On any given day, thousands of students on Boston University’s Charles River Campus walk past the window-lined 808 Gallery. The gallery traditionally features the hard work of students in the College of Fine Arts along with a handful of visiting artists. If one were to look through the windows right now, though, one would most likely gaze upon an eccentric pair of steel lionfish created by none other than sculptor Kitty Wales, a CFA lecturer and one of the instructors helping CFA students achieve that hard work.
The sculpture is only one of many pieces that are a part of the School of Visual Arts’ Faculty Exhibition, which opened Friday. The exhibition features works in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography and graphic design. Though CFA hosts a faculty exhibition every three years, this year represents an important milestone: 60 years since the college’s founding in 1954.
“This is a faculty exhibition, which means that those in the show are teaching in the School of Visual Arts in the College of Fine Arts here at BU,” said Lynne Allen, the director of CFA’s School of Visual Arts. “We gave an open call to all full-time and part-time faculty, and anyone could include their work.”
Not only does the exhibition serve as a magnet of culture for the greater Boston public, but it is also a learning opportunity for BU students, Wales said.
“The Visual Arts faculty exhibit is an opportunity for our students and the BU community to see the wide range of work and media that is being done by their professors and to see our research and what inspires the work being done in our studios,” Wales said.
Students and gallery employees Tanner Gauvin and Qian Mei attended the exhibit’s opening reception, and also said it was fascinating to see the work of their professors.
“It [the artwork] is stunning,” said Gauvin, a freshman in CFA. “All of us naturally stalk our professors’ artwork, and it’s really nice to see it in person. When you look at their pieces, you understand why they teach the way they teach. You start to understand more about them.”
Mei, also a freshman in CFA, agreed with this notion, and expressed her appreciation for the exhibit’s easy accessibility.
“Right now we’re taking Drawing 1, and a lot of the time, we think of our drawing professor as someone who just draws,” she said. “But she also paints, and her paintings are fabulous. It’s really inspiring, because you want to be like them when you grow up.
“Having an open gallery that students, or anyone in Boston, can access will spread art. Anyone that wants to see all of this can come whenever they want. It’s great that we aren’t just confined to CFA,” she said.
Both the students and organizers of the event emphasized its appeal to those who may not usually think of themselves as people interested in attending galleries.
“As with any art event, artists hope that audience members find something that challenges them — makes them think about the work and what it is about — or that they admire and find interesting,” Allen said. “I believe the faculty show is a very strong example of the wide-ranging types of art that are a part of contemporary life.”
It’s also a good way to kick off the next 60 years, by showcasing the very artists who will most influence the next generation, Allen said.
“Artists reflect the world around them, and this exhibition is a very good example of what interests artists,” Allen said. “Many of them are narratives that tell stories, but others showcase a new way of seeing the everyday.”
The 2015 School of Visual Arts Faculty Exhibition will be open to visitors through March 1.
