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Students display art based on Common Reading selection

ISSUED: 4 December 2013
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens

SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Ties that Bind, an exhibit featuring works by 20 Shepherd University students, will be displayed in the Scarborough Library Reading Room through December 23 and January 2-24, 2014. The works are based on Shepherd’s Common Reading selection, “Strange as This Weather Has Been,” by Ann Pancake. Pancake explores the theme of “identity” through her central character, who reconnects with her home only after going away to college. Students in Visual Thinking Skills I were asked to explore their own sense of identity in their artwork and to express how identity is bound to people, places, and home.

Visual Thinking Skills I (ART 140) is a first-year course for all art majors and minors. Students enrolled in ART 140 grapple with the complexity of visual communication through an understanding of composition, materials, style, symbol, and metaphor. The 20 works in this exhibit were juried by teams of faculty currently teaching the multiple-section course. Sonya Evanisko and Christian Benefiel juried sections 03, 04, and 05, taught by Rhonda Smith, Mike Mendez, and David Modler. Mendez and Modler also juried sections 01 and 02, taught by Evanisko and Benefiel.

Students displaying their work include Josh Levi, Jacob Calvarese, Tina Miller, Julie Becraft-Shehan, Anna Hosey, Sabrina Biddinger, Vincent Juarez, Maria Smith, Josh Faircloth, Patrick Facemire, Deanna Shears, Acadia Kandora, Jessica McCann, Caliph Greene, Holly Campbell, Nadine Stotler, Steven Welti, Kourtney Dailey, Richard Marshall, and Margaret Langland.

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