Once again, NIC’s Corner Gallery is hosting an intriguing art exhibit for any curious student or community member wishing to attend. For those who have not dropped by, the Corner Gallery is offering the chance to dwell upon art made by NIC instructors, giving the exhibit a variety not commonly seen.
A total of ten NIC instructors shared their art in the gallery, including art instructor and Corner Gallery Director Priscilla Cooper, photography instructor Philip Corlis, and art instructors Fran Bahr, Donna Bain, Larry Clark, Robin Dare, Rachel Dolezal, Michael Horswill, Megan Riffe and Allie Kurtz Vogt.
With such a large number of artists showing their work in one space, one could see how difficulties might arise while deciding how to arrange each piece in preparation of the opening. For the Corner Gallery, there is only one man who holds this responsibility, and that man is Tom Cooper, the assistant director of the Corner Gallery.
“All of the work was delivered, and it’s spread all over the room, and I take a chair and sit in the middle and regard all of the work,” Cooper said. “I’m bound to some degree by the fact that it’s a faculty show and I’m attempting to keep people’s work together and not spread it around.”
An exhibit of this fashion takes Cooper more than 20 hours to put together in a way that satisfies his artistic eye but, on occasion, he spends a generous amount more getting the flow just how he wants it.
“I’m a composer; I write musical theater and opera, and there are many of the same elements that go into the making of music and the making of art in terms of balance and in terms of composition and structure,” Cooper said.
Students in NIC art classes regularly drop by the gallery’s exhibits during class time. Rachel Dolezal’s piece “Emery” caught the attention of one NIC student.
“There’s something about it…the value, it’s kind of haunting, almost surreal, just the way he’s staring at you,” said Andrew Stone, 19, English, Coeur d’Alene. “It’s like looking at a portrait of a soldier almost, you know? Like a war picture.”
“Emery” is an image of an African-American man wearing a bandanna. His face looks stern, but there seems to be more to it than just that.
Horswill’s work consisted of pieces built with organic and man-made materials crafted together to form structures of a sort.
“I bring different kinds of materials together, and they sort of find their shape through the drawing process, and through my exploration with materials,” Horswill said. “What I can do with them, and what I find they want to do and what they don’t want to do so much…So I’m kind of organizing a little party for things and they get together and they live.”
NIC yoga instructor Nancy Schilling said she was impressed with the textures of Horswill’s piece.
Allie Vogt’s piece, “Jeweled Losses,” hangs opposite of Horswill. A memorial to a friend, the pieces tell the story with passionate, bold and powerful images and colors.
“You work a lot at thinking about how you want to compose an idea, and it’s this visual sort of start,” Vogt said. “Often times, I make a small drawing.”
Vogt’s work gradually transitions into Priscilla Cooper’s work, which incorporated a large variety of found objects, from bones to wasp nests. Cooper commented on her affection of areas such as Priest Lake for collecting material.
“I’m really interested in nature, and in decay and renewal,” Cooper said.
Philip Corlis’s work consisted of photographs from around the world, but referred to a statement by a famous photographer to help explain where he considered the art to lie in photography.
“Ansel Adams always said that the negative is like a musical score and the print is like a performance of that score,” Corlis said. “So you get what you get, and then you try to enhance it and make the picture look more like it felt, as opposed to what you saw.”
The Corner Gallery is open weekdays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and is located on the first floor of Boswell Hall, Room 13. The Faculty Art Exhibit closes March 23.
