Courtney Carpinello ’15, Amanda Molitor ’14: The Crawford Campus Center Gallery has made plans to integrate several additional student exhibitions as well as shows by outside professionals for the new school year.
Susan Coote, Episcopal parent and coordinator for the gallery, specifically hopes to continue the program of having academic departments create material for the gallery. “Last year, we worked with the English department and did a project with words. This year, we want to do a similar thing with the science department.” Coote added that, “I think it is my overall vision to continue to get students and different departments involved.”
Brianna Belo ’14, president of the Da Vinci Club and a prominent member of the Episcopal art community, shared her reaction to Coote’s proposal. “I’m really excited to see what’s going to happen with this collaboration because people don’t usually think art and academics really go together at all, when in fact the opposite is true. It’s really inspiring to see that someone felt it was important to see science and art combined because it’s not often in this world where we see people supporting both together at the same time.”
Coote, along with David Sigel, Visual Arts Chair, has been in touch with local artists whose work possesses a natural or scientific theme and who would like to share their art with students. Among such individuals are ceramic artist Michael Ellis, who also services Episcopal’s kilns, photographer Jena Johnson, who works in a lab at the University of Georgia, and artist Gregory Brellochs, who will be featured in shows in September and October.
“[Sigel and I] were thinking of having artists whose work is being shown in the gallery come once a month during lunch and the students could come by and meet them. All of the artists we have are putting their art in this gallery because they want to reach out and educate kids about art so they’d be happy to meet the students.” Coote also expressed her desire to get more students involved in the gallery, especially those who are too busy to have art in their schedule. “I know some students don’t have time to take art classes at school, so they do art outside of school and those students should contact me or Mr. Sigel and maybe we can incorporate their work into the gallery as well.”She urges students who do not have time to take art classes to enter the
Dora Khayatt Visual Art Competition in the spring as a way to put their art on display. Coote also encourages students to begin thinking about their senior projects, as the art projects will likely be displayed in the gallery.
Partly due to the gallery’s central location on campus, Coote noted just how fortunate the school is to have it. “We’re really lucky to have this space. It is a great hub that we can use to get different departments involved with each other and working together.”