhibit tackles themes of the past, the art world’s future sustainability is another large aspect, Moss said.
“I think ‘Second Time Around’ is situated within the art world where we’re looking at the sustainability factor and who controls the narrative,” Moss said.
As for future exhibitions, they are not off the table, according to McCutcheon.
“Not every year, but look out for it in like two years,” McCutcheon said.
“Second Time Around” is on display until June 15 at the Jamestown Arts Center in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
More information about the exhibit can be found on the Jamestown Arts Center website: www.jamestownartscenter.com