Galleries

Two by Land: Nicole Donnely & Katherine Sandoz co-curated by Megan Berner/Ahren Hertel

This exhibition consisted of paintings done on canvas and wood. There was a mixture of abstract and surrealistic paintings.  A lot of bright colors, and color studies, were used. For some of the abstract paintings they were painted on square blocks of wood and were usually a set of four.  They were very pleasing to look at and were very clean.
The more interesting ones were the surrealistic paintings.  One of them looked like pastel clouds that had rope or something holding them down.  It looked like somebody was trying to capture them or maybe to keep them from floating away. Another one had a background that looked like it was on fire but there was an outline of a ship.  All of these paintings are rather large but very impressive. The surrealistic ones seem to tell a story while the abstract ones are simply nice to look at.
Overall this gallery was great and very interesting to look at. The way they set it up was nice and the art itself was great quality.

McNamara Gallery: Exhibition 3: Priscilla Varner
 They say that a photograph is worth a million words but a person can interpret a photograph differently than somebody else.  In this exhibition the artist was playing around with words and photographs. She placed words, usually three, before or after a photograph to influence how the viewer perceived the photograph.  If viewed correctly the words would influence the thoughts and feelings the viewer received from the photograph.
The photographs themselves were good photographs that could have different feelings and words associated with them. When looking at the photographs with the words before the photograph the viewer was expecting the photograph to represent those words and when they looked at it realized that it did.  For the photographs that had the words after the photograph itself when the viewer first looked at the photograph they made their own thoughts and feelings about it. Then when they looked at the words they probably either changed their minds about what the photograph is representing or they did not think that the photographed represented those words.
Usually in an exhibit there are no words, only the photographs, so including the words with the photograph can help the artist get their point across. It can also help the photographer shape the thoughts of the viewers. in all this is an effective exhibit in which makes people think about what they are seeing and proving that words can influence people's thoughts about a particular photograph.