The Shaw Gallery will be hosting the Weber State Student Exhibition beginning Feb. 3. The exhibition allows Weber State University students to submit their art for a chance at being displayed in the gallery.
Danielle Wilcox, a photography major, has submitted work into the student exhibition.
“I think its a good confidence booster for actually getting work and submitting into other institutions as well,” Wilcox said.
Lydia Gravis, the outreach coordinator for the Shaw Gallery, said the exhibition has been running for about 45 years. The exhibition accepts works in any medium, but there are a few requirements. All work must have been completed while a studying at WSU within the past two years.
In addition to meeting those conditions, the pieces must be juried into the show. A panel of jurors made up of three faculty members plus one guest juror select the pieces to be displayed. The judging is done blindly. Since the process is done by a randomly numbered system, the only person who knows the name of the artists is a record keeper who accompanies the jurors.
“Every year there’s a different set of jurors, so that one year, one student might get in, and another year they may not get in,” Gravis said.
This year, pieces in many mediums were selected for display in the gallery in addition to paintings. Mixed media, video pieces and interactive pieces will be on display. About 129 pieces were submitted with 54 entries selected for display in the gallery.
Beau Burgess, the Shaw Gallery curator, says that the criteria for getting into the show is “strictly up to the jurors.”
“In my experience as a working artist,” Burgess said, “and having submitted into several shows over the past couple years, you could have one piece that gets into one show, and some into another.”
When submitting their pieces for consideration, the artists have the option to have their work shown in a different gallery, known as the Salon des Refusés.
“If someone entered into the show, and it’s refused, they can be eligible for the Salon,” Burgess said. “The only requirement is that it is refused from the show.”
The Salon des Refusés has a rich history behind it. Burgess said that it started out as a way for artists to still have their work displayed if it was rejected.
“If they weren’t accepted into a show, they kind of did it to prove a point or, in a sense, a revolt,” Burgess said about the Salon, which runs simultaneously to the Shaw Gallery Exhibition. “It’s an intriguing dialogue between the two exhibitions because to put them side by side like that, it’s kind of a fun process.”
Carey Ann Francis, a student at WSU, has also submitted work to the exhibition. Francis works with unusual materials. She says her favorites are “strange and unusual surfaces, mixing copper and wood and creating pictures like that.”
“When I first got here to Utah, I submitted and got into the Salon des Refusés,” Francis said. “I feel that it’s positive. You submit your work, you do the whole little shebang and have your work displayed.”
Burgess encourages students and the community to visit the gallery.
“Sometimes with some of the more stricter classrooms or labs that are on lockdown, it’s hard to get the rest of the student populous or especially the community into your department or onto the campus,” Burgess said. “But with visual arts, it’s a very open and public department where we have a space to do that. If it’s something that they haven’t come over and seen, they should come over and check our gallery space. It is a professional gallery space, (and) it isn’t just for things on campus. We’ve had national and international artists shown in this gallery.”
The exhibition will run from Feb. 3 through Mar. 9. A reception and awards ceremony will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 3. The public is invited to attend.
