A look inside “Ephemerality,” Winthrop’s most recent gallery and statements from some of the artists.
By Gabriela Griggs
Staff Writer
AC&T
Inside Winthrop University’s Lewandowski Gallery, housed in the entrance of McLaurin Hall, a brand new gallery has covered the walls. Titled “Ephemerality,” this gallery is currently hosting work created by the Winthrop Art Education Cohort.
Ephemerality, as a word, is defined as referring to the state of lasting or existing for a short amount of time. In the context of the gallery, artists turned to utilize this definition and reflect it within their creations on the intersecting personal layers of identity, their identity as current or aspiring teachers and education, and their personal experiences with the world.
“Our identities, how others perceive us, and how we perceive ourselves, perpetually evolve and impact how we conduct our practices as artists who are teachers. We rely on transience and fluidity as we alternate between and synthesize the different roles we uphold. Finding ourselves in these different spaces, we often battle liminality,” reads the introduction near the entrance of the gallery.
In the gallery, there are seven different unique presentations from Winthrop Art Education students. These exhibitions center around “peeling back the layers of artistry and education,” as defined by the Winthrop Fine Arts Instagram.
One of the displays by graduate student Leah Anderson focuses around the intersecting idea of the inner self and the outer self through a lesson taught to fifth graders. This display involves artwork created by younger students through collages, resulting in a self portrait that exhibits all the varying characteristics of the student’s personalities.
“I taught them first how to draw their self portrait, how to practice drawing themselves, and what represents them. Then, around their picture, we put objects and things that represent them as a person, so their inner self and their outer self are all in one picture,” Anderson said.
Issy Sutton, a fine arts student concentrating in sculpture, curated a display that features her major piece “Astraea” and collage work from adult students independently taught by Sutton.
“I named [Astraea] after a goddess who was really disgusted with the state of her world. I feel as though right now, I’ve been having a lot of internal struggle with the state of our world and the state of our politics, especially how those politics are attempting to attack teaching.” Sutton said.
A new federal proposal introduced by the Department of Education now includes an outline that categorizes degree fields as either professional, or by exclusion, non-professional. Under the new proposed definition of “professional,” education, as a degree, is excluded. This definition seeks to further tighter regulations on loan eligibility for students and their ability to seek higher education in their fields.
This proposal was introduced only a couple days before the opening reception of the “Ephemerality” gallery, hosted on Monday, Nov. 24.
“This is our Art Ed. exhibition, so I feel like what’s going on with schools is very important to talk about. Because of this, I’ve been looking into alternative methods of teaching, so I’ve been hosting adult art classes. They all made their pieces [here] on their feminine experience, and I asked them to focus on unpacking something that might be bothering them, such as the political climate. Some of them took it really deep, some of them took it more non-objective, but I was overall very impressed with the artwork that they did,” Sutton said.
Senior arts education student Rachel Burroughs utilized a variety of artistic methods and techniques to curate a presentation that honors her identities as both a student and an aspiring educator. She highlights the restraints on understanding individual identity when also creating her identity as a teacher.
“I wanted the pieces to connect. The flower [motifs] represent me in childhood, me discovering myself, and me now focusing on myself and the core parts of my identity. All the fish in the pieces also represent the political climate, [with] the school of fish of how we’re expected to be normal and not be ourselves, and how that’s being taught. It [speaks to] how they’re implementing a lot of rules in education when the core necessity is being yourself and learning and growing,” Burroughs said.
“Ephemerality,” while defined at the gallery’s entrance, turns to take different meanings within each of the artist’s individual exhibitions. This word turns to fuel each of the cohort’s member’s creations, even when it varies in meaning from individual to individual.
“[Ephemerality] means to me the layers of ourselves and the layers of who we have to perform as, and how it all comes together in one person. It’s all the different split identities [we hold,] but we are still that person, whether you take away parts or add more,” Burroughs said.
“To me, ephemerality is a state of being comfortable with yourself knowing that there are different variations of you, based on time and the passage of time, but still loving and consuming all those versions of yourself. You should be open to change in your life, because it’s still you, no matter which layer or step [of life] you’re on,” Sutton said.
“It means to me the layers of being a teacher, an artist, and a student. I taught elementary school art for a year and a half before I came back to school to get my graduate degree, so it’s that transition back to becoming a student after being out of the classroom for such a long time [that helps establish] that new layer of identity,” Anderson said.
The “Ephemerality” gallery will remain in McLaurin Hall until December 16. The gallery is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
