Jamestown College art department stages fall all-students show

Jamestown College visual arts students have their work on display in the gallery of the Reiland Fine Arts Center now through Dec. 14. It’s free and open to the public during regular hours and events.

Students have work ranging from introduction to drawing class, large format painting class and ceramics class.

All students are required to show a certain number of pieces for their final grades, so everyone has to prepare and present work, even if it’s not what they perceive as being their best work.

It is a tough call to have to show to an audience the work that’s been struggled with since August.

Learning how to control the potter’s wheel is always a challenge, but one so enjoyed once mastered.

The period of time following Thanksgiving break and the start of Christmas beak is comparable to a hive of bees readying to move the queen to another site.

The students are all abuzz making gifts. The pressure of a grade is off their shoulders and they are at a point where they need a place to escape from the stress of final exams. There’s hardly anything outside of sports or running that equals what throwing pottery can do for stabilizing stress. The greatest problem they have to confront then is getting a wheel. The room is usually full and gets much more relaxed now through the last break of the year.

The large format painting class is always small in number but large in enthusiasm.

One of the students has a section of a curved grain elevator in the gallery. Needless to say, she had to get some help moving it into the display gallery. She painted a trompe l’oeil scene over the rolling corrugated metal surface using metal primer followed by latex and acrylic paint used for details. It’s on the platform where the curve of the metal flows with the gallery’s architectural curves.

Another student has photos of her wall trompe l’oeil she did at home, also using latex paint and acrylic. Since her example was not moveable, she showed what she did via four documentary photographs. That class helps students learn how to do very large-scaled pieces painted with house-paint while using fine art painting techniques learned in class.

Students also have the option to paint a wall or another object. Those who did actual building walls photographed the chronology of their progress and have matted evidence of each stage. Muralists and large scale painters work background to foreground, using various means of perspective tools.

It’s not exactly simple or easy on a flat wall, but trying to paint realism across undulation is mind-boggling. In the past, students have painted scenes over walls, windows, doors, shelving and cabinets, and furniture. From alumni comments, it has been a popular study taken into marriage and career-life in first homes and even offices.

Their walls include recognizable scenes and some familiar locations. The photographic documentation is almost a “how-to” for do-it-yourselfers planning to paint a scene on an interior wall this winter, so their displays alone will be worth stepping over to the Reiland Fine Arts Center’s gallery.

And be sure to take notice of the pottery in the window walls. More than 45 students completed requirements for making hand-built and wheel-thrown clay vessels. Some are for sale. The class as a whole did an outstanding job of producing designs in white and red clay (terra cotta). Those who glazed their pieces were usually students who had high school pottery classes so during their semester focused on perfecting forms and glazing rather than construction alone. Those that were glazed are exceptional.

Hand-built pieces were made with three methods: pinch-pots, coil-built and slab, plus a combination using all three construction methods. Wheel-thrown vessels includes straight-walled cylinders, out-curved and incurved styles, as well as combination vessels using all three wheel-formed shapes. They would make some inexpensive and thoughtful Christmas gifts, so a look-see might be advantageous for people seeking original gifts.

If anyone has an item for this column, please send to Sharon Cox, PO Box 1559, Jamestown, ND 58402-1559.

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