From Friday, Oct. 6 to Friday, Nov. 3 alumni art students’ work was featured. A new exhibit, “The Metamorphosis of Identity,” will open on Friday, Nov. 10. Darrah Walker
Marcus Smith
Lantern Staff
In Butler’s 700 building on the El Dorado campus, there is an art exhibit that is open to the public and has been for the past 25 years. The most recent show is a display of some graduated art students’ work, called “Welcome Home,” which ran from Friday, Oct. 6 to Friday, Nov. 3. Admission is free to the public, and one can visit the gallery from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Monday to Friday.
The Art Department’s co-Directors Valerie Haring and Trisha Coates host six shows a year, three in the fall and three in the spring. Each exhibit usually runs for about a month and are scheduled the year before. Haring, who has taught at Butler for about 25 years, has had the former student artists as students of her own.
“It’s one of my favorite exhibits because most of the students that have art in the exhibit right now were students of mine, so they are kind of like my kids,” Haring said. “I’m proud of them. It’s exciting to watch students go into the world and continue to make art, so it’s like a parent feeling proud of their kids.”
Since Haring has been here, a third alumni exhibit has been hosted. None of the artists who entered work into this exhibit have had work in a previous one. Most of the artists that entered work are local, and delivered their work themselves, besides one artist, who had to ship their work. Most of the work was also up for sale.
“We got a lot of really good work,” Coates said. “I think it shows a really robust cross section of what our students are doing now.”
Angela Perkins’, a former student, will be featured in “The Metamorphosis of Identity.” Perkins’, who continued her educational career after Butler at Kansas University and now teaches at Lawrence High School, specialty is photography, according to Haring. The next show, which will begin on Friday, Nov. 10 and will feature some of Haring’s own work. In this show there will be 39 works by 19 artists.
Most of the work entered into the art exhibits are sent to one of the directors, Coates or Haring. Since Butler has a reputation in the art community, they rarely have to ask for an artist’s work. They will send out a call for entries, an invitation from Haring to enter one’s work. Anybody is welcome to submit art, and it will be judged to see if it will go in the gallery.