Nutting Gallery at West Liberty University presents its annual Art Faculty Exhibition through Feb. 11, 2016. Faculty participating in the 2016 exhibition are Sarah Davis, Brian Fencl, James Haizlett, Martyna Matusiak, Moon Jung Kang, Nancy Tirone, Lambros Tsuhlares and Robert Villamagna.
“Each year the Art Faculty Exhibition features a theme and this year the art faculty selected the title of Almost Level, West Virginia,” explained Robert Villamagna, gallery director. “Artworks in the exhibition are a wide variety of media as each faculty member interprets the exhibition title in his or her own way.”
“Having a new theme for the exhibition each year does a number of things,” Villamagna said. “It brings a freshness to the annual exhibition, it challenges the members of the art faculty, and it shows students how a diverse group of artists each approach a single problem or idea each in their own unique way and in a variety of media.”
Professor Davis added, “With our role as professors, I think it’s imperative that we practice our craft and share that with students and each other. This gives us a chance to create new work, address issues within our community and explore new approaches.”
Professor Tsuhlares explained that this year’s faculty exhibition title “is about mountain top removal, and the industrialization of rural West Virginia with no regard to citizen suffering or citizen input. On a bigger platform, it is part of a plan to globalize society to a promised type of utopia that the neoliberal and neoconservatives have promised since the first big trade deal (NAFTA) was imposed. That utopia promised to end and reduce poverty, to reduce nationalism (create a global society) and spread democracy around the world. All this, if we would only let every aspect of society conform to the dictates of the market place, and let the invisible hand of the market rule.”
“As evidenced in West Virginia, and around the world, it has not worked out so well for people. Nationalism and flag waving is at an all time high, the economy has collapsed several times, and war is the best growth industry,” he continued.
“In West Virginia we live in a sacrifice zone that is ruled by the extraction industry. We have no teeth in the laws that protect our water, air and land. We must succumb to the laying of pipelines and blasting away of mountains and filling in hollows and waterways. All to get our gas and coal shipped to the global market. If you don’t have a stake in the extraction industry, the individual West Virginian sees little to no benefit,” he said.
“To me, the title is about the process of extracting fossil fuels from the earth and how it destroys West Virginia’s physical, emotional and spiritual landscape,” added Davis. “A description of the top-most layer of hell from Dante’s Inferno comes to mind: Upper Hell or ‘Nowhere’ is near the River Acheron, with rapidly moving ink-black water. A shiny mud flat covers the shore of the river. A flat field of dirt stretches inland for miles to meet some low, brown hills. This vestibule is where people who make no choices in life, who have lived a life without responsibility or devotion, are sentenced to eternity.”
Almost Level, West Virginia, will open Wednesday, Jan. 20, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at West Liberty University’s Nutting Gallery. The Nutting Gallery is open 8:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. weekdays, as well as evenings and weekends by arrangement. For additional information contact Villamagna at 304-336-8370 or at rvillama@westliberty.edu.