Southeast Missouri State University student publication

Group art show at Cateye to feature five Southeast students

Monday, February 22, 2016
Kelsey Rost has created moss sculptures that will appear at the group exhibition on Friday at Cateye Glasses Studio.

Five Southeast Missouri State University art students are producing a group art show to exhibit from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday at Cateye Glasses Studio on Broadway.

"Not a lot of times do you see a bunch of artists, especially art students, come together and make their own show," Conley Clark, the exhibition's curator, said.

Clark, along with Kelsey Rost, Jade Notice, Shawn Lohman and Caitlin Kennedy, came together at the end of the fall semester to start putting together the group exhibition called "In The Name of Art."

"It's really important for us BFA students to have shows before we graduate, and it's kind of difficult to get that going because there's not a whole lot of places outside of the university to have these shows out to exhibit," Clark said.

Clark did a show at Cateye in 2013 and started having conversations with the studio's owner, Rosetta Whitten, in November about doing another show. He said it wasn't finalized with all the other students until right before winter break.

Clark said the work he is doing for the show is very personal to him and will have to do with gender stereotypes he has come across. He said he specifically wants to tackle "fem-shaming" against feminine males in the LGBT community.

"Right now, I am working with these ideas of the terminology and stereotypes of what is masculine and what is feminine," Clark said. "Why we as a society have created or upheld these certain stereotypes, these gender norms, these ideals. What makes a masculine guy masculine, what makes a feminine guy feminine and what's wrong with being feminine as a man, especially in the gay community?"

Clark added that the show not only will have variety through the artists' points of view but also in the mediums with which they work, ranging from sculpture to ceramics to photography and mixed media.

"I think just about all of us do something different, so it's going to be eclectic and all sorts of different things coming together 'in the name of art,' which is what it's called," Rost said.

Rost said she will show both her sculptures made out of objects she found in nature and her photographs of the sculptures back in nature in the show.

"My pieces are these sort of moss sculptures that are mounted on wood and then on the wood there are photography prints," Rost said. "The main thing that I do is photography because I'm a commercial photo major, but I've been in sculpture a lot lately so I'm combining the two in my work."

Rost, who had never exhibited her work outside of the university, said being able to have her work shown in the community has prepared her for gallery exhibitions as a professional.

"It's different than just presenting in the River Campus, for example, because you get to go out into the community," Rost said. "And so many different types of people get to come to the show, and you're literally in downtown Cape. You're off campus really doing work that someone in the field would do, presenting in a gallery."

Lohman, who also produced sculptures for the exhibition, said the show allows the students to have more control over what pieces were chosen than typical River Campus events.

Lohman said he plans on showing some of his recent series of animal sculptures made up of various found materials that have helped him work through recent emotional experiences, including anger through a boar and a baby giraffe to signify him moving on from feeling unstable.

"I find all this stuff and cut it up and tear it up," Lohman said. "I've had trash bags stretched out and look like hair. I've used foam, nails, glue, tape -- whatever I can find. And if you think about a baby giraffe right when it's born, it's scared, it's shaking, it doesn't know how to stand. The more it goes, it starts to learn, so it's like it builds these things. So each texture is kind of a new experience or it's muscles learning how to move."

Clark hopes the show will be a start of having more art shows between First Fridays, because he sees the art community in Cape Girardeau, both among professionals and with students, as only growing.

"It's not a BFA show, it's not about any particular artist," Clark said. "It's not on First Friday, which is kind of intentional. I think it started as a First Friday [event], but we had some conflicts and had to push back. But I'm glad that it's not because I think I want the point of the show to be that art is still happening when you don't see it. It doesn't stop, and it's not just to be seen once a month."

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