Fans of student-made art can visit Green Hall until May 3 to peruse the Juried Student Art Gallery, composed of 33 pieces from the University of Rhode Island’s undergraduate art and art history students.
While the Fine Arts Center is normally the home for the show, the recent construction meant that the gallery had to shut down for a few years and find a new temporary home, professor of painting and past gallery director Rebecca Levitan said.
“It’s really important to us that we keep the tradition going of the art show, even if we don’t have a permanent space,” Levitan said.
The show has moved to Green Hall, a space bustling with movement from students, faculty, administration and many important community members, the URI coordinator of arts and culture Steven Pennell said.
Recently, Pennell became the new gallery director after moving from URI’s Feinstein College of Education to Kingston. Pennell was the founder of the Providence campus and of its various programs 27 years ago, and has only just begun the shift from the urban environment to the main campus.
“My first order of business was to start looking for partnerships and collaborations across campus,” Pennell said.
One of the main targets of the public gallery is to spread awareness for the art program to members of the URI community, Levitan said. It is also a chance for the students to see different kinds of art, and to see their own art being displayed for a wide audience.
Each year, the pieces in the gallery are chosen by a guest juror, a professional artist invited by the program. This year, independent art curator, arts consultant and writer Rachel Rosenfield Lafo was the guest juror.
Over 140 pieces were submitted to the gallery. Of those pieces, 33 made it to the final show. The pieces ranged in medium, and included three digital pieces that were displayed on screens within the gallery.
The process of creating the gallery took months, accounting for finding the juror, putting the call out to student artists, picking the pieces, ensuring them for public display and, finally, formatting the gallery to include each piece.
“The hanging system was new to me,” Pennell said. “They have a specific system that I had never worked with before.”
After all the pieces were in place and the gallery was completed, the URI arts and art history program hosted their opening reception for the gallery in Green Hall’s Great Room on April 9 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Rosenfield Lafo gave a speech about the exhibit, and some awards were given to deserving student-artists.
“Dean [Jeannette E.] Riley has a really nice tradition where she picks three pieces that were her dean’s choice and gives out an award for those,” Levitan said.
This year, the Dean’s Awards went to Maye Sohboff for “Critter Collection,” Grace Horner for “Thinking” and Dani Mattio for “Through the Window.”
The arts program aims to include as many people in student art as they can, Pennell said. This includes finding spaces where student art will be visible to everyone.
“For the students, their work gets noticed,” Pennell said. “It’s a really exciting place to be.”
The Juried Student Art Gallery can be seen from now until May 3 in Green Hall. For more information, visit URI’s department of art and art history website or visit their instagram page @uri_art_arthistory.