Art exhibition continues to inspire, showcases ECU faculty passions
Mingling with colleagues and viewing their art pieces took Professor Catherine Walker back to her own undergraduate days at East Carolina University.
Hanna Jubran, ECU professor of sculpture, speaks about his piece, Expanding Universe, in the School of Art and Design faculty exhibition. Scott Eagle, ECU associate professor of painting and drawing, who also has pieces in the show, looks on.
The School of Art and Design faculty exhibition, “Persist,” features works by Walker and other faculty members. They celebrated the exhibition during a reception last week, and the exhibition is on display through Friday, March 28, at the Wellington B. Gray Gallery in the Jenkins Fine Arts Center. Gray Gallery is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
Walker and Scott Eagle, an associate professor of painting and drawing, reminisced about previous facultly exhibitions during their time as ECU undergraduates.
“It was my favorite show of the year,” Walker said. “It’s really important to have a faculty show for the students. It’s a teaching gallery; students have the right to see what we’re doing.”
Eagle added that the faculty shows were “always packed.”
A crowd of faculty, students and others viewed this year’s exhibition during its March 20 reception. The faculty artists discussed their pieces with onlookers.
Professor Hanna Jubran walked up to a group engaging with his sculpture piece called Expanding Universe. Observers can move a metal ball around sand filling a metal bowl. The sand takes on the craters and cuts of the ball, and is recycled as the ball rolls across the same swaths. Jubran said this represents galaxies in our universe.
Walker spoke about one of her several lino cut print pieces in the show, “A Question of Taste.” It shows multiple arms reaching over a dining table space, and represents people she knows. Her prints offer glimpses of home.
“That’s what is important to me,” she said.
Important to Professor Lisa Beth Robinson is climate-driven migration, water, and ocean health, reflected in her large display piece “Mitigation.” Visitors will see paper canoes hanging from the ceiling, and large, printed woodcut panels along one wall, as well as Robinson’s statement about the piece.
“In hope, there are moments of quiet reflection, a brief mitigation of the acute pain and distress of needing to leave one’s home and head into the unknown,” the statement says, in part. “In endings, there are beginnings.”
Robinson said art often serves something, and praised the opportunity for collaboration among artists, and between art and science.
“Art is a catalyst, and you can get people to feel things,” she said. “If you communicate well, they’ll have the conversations you want them to, or at least consider it.”
Robinson agreed with her colleagues that it is important for students to see faculty work, especially as faculty members talk to graduates about potential career paths.
“It’s also rejuvenating for me,” Robinson said. “I get to see my colleagues’ work.”
The SOAD holds a faculty exhibition every two to three years; the last was in 2022.