Twenty-fifth annual VIEW awards undergrad artists with experience, cash
“VIEW/2011” has since been relocated exclusively to the Monroe Park campus and made to benefit the students who submit their work to the exhibit.
Mechelle Hankerson
Assistant Spectrum Editor
The Painting and Printmaking Department of VCUarts was asked 25 years ago to help create a connection between the school’s Monroe Park and MCV campuses. VCUarts Painting and Printmaking professor Reni Gower decided that a showcase of Painting and Printmaking students’ work was one way to help foster that missing link.
“VIEW/2011” has since been relocated exclusively to the Monroe Park campus and made to benefit the students who submit their work to the exhibit.
The show, which accepts work from undergraduates within VCUarts, is a juried exhibit, meaning submitted pieces are evaluated by a department-selected judge before hopefully being chosen for exhibition.
For this year’s judge, the department brought back James Busby, an alum of VCUarts. Busby received his graduate degree from VCU and currently lives in South Carolina.
Gabrielle Mormile, a junior painting and printmaking major, submitted a figure painting, which was chosen for the exhibit along with other painted pieces for consideration in the exhibit.
“VCU is pretty known for being abstract, and that’s usually what they pick for shows,” she said. “When my figure painting got in, I was confused. Excited, but confused.”
According to Gower, who organized the event, the benefits of the show typically draw students to submitting their work to be judged.
“There are awards,” Gower said. “There’s no charge to show their work. They only have to be a student in our department, and they can submit up to three things.”
Although all chosen students get to display their work – this year, there were 18 pieces displayed by 16 students – the department allots money to the jurors to award as they see fit as merit awards to the students whose work is displayed in the exhibit.
This year, the money was awarded to Corey Durbin, Emily Bolin, Meredith Cosier, Toliver Roebuck and Joe Olney.
Olney, a transfer junior from a community college in Florida, created a painting titled “Carts.”
“I saw a cart … and the form of that cart was really interesting to me,” he said. “I just drew it a bunch of times and played with the logic of things and omitted things and blended shapes together.”
Olney has been interested in art his whole life but took a break from actively pursuing it when he joined the National Guard. In the last few years though, Olney has begun to pursue his art more seriously.
“I started really small, (compared) to coming here and seeing people working on 8 foot by 10 foot pieces,” said Olney, whose piece measured about 2 feet by 4 feet.
Roebuck, also a junior painting and printmaking major, experimented more with digital prints for his two pieces “A Thought” and “Offering.”
Roebuck had a third piece that was created to accompany the two pieces, but it was not included in the exhibit.
For his pieces, Roebuck employed technology to help with the design by using a program to create unique shapes and colors.
For Roebuck, this was not just about a merit award, but also a learning experience for him as an artist.
“I took a lot … of risks,” he said. “It’s just like anything else; the more risks you take, you have more chances to fail, but as an artist you learn more from mistakes than anything else.”
VIEW/2011 will remain on display in the Fine Arts building at 1000 W. Broad Street until Jan. 28.
