There are not many places at Elon University where somebody can find a description of Hiroshima through scrapbooking and braille, political figure puppets and an artistic examination of shaving an ingrown hair.
This year, the department of art and art history’s Faculty Biennial exhibition surrounded the idea of an art kit. These packages usually contain an array of artistic materials such as paintbrushes, chalk and pencils so a buyer can purchase the utensils at once.
This concept takes on a different meaning for each faculty member and, therefore, was addressed very differently.
In honor of the exhibition’s opening Feb. 11, the artists participated in a panel discussion where they spun a numbered wheel and each number corresponded to a specific question. Other times, audience members could ask questions.
“When I’m thinking about making art, I’m thinking about how I can draw the audience in,” said Ken Hassell, associate professor of art. “And part of that is the structure we all think of.”
Until April 9, faculty members Samantha DiRosa, Michael Fels, Judy Hendricks, Young Do Kim, Juan Obando, Mike Sanford, Anne Simpkins and LM Wood will show their work in the Center for the Arts’ Isabella Cannon Room.
Hassell’s piece took a very unique approach compared to his peers.
“It’s going to be a very different kind of experience – a performance piece,” he said.
The art seemed to be asking the overarching question of whether artists are glorified craft hobbyists or something more.
“I’m just a producer of kits – I’m ‘Kit,’” said Fels, whose two pieces in the room were a photograph and a painting of him wearing a white T-shirt labeled “Kit.”
Kim said he hoped to present art as something more complex and wondrous than what a kit might be able to offer. He displayed large panels with a connect-the-dots outline. If the dots were to be connected, the audience would be looking at Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam.”
“I am asking people to kind of just use their imaginations,” Kim said.
Most of the art professors had never used an art kit or other package that restricted creative boundaries. For example, the idea of buying a corporate paint-by-number box may not have been on the professors’ minds for years, but Simpkins decided to run with that idea.
For this exhibition, she created her own paint-by-number art.
“I was really interested in how idyllic paint- by-number imagery is,” Simpkins said.
She based her painting on her recent travels to China with her family. Before their trip, her children based their perceptions of the Chinese people on stereotypes, movies and cartoons.
She said now her goal is to help people question what is considered beautiful.
Each piece in the exhibition told a completely different story based on the same general prompt. By hearing each artist explain their process through the panel discussion, the art took on new life and new meaning.
“It [an art kit] would lack the interaction with the artist,” said LM Wood, an associate art and art history professor. “The process is really art for me. All of that is much more the art experience.”