Every three years, the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art has a Faculty Art Exhibit. This is one of those lucky years. The opening of the Faculty Art Exhibit was on April 8, 2022. All of the art is beautifully made and displayed. It is definitely a must-see while it is open here at Augustana. 

The exhibit is at the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art in Centennial Hall. The exhibit will be open until April 28 from noon-4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

“It’s fun. It’s also an enormous amount of work. There’s way more involved than people would probably think.” Jennifer Saintfort said.

Saintfort is the interim director of the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art. She helped install the exhibit, created the layout of the exhibit and made sure everything looked correct and where it was supposed to be.

“First there’s getting the artwork into the building. This building doesn’t have an elevator so it means carrying everything upstairs, including all the pedestals. Then there’s laying out the show and trying to get things that go together that don’t clash. And then there’s hanging the show,” Saintfort said.

There were eight faculty members who participated in the art exhibit this year. Those faculty members were Paul Lang, Kelvin Mason, Vickie Phipps, Megan Quinn, Rowen Schussheim-Anderson, Corrine Smith, Lee White and Peter Xiao. 

“What was unusual was that most of these artists don’t normally work in series [unified bodies of art that use the same technique, subject or palette throughout multiple works of art] but this year, everyone decided to work in a series,” Saintfort said.

There were also a wide variety of different artistic mediums, from charcoal to graphic design, weaving and more. Each piece of art brought with it a different feeling and personality.

“I think we have an eclectic faculty, and because the faculty comes from different backgrounds [and] we’re multigenerational, there is a nice diverse feeling in the work as you go from each professor to the other,” White said.

Each piece of art was inspired from different sources, and each faculty member carried out their ideas in a different way. “I was just looking one day at the cereal box and seeing this ridiculously happy cereal character on there,” Mason said. “Nobody feels like this during the pandemic. It’s ridiculous right?” Mason’s finished works are all of many different cereal mascots looking very angry and displeased. 

Inspiration can come from anywhere or anything when it comes to art. Just by looking at all the different works of art and their mediums you can tell that they were all inspired by something different. 

Many of the pieces in the exhibit are quite large and very intricate. The time and dedication that went into these works of art are amazing. “The very first painting that I made in the series took the longest because it was a kind of transformation,” White said. “The first one took probably a year to make.”

Once the art show is over, the works of art have one of three things that can happen to them. It can either go into storage, it can be sold or it can be sent off and shown in another art exhibit. I highly encourage everyone to go and see the gorgeous art in this year’s Faculty Art Exhibit. Not only is going to the exhibit a fun time, but it can also bring inspiration to all types of people.