On a Monday night, as the sky darkened and the air cooled, the doors to the Bardwell Art Gallery opened. Students walking in were greeted by a diverse display of all kinds of artwork: drawings, paintings, sculptures and design work. Art hung not just in the gallery space but in the hallways and upstairs, as well as in the Green Art Gallery.

The exhibition featured the work of students from the past ten years, across all the different forms of art. The Bardwell art gallery contained the lower and medium division artwork, while the Green Art Gallery held the upper-division artwork.

The exhibit was hosted for NASAD, the National Association of Arts and Design.

Jenn Cai, a sophomore art major, was one of the organizers of the art exhibit.  Cai shared it was her first time organizing the exhibition more independently, due mostly to the recent changes happening in the art department.

“It was mainly just how me and my coworker wanted it to be,” Cai said. There was still the larger concept in place for where lower- and upper-division artwork were to be located, but Cai and her coworker had more freedom to decide how those pieces would be arranged in the hallways and gallery spaces.

CHANGES IN CURATING PROCESS

Given the changes in the art department — as well as the departure of the art curator — Cai reflected on how organizing art galleries at Biola will now look like.

“Now we will have different [art] professors that will help with [curating] the gallery,” said Cai. “Before, it was just Jeff. [He] did everything by himself, [designed] everything by himself. Now there’s multiple faculty in the art building that [will] be involved in the gallery.”

One possible difficulty Cai sees is how art professors may balance curating the art gallery alongside teaching classes.

“Professors are also busy,” said Cai. “But I also think it will be [good] for the gallery because it will have different points of view from different professors.”

THE INSPIRING NATURE OF ART

As a student worker assistant for organizing the art exhibit, Cai was proud to put the various kinds of artwork at the exhibition on display. 

“There’s [just such a] diversity of people’s ideas,” said Cai. “There’s people using different media, people using different techniques … People are using different color theory and size of paper or palette or medium that just creates different effects. That really makes me feel inspired by looking at it, and I hope [everyone] feels that too.”