Newest DeLuce Gallery exhibit explores ‘Art Left Behind’

Newest DeLuce Gallery exhibit explores 'Art Left Behind'

A new exhibit at Northwest Missouri State University explores the work art students have left behind in the storage rooms of the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building.

"Art Left Behind: Exploring Decades of Creativity," which is open now through March 31 in the Olive DeLuce Art Gallery, showcases a range of artwork completed at Northwest since the 1960s.

Curated by Northwest art students Brooke Reyes, Jeri Walters and Sammy Ward, the exhibit is part of Women's History Month activities happening throughout the month at the University.

"What we uncovered was not simply a forgotten collection but a visual archive of student voices spanning from the '60s to present day," Reyes, a senior art education major from Omaha, Nebraska, said. "This exhibition brings those works back into the present, highlighting decades of learning, experimentation and artistic exploration."

The exhibit came to fruition after the students approached Dr. Karen Britt, an associate professor of art, with an idea they formed through their experience of assisting with the Olive DeLuce Art Gallery. The women had discovered about 300 discarded pieces of art in a basement room of the Fine Arts Building.

While the artwork they found dates back to the years after the Fine Arts Building opened in 1965, most of the pieces, the curators determined, were prints completed by students working under the tutelage of Phil Laber, who taught at Northwest from 1976 until retiring in 2016. The prints contained myriad forms, ranging from abstract figures and structures to political and social commentaries.

What developed from the piles of art the curators sorted into various categories was a process of elimination that was "kind of ruthless, pretty rigorous," Reyes said. "We essentially were putting all of these prints on trial. We decided it was important to pick a large range of pieces that encompassed the diversity of printmaking as a medium and as a practice. There were so many themes, so many techniques happening in all of these prints."

As a fundamental component of Northwest's art program, the practice of printmaking helps students develop technical skills, critical thinking and problem-solving, Reyes said. The prints also help their audience gather insight into an artist's techniques, materials and tools.

"Each piece is extremely unique, uses different techniques, compositions and was all made across four decades," Reyes added, pointing to a print titled "Green Lady" as one of her favorites in the exhibit. "I was very interested and visually attracted to almost all of the prints with figure compositions. This one always stuck out to me due to the large proportions displayed in the figure depicted and the clear use of foreshortening within the composition."

Walters, a senior art education major from Raymore, Missouri, noted that mystery still surrounds much of the collection. Although some of the prints have names and dates scribbled on them, some were found with no writing or labels. Often, the curators discussed tracking down each piece's original artist.

By coincidence, one print the curators had identified as a favorite was created by a regular visitor to the DeLuce Art Gallery. The artist had created a print in the 1980s that depicts Ronald Reagan, and it appears in the exhibition.

"Something that we learned through our classes is that history matters," Walters said. "Contextualizing our art in history is a valuable tool that we shouldn't ignore. These pieces exist as part of our past and can help to influence our art and community in the future."

Additionally, the curators found a box of videotapes that contained educational videos and demonstrations, news segments, documentaries and some unique performance art. The women watched everything they found on the tapes, amounting to about 30 hours. A projector inside the exhibit shows some of the most interesting footage the curators discovered.

While most of the recordings were mundane and repetitive - including several gallery openings during the 1990s - they offered historical accounts of the faculty, students and visiting artists connected to the Northwest art program during that period, Ward said.

"It made us reflect on how much has and hasn't changed," Ward, a senior art education major from Omaha, Nebraska, said.

As curatorial assistants for the DeLuce Art Gallery, Ward, Reyes and Walters are integral in the planning and installation of exhibitions in addition to helping with research, collection management and administrative tasks.

"It was my hope that the curatorial assistantships would be a means for furthering students' knowledge and professional experience by providing training similar to that which would be provided in a museum environment," Britt said. "So you can imagine how thrilled I was when, last fall, during our weekly curatorial meetings, Brooke, Jeri and Sammy asked if they could curate an exhibition from its inception to its completion."

The Olive DeLuce Art Gallery, which is free and open to the public, is open from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays. For more information, call 660.562.1326 or email [email protected].