On Thursday, Jan. 31, professors and instructors of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts displayed their works during the Faculty Art Exhibit in the Contemporary Art Gallery, including displays of a large mechanical fish and sculptural ceramics to literary publications.
John Valentino, associate professor of new media and animation, made his work as a part of an arts festival in the Nevada desert.
“[The large mechanical fish] is a prototype for a large installation that is going to be shown in the Nevada desert this summer at the Burning Man Festival,” said Valentino. “Burning Man is an arts festival. There’s music, there’s art and there’s a number of interactive installations that go on out in the desert. This is going to be the New Orleans contribution to the Burning Man Festival 2013.”
Jamie Alonzo, lecturer of 3D design, displayed her sculptural ceramics works.
“I based my work off the idea of the cycle of life, intertwined with the idea of the young and the old coming together again,” said Alonzo.
Professor of graphic design Gary Keown used his work to bring attention to tragedies that are caused by assault weapons.
“These are silhouettes of Dick and Jane from back in the 50s and early 60s,” said Keown. “They were two children that were used in the textbooks that were read by elementary school kids years ago. What this is all about is the mass killings of children and so on with semi-automatics. If you look at the silhouettes, those are a grey. Those are the same grey of those semi-automatic weapons which I found from sampling the colors of those.”
Kenneth Boulton, interim head of the Fine and Performing Arts Department, said that it was “a spectacular show, as it always is.”
“This show represents how multilayered our faculty’s talent is and how creative and imaginative they are as individual faculty, and it’s so great to see all of this art coexisting and intermingling,” said Boulton. “There’s no substitute for our student’s to be able to see what their faculty produces professionally. Our faculty are not just spectacular teachers, they’re also gifted artists in their own right.”
Other faculty artists agreed that it was a great thing to have their work displayed to their students, as opposed to their student’s work displayed for them.
 “I think it’s actually a good thing to have because they kind of get a window into you as a designer or artist,” said Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton, assistant professor of graphic design. “In the classroom, obviously, it’s always about them, we’re always talking about their work, and so they don’t really get to see what we do outside the classroom.”
According to Cristina Molina, assistant professor of new media and animation, its a great way to exchange ideas and, “I think it’s good for them to be exposed to faculty work so that they see that we’re actually practicing artists as well.”
“I think it’s very important to have students see their faculty working as artists,” said Valentino. “We encourage our students to make artwork to a high standard and it’s important for them to see us doing the same thing.”
The Faculty Art Exhibit will be displayed in the Contemporary Art Gallery until Feb. 28.