WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., July 21, 2022 — West Liberty University’s Professor of Art Brian Fencl was interviewed recently for a podcast entitled, “Forgotten America,” that explores life in rural America.
“Part of the mission of the visual arts faculty at West Liberty is to grow the arts in the state and in our region,” explains Fencl, who also is the director of the Nutting Gallery at WLU. “This was an opportunity to have a long conversation about why the arts matter in rural America, American art history, trends in the arts and why arts education in K-12 is important for the development of students. It is a fun conversation and an unexpected opportunity to connect to an audience that is normally tuning in for discussions about rural politics and economics,”
The podcast is hosted by Garrett Ballengee and produced and edited by Tony Reed. Ballengee is the executive director of Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy which is a think tank based in Charleston, West Virginia.
In the 77-minute episode, the two discuss some of the reasons visual arts are just as important for rural locations and small towns, as the big cities and major urban locations.
It asks questions like:
- Are rural Americans portrayed fairly in art?
- Should the government continue to support the arts?
- Is it even possible to define what art is?
Fencl is one of the faculty members in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts Department of Visual Art.
For more information, please contact Fencl at bfencl@westliberty.edu. You may also visit his website here: www.fenclstudio.com.
Listen to the podcast below or on Apple Podcasts
West Liberty University is West Virginia’s oldest public institution of higher learning and offers more than 70 undergraduate majors, plus a growing number of graduate programs, both online and on campus. For more information, please call 1.866.937.8542 (WESTLIB), visit westliberty.edu or follow WLU on social media. To view more about WLU, please visit westliberty.edu/youtube.