Shaw Gallery displays work of art instructors

The Weber State University Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery is hosting the Faculty Art Exhibit from Nov. 17 through Dec. 12. The biannual show consists of artwork from faculty members of the Kimball Center for the Visual Arts. The faculty members participating are both tenured and adjunct faculty. Overall, 24 faculty members are having their artwork shown. The artwork ranges from paintings, to photographs, to sculptures. Suzanne Kanatsiz, a WSU sculpture professor, did a piece with birch plywood and carbon. "I just soot the birch plywood until it has a fine layer of really, really rich black-like dust, and then I just do an imprint of the body," Kanatsiz said. "It's impressive what the carbon gets; you can see every hair, every pore. It's like a fingerprint." The process of creating the piece took more than a year and a half. "Various things went wrong," Kanatsiz said. The process of finishing one of the birch pieces was making the imprint, and then using a variety of "environmentally friendly water-based" resin over the soot. "It's really hard to do because it wants to blow the carbon away," Kanatsiz said. WSU photography adjunct teacher Paul Crow created another piece shown in the exhibit. His piece featured two photographs about technology. The photographs are a part of a larger project. The project started out as an idea on surveillance. "It is very easy for me to imagine the technology we associate with watching TV and listening to music on iPods," Crow said. He said that after the Bush administration, people are forced to think about the darker sides of technology. "I also meant for (the images) to be kind of humorous," Crow said. "Like two pieces of antennas are chattering to each other." Crow said he was surprised at the spot he got in the gallery. There is a security camera almost right above his pictures. "That camera is right there, and you become a part of the conversation between the dish antenna and the TV antenna," Crow said. "I would have been sad if I had gotten another spot in the gallery and found out the camera was there." Crow has been working on the project since September. All of the work done on the project has been made at the photography lab in the Kimball Arts building. The photos were shot in Salt Lake City. According to Lydia Gravis, the Kimball Arts outreach coordinator, the show features recent work from the faculty and staff. Most of the artwork is for sale, and the proceeds go directly to the artist. The gallery doesn't charge a fee for the selling of a piece.