The Visual Arts Society (VAS) encourages students to express their political opinions through their artistic abilities for the “Vote with your Art” art show.
The art show will be located in the Sims Memorial Library from Monday, Nov. 5 through Thursday, Nov. 15. The display consists of a variety of artistic styles such as paintings, digital art and 3-D pieces.
“The overall purpose was for the students to express their political ideas without backlash from their peers,” said Dillon Raborn, vice president of VAS. “There’s a different dialogue with art than debate. If it’s an art piece, especially if it’s anonymous, you can say whatever you want without worrying about hurting anyone’s feelings. You can do that with artwork because the artists themselves aren’t there, but they’ve still left their part of the conversation and left the viewer to fill in the rest of the conversation.”
The idea of topical art shows is a new one for VAS, but an idea which will potentially develop into a more consistent event.
“It was collaboration between the VAS officers and the faculty sponsor, Michael Aldana,” said Raborn. “We got together over the summer and we decided that we wanted to have a topical show, and it was only natural for the topical show to be political with the presidential election coming up. We’re going to try to do a topical show every semester.”
While some of the students focused their artwork on specific presidential candidates, many of the pieces expressed a general political theme or centered on a specific issue.
“I think the more successful ones were the ones with more general political themes,” said Raborn. “When you pinpoint it on an individual candidate, it really limits the range of what you can discuss in the art. You’re making it about a person instead of a subject that matters to you.”
The politically themed show resulted in the display of several potentially offensive pieces.
“I was not expecting as harsh of pieces. These are not warm, fuzzy pieces at all,” said Raborn. “One of the more successful paintings was ‘Man Meat,’ which showed the hybrid between women and cows and talked about how women are treated like cattle.”
One student designed a toilet bowl, which was painted red, white and blue, to express his opinion of the political parties’ interaction. This unique piece received a great deal of attention.
“There’s the toilet, which was the most obvious,” said Raborn. “It shows how the political system is mechanized like a toilet, because the Democrats and Republicans are like this mass of water, and anything that would be in the bowl is flushed down.”
 While many students enjoyed the topical art show, some students hope to see more variety in future shows.
“I thought it was awesome, and they should definitely do it again,” said Megan Jenkins, a sophomore psychology major. “But next year they should have a greater selection of art mediums on display. I felt that they had too many posters and would love to see more sculptures and paintings in the future.”
Despite the immediate attention the 3-D pieces drew in, some students preferred the more traditional paintings.
“The toilet and the eye-brain cup were kind of weird, but still cool,” said Cory Soileau, a junior kinesiology major. “The paintings were the best in my opinion.”
This semester VAS has also hosted the Kandinsky Project, which displayed abstract art inspired by the artist Vassily Kandinsky. The Art Night Promotional Show displayed pieces from past semesters to raise awareness for Art Night and the Juried Exhibition for which Aldana and a visiting artist judged entered art pieces.
While “Vote with your Art” is the last VAS art show for the semester, Raborn hopes to increase the activeness of VAS in the coming semester.
“The number of art shows is not what we would like,” said Raborn. “The VAS is changing rapidly. We’re going to try to be much more active. Hosting four shows is good, but it’s not good enough. We’ve got to do more than that to promote the students’ art.”
Overall, students enjoyed the art displays and look forward to similar future shows.
“I found the art to be very spirited. By that I mean it was very pro-election,” said Ryan McDaniel, junior computer engineering major. “I believe it peaks the attention of people who are really into politics. This is something that should be done again for big events in our country.”