SoFA Gallery opens its doors for the fall ’08 season

The School of Fine Arts Gallery was divided between the abstract and the familiar Friday night as visitors viewed the gallery for the first time this season. The opening kicked off two shows: “Vacation ’08” and “HUB: A Collaboration of Art and Space.”

“It’s always exciting at the beginning of a show, especially at the beginning of the year, because it’s an opportunity for everyone to visit each other and revisit work students have been working on, like the HUB show, and what faculty have been working on over the summer,” said Althea Murphy-Price, a member of the fine arts faculty whose work is featured in “Vacation ’08.”

“Vacation ’08,” comprised of art faculty members prepared during the summer, occupies one side of the gallery. Most of the discussion seemed to center on “HUB,” which was in the second room.

“HUB” is a two-part show, so Friday’s opening was only the start of one phase. The second phase, originally planned for Memorial Stadium, will now take place at the McCalla School at 10th Street and Indiana Avenue, where all the artwork will be shown in trucks.

Jonathan Dankenbring, an MFA student featured in HUB, said the two phases make the show unique.

“There’s something very different about having a show that’s in two different phases,” Dankenbring said. “Typically work goes up in a gallery and it comes down a month later and you’re done. Here it has a second life. Because of the context shift, the work is going to change.”

Derek Parker, an MFA student with “HUB,” said he was still nervous about the show but calmed down after he received positive feedback.

“So far I’m starting to relax, and I’ve been getting good responses from people,” Parker said. “I’m just vindicated to have spent so much time and effort and have it all come together.”

Even though both Dankenbring and Parker said they feel a bit of relief, there is still a lot of work to do for the next phase because the artists will have to move and reconstruct their work.

“It’s going to be a completely different ballgame when that happens,” Parker said. “We’re going from a few thousand square feet to probably a few hundred square feet.”

With a shift in location and context, Parker said the idea of “HUB” is rare for a show in an art school at an IU-size university.

The fresh idea of “HUB” and the variety in “Vacation ’08” attracted a range of guests. The crowd consisted of graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and family.
Sophomore Cristina Vanko  came to the show to get a sense of what SoFA has to offer.

“I’m an art major, and basically by looking at each exhibit, I’m trying to decide what to do with my art career,” Vanko said.

Murphy-Price, who has a few pieces in “Vacation ’08”, said both shows exemplify the different types of work that come from SoFA.

“It’s nice to be able to see what people are working on and there’s a lot of people that are really committed to their work,” she said. “It shows a really diverse array of what people are doing in fine arts.”