Faculty artists' own works help engage students

William Woods faculty show runs 8 more days

Students interact with art at William Woods University's faculty art show. The installation in the foreground, titled "While We Tread Lightly," is the work of Valerie Wedel and includes dozens of tiny clay pods and soil from her father's farm.
Students interact with art at William Woods University's faculty art show. The installation in the foreground, titled "While We Tread Lightly," is the work of Valerie Wedel and includes dozens of tiny clay pods and soil from her father's farm.

Students gathered with art department faculty this week to learn about the pieces on display at the William Woods University Faculty Art Show.

Six faculty members are featured in the show, which runs through Dec. 9. Three were on hand Tuesday to discuss their art and the ideas and ideals behind it.

After allowing the students time to view and consider the art, assistant art professor Jane Mudd opened the talk.

"You can ask any artist, 'Why do you make art?'" she said. "The answer is that we can't imagine not making art."

She brought a selection of charcoal drawings she created the previous semester, which were largely completed outdoors without reference photos.

"I wanted to capture what's going on around the campus," Mudd said. "Whatever I didn't finish (outside), I just took it up to my studio and kept searching with the charcoal and eraser."

She described her method of creation as a "messy" process, saying she often laid down charcoal and lifted it with the eraser many times before it felt right.

"That horse went through a lot of different shapes," she said, pointing to a horse in one of her pictures.

Mudd also brought two pieces of art created in collaboration with poet Joe Polacco. For one, she created the image and he wrote poetry to describe it. For the other, she illustrated his poem.

"Many artists are very much inspired by songs and poems," she said. "We look for other artists to inspire us."

Terry Martin, art professor, brought some of his paintings - both originals and digital prints. His art focuses on capturing the natural world.

"I think the work kind of speaks for itself," he said.

He talked about how he tells students in his classes to create a work of art as a service project for the final.

"An artist is almost the opposite of an arsonist," he said, referencing the fire in Tennessee devastating Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. "Most artists want to elicit a response from people that is positive."

For his own "service project," he created a rainbow of swirled pastels and presented it to a student as a wedding gift.

The goal of his art is to encourage people to think about the environment.

"Things change quickly," he said. "Your generation will have to put more and more pressure on the leaders."

To Martin, nature represents endless rebirth.

"I don't think there's death; I think there's always creation," he said. "Perhaps someday I'll be a tree."

Gallery coordinator Nicole Petrescu wrapped up the talk by focusing on two of her own pieces of art. One painting was a study in color and texture, with autumnal colors swirling beneath a glassy finish. "It's just color and texture," she said, adding she created it for her class in basic design.

The other was a little more political.

"I am more drawn to ideas, concepts," she said. "This piece is where my heart and soul would be."

It's essentially a dangling bar graph with plastic disks daubed with color hanging in strings. Each disk represents a single death caused at the hands of United States law enforcement, and the colors indicate race.

"There were 694 killed in the U.S. in the first nine months of 2016," Petrescu stated. "I'm not here to judge those acts (but) I don't think they should have a place in a civilized world."

She pointed out many of the dead are the students' age.

Students said they found both the art and the talk engaging. Joella Vermeire had an insider's perspective, having helped adjunct professor Valerie Wedel put up her installation.

"Working on it, you see so much more of the time and effort that went into it," she said.

She said it took 22 hours for her and Wedel to assemble the finished piece.