The poster series designed by Professor Larry Clarkson (Visual Arts) for theatre performances last year on campus has been included in Print magazine's 31st Regional Design Annual.

The competition showcases what is considered some of the best graphic design created across the US over the last year. With several thousand of entries submitted, only a few hundred or so are selected. The work of only three practicing designers from Utah made it into the annual this year, Larry Clarkson and DOVA alumnus Dan Christofferson included.  Larry and Dan’s work, as well as the entire show, is available online at http://regionaldesignannual.printmag.com/far-west-2011/. 

The Shaw Gallery will be hosting the Weber State Student Exhibition beginning Feb. 3. The exhibition allows Weber State University students to submit their art for a chance at being displayed in the gallery.

Danielle Wilcox, a photography major, has submitted work into the student exhibition.

“I think its a good confidence booster for actually getting work and submitting into other institutions as well,” Wilcox said.

Lydia Gravis, the outreach coordinator for the Shaw Gallery, said the exhibition has been running for about 45 years. The exhibition accepts works in any medium, but there are a few requirements. All work must have been completed while a studying at WSU within the past two years.

In addition to meeting those conditions, the pieces must be juried into the show. A panel of jurors made up of three faculty members plus one guest juror select the pieces to be displayed. The judging is done blindly. Since the process is done by a randomly numbered system, the only person who knows the name of the artists is a record keeper who accompanies the jurors.

“Every year there’s a different set of jurors, so that one year, one student might get in, and another year they may not get in,” Gravis said.

This year, pieces in many mediums were selected for display in the gallery in addition to paintings. Mixed media, video pieces and interactive pieces will be on display. About 129 pieces were submitted with 54 entries selected for display in the gallery.

Beau Burgess, the Shaw Gallery curator, says that the criteria for getting into the show is “strictly up to the jurors.”

“In my experience as a working artist,” Burgess said, “and having submitted into several shows over the past couple years, you could have one piece that gets into one show, and some into another.”

When submitting their pieces for consideration, the artists have the option to have their work shown in a different gallery, known as the Salon des Refusés.

“If someone entered into the show, and it’s refused, they can be eligible for the Salon,” Burgess said. “The only requirement is that it is refused from the show.”

The Salon des Refusés has a rich history behind it. Burgess said that it started out as a way for artists to still have their work displayed if it was rejected.

“If they weren’t accepted into a show, they kind of did it to prove a point or, in a sense, a revolt,” Burgess said about the Salon, which runs simultaneously to the Shaw Gallery Exhibition. “It’s an intriguing dialogue between the two exhibitions because to put them side by side like that, it’s kind of a fun process.”

Carey Ann Francis, a student at WSU, has also submitted work to the exhibition. Francis works with unusual materials. She says her favorites are “strange and unusual surfaces, mixing copper and wood and creating pictures like that.”

“When I first got here to Utah, I submitted and got into the Salon des Refusés,” Francis said. “I feel that it’s positive. You submit your work, you do the whole little shebang and have your work displayed.”

Burgess encourages students and the community to visit the gallery.

“Sometimes with some of the more stricter classrooms or labs that are on lockdown, it’s hard to get the rest of the student populous or especially the community into your department or onto the campus,” Burgess said. “But with visual arts, it’s a very open and public department where we have a space to do that. If it’s something that they haven’t come over and seen, they should come over and check our gallery space. It is a professional gallery space, (and) it isn’t just for things on campus. We’ve had national and international artists shown in this gallery.”

The exhibition will run from Feb. 3 through Mar. 9. A reception and awards ceremony will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 3. The public is invited to attend.

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Weber State University students who enjoy the arts and free activities might be interested in the all-age entertainment events that are hosted by the Browning Center and Kimball Arts Center, which they have access to in the community and on campus.

Jazz at the Station is an example of such a program that is an all-age, free jazz concert open to the community, with a donated venue located at the Union Station, as well as donated time and talents from local jazz artists. The program runs on the calendar for 12 performances a year every second Wednesday of the month, and sometimes showcases students from the WSU Jazz Ensemble.

“It tends to not only be a program for our students, but it attracts a lot of people from the community as well,” said Caril Jennings, marketing director for the WSU Visual and Performing Arts Department.

Jennings said that the crowd can reach up to 200 people because of Jazz at the Station’s reputation, and that she sees the program as a way to reach out to the community, to attract them to other events open to the public that are held on campus.

The band Shaky Trade was the featured act of the night earlier this month for Jazz at the Station, and some of the band members hold their roots as WSU alumni.

“Ogden is such a weird place, because it has a really vibrant art community, and it’s cool to have the support of Weber State as a big part of that,” said Christopher Clemons, trumpet player for Shaky Trade and graduate of WSU with a music performance degree.

With a calendar loaded with constant events, the Performing Arts Department’s featured event would most likely be their theater season. The fall season starts with the Shakespearean classic Romeo and Juliet, premiering on Oct. 7 and running through Oct. 15. Then follows the musical Xanadu, opening on Nov. 4. There will also be a production of the Euripides traditional Greek play Iphigenia and Tauris, which will be shown on Aug. 28 during WSU’s annual Greek festival.

The Tuesday performances of Romeo and Juliet and Xanadu are free to any WSU student with a current Wildcard. The tickets are only available an hour before the performance, so people are encouraged to arrive early because of the first-come-first-serve policy.

The Kimball Arts Center has their own outreach for art enthusiasts in the community with seasonal free outreach programs and their series of artist lectures and exhibitions.

The Arts in the Parks program, directed by WSU history professor Kathryn Mackay and Kimball Arts Center Outreach coordinator Linda Gravis, has just finished its second season and was a program modeled after the five-year-running Science in the Parks programs.

“Universities can tend to be sort of an academic bubble within a community,” Gravis said. “I’m interested in advancing efforts on behalf of Weber State to integrate more with the general community as far as outreach opportunities and activities go.”

Arts in the Parks is a summer opportunity where children and their families can participate in free arts activities for an entire week, with different themes each week, such as music, dance, visual arts, theater, and performing and literary arts, which was a partnered effort of the Weber County Library.

Snow Days at the Shaw Gallery is their winter community activity that was started in 2009 and is a bilingual arts program held the first Saturday of each winter month. The program is free, with the gallery remaining open and activities being held by art students in the lobby, with at least one instructor fluent in Spanish and English.

“When you take something to a certain demographic in the community, it’s more effective than when you’re expecting that population to come to something you’re putting on in a different location,” Gravis said.

The artist lectures and exhibitions are free to students as well. The first exhibition, featuring fine arts photographer Edward Burtynsky, begins Aug. 15 and runs through Nov. 22, with a public lecture by the artist on Sept. 16.

Other events can be found by checking the performing and visual arts calendars on the school’s website, or by contacting the WSU Performing Arts Department by calling 801- 626-6800 and the Kimball Visual Arts Center at 801-626-6455.

“In some college towns, everything goes on campus; in others, everything goes on downtown,” Jennings said. “I don’t believe Ogden is like that.”

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