New Semester With New Links to Student Work!

Jenna Spencer

PSU Department of Art's students ROCK!

Photography © Carol Longman (2D track)

          Art vs Exhibition

To quote Ad Reinhardt:“ I don’t know about enjoying it [Exhibitions]. It is trouble and it’s something that one has to do. And it’s great to have it behind one because one doesn’t really work for oneself. That’s a myth. Artists have to show their work. It doesn’t mean they have to sell it, or peddle it, or use it for anything, but they do have to show it.”

A professionally exhibited piece is different entity from the same work hanging in a studio. It is removed from the environment that produced it. This gives people the opportunity to step away and look at its “finished meaning”. Exhibitions help resolve and close pieces for an audience.

Most evolving artists (unless site specific) generally are of the same beast. Work becomes timid, non-exploratory or clone-like, if the need for an exhibition schedule is a factor in artistic choices. I look to the gallery and museum exhibitions as an afterthought to art making.

Generating art is not about seeking approval, gaining celebrity or even disapproval. Human communication is founded on an assemblage of signs- verbal, aural, and in my genre - visual. Art is communication. Thus, I am very cognizant of the “signified” or associated mental concept conventionally associated with my pieces. The voyeuristic gaze of the audience soon to be looking at my work, and their relationship with the iconography of the images echoes the principle concept I am fascinated with learning about.

                 Keep in mind -One of the most beneficial audience members is myself. - Rhona Shand