The art department is hosting a faculty exhibition until Oct. 8 in the Wise Auditorium. Participants in the show include art instructors Derrick White, Barbara Holland and Dave Funk.
“The event will be a way to show students the work of professional artist and the work of people who make art for a living,” White said.
Depending on the scale, participants can enter two to three small pieces or one large piece.
“I am entering one painting and one paper sculpture,” Holland said. “I work on art all the time, but I wanted to enter in the latest things I’ve worked on.”
Holland said she always knew she was going to be an artist. She said she used to spend all of her time drawing and painting as a child.
“You have to start young and show your work as young as you possibly can,” she said. “Art is very time consuming and you have to do it all the time. All my life I have been working on pieces and there are pieces I am still working on.”
Holland said she became interested with paper sculptures because of a class she took when she was in England.
“In 1960, a man came into my class one day and he was doing paper sculptures for a display,” she said. “I have been making them ever since.”
Holland said she enters her art into exhibits and competitions online. She said that she suggests students do the same.
“Sometimes you get in, sometimes you don’t,” she said. “You have to get used to rejection, and you have to learn to take disappointment. Everybody doesn’t like everything you do.”
White said he hopes that students will see the work made by the staff and apply it to their own style and artwork.
“I tell the students that if you have one painting, you cannot enter it into five shows,” he said. “If you have five pieces of art, you can enter it into at least one show.”
Funk, who is entering eight sculptures, said his inspiration in ceramics is utility.
“Usable things make sense for me,” he said. “I had no head for sculptures, and I had no head for paintings. There is a lot of art I like to look at, but I can’t wrap my head around how to make them.”
Funk said he also majored in Graphic Design.
“I always loved comic books and graphics, but I wasn’t very good or clean,” he said. “There were no computers so we had to use pens and right angles and had to do a lot more drawing.”
Funk said his parent’s job of working with Vietnam Veterans is what made him want to pursue art and ceramics.
“When I was a little kid my parents would take me to work with them,” he said. “They would give me pads of paper with pens and pencils and I would sit and draw all day. It was the only thing that made sense to me. I’m attached to it, and ceramics is one of the only things that if I don’t do I’ll miss.”
Funk said his student’s work is what began his teaching career.
“I had never taught a class until I got to grad school,” he said. “In the TA program, I was responsible for a class for a whole semester when I just wanted to be in a studio and left alone, but the work the students did was very satisfying. I also taught Art Appreciation through a prison instruction program.”
Funk said teaching ceramics helps students understand the work that is put into a project.
“People who don’t have experience would ask why they should pay for something that is bent and not made perfectly when they could get it for $5 at Wal-Mart,” he said. “Once they go through the class and struggle, they realize the value of handmade work.”
Funk said he wants to give the students enough tools to succeed and develop their own voice.
“I want to give them skills so they can create what they want when the ideas start to come,” he said. “Parents always want to ask ‘is my kid going to make a living’ from doing art. I tell them that it’s up to their kid. Everywhere in the world there’s someone who needs something either drawn, created or built. You just have to work.”
