On Jan. 31, the University of Dayton Honors Program showcased 27 art pieces by students to be displayed in Alumni Hall for a year.
“The goals of the show are to explore the artistic creativity of all our students,” said David Darrow, director of UD’s Honors Program. “We do this to celebrate our students as artists.”
The pieces for the exhibition were selected out of 50 entries by Springboro art instructor Peter Berwald.
“I always try to appreciate time and talent,” he said. “I tried to stop and look at each piece … to slow down and notice smaller painting or muted colors.”
“You’ll see unusual things you’ve never seen before,” said Jill Talley, administrative assistant of UD’s Honors Program. “I love all of the color and three dimensional aspect of [the show].”
Talley and Roger J. Crum, a professor from the department of visual arts, teamed up to coordinate the event.
Darrow said that artistic events like this give students that are not in an arts-affiliated major a chance to show a side of them that people might not normally get to see.
From engineering to religious studies, the variety of submissions to the show reflected the students from a variety of majors.
“This is one of the most colorful shows we’ve had for a while,” Darrow said. “We’ve gone from something that was almost completely two-dimensional to a show that has some very interesting sculpture pieces.”
Berwald said that he tried to look for art that followed the rules and broke the rules, as well as art that seemed to belong to the show.
“I looked at the overall design, use of color, use of space, and specifically, the overall impact of the piece,” he said.
The students whose pieces were selected for the show each received a $100 scholarship. Berwald selected two pieces for “Best in Show,” both by sophomore pre-medicine major Ann Zerfas, who received a $500 scholarship.
Zerfas’s pieces were a non-traditional oil painting self-portrait and an acrylic painting of orange and red flower.
“The challenge [of the oil painting] was looking at composition to make it from an artistic angle,” Zerfas said. “The acrylic was more fun to use more vibrant colors.”
“It took five people to convince me that the [self-portrait] was not a picture,” Darrow said. “Incredible.”
In addition to carefully captured photos and intricately created acrylic, oil and watercolor paintings, the exhibit features a number of unique pieces, according to Berwald.
For example, an intricate fold-out book of different black and white visuals of crosses and a realistic sculpture of a worn out shoe are featured in the show. However, one of the pieces that stood out the most is a replication of Van Gogh’s famous “Starry Night” on a tapestry – completely made of colored duct tape, Talley said.
“Sometimes something is just so good that you can’t ignore it,” Berwald said.
The pieces from the show will hang in the corridor outside of the Honors Program offices in Alumni Hall until Nov. 2013.
“It makes the hallway incredibly cool,” Darrow said. “I’m looking forward to enjoying it the rest of the year.”
