Breanna Denney /Nevada Sagebrush
(Left to right) Students Chenay Arberry and Maddie Poore look at Bachelors of Fine Arts candidate Erin Wohletz’s work at the opening of the B.F.A Midway Exhibition on Thursday, Feb. 19. The exhibition is a requirement of the B.F.A program and teaches student artists about the workings of a gallery and how to display their work in a professional setting.

By Alexa Solis

The University of Nevada, Reno has many galleries where artwork is displayed. One of these spaces is Student Galleries South where the Bachelor of Fine Arts Midway Exhibition takes place every semester.

The exhibition, much like its name implies, marks the halfway point for students in the B.F.A program. It is the preliminary display of what will later become students’ thesis exhibition and is a vital step in the academic process, according to Richard Jackson, assistant to UNR gallery director Paul Baker Prindle.

“It’s a good time to work out kinks, [and] you’ll see kinks [in the gallery],” Jackson said. “All B.F.A students have committees, after the show your committees get together and critiques the show, and tells you how you can improve to help tighten the screws.”

The current show includes two artists of different mediums, Erin Wohletz and Austin Clinton. Jackson found Wohletz’s work, which is based in painting with sculptural elements, to be impressively original. However, he did note that both artists are tremendous assets to the B.F.A program.

Instead of traditional painting, Clinton uses computers and technology to bring his artwork to life. Two of his pieces in the exhibition are projection pieces that have interactive elements demonstrating people’s relationship to the space around them through puzzles.

Though Clinton has been working on his art for years, the Midway Exhibition is his first experience with the workings of a gallery and the process of putting one’s artwork and display.

“I learned a lot about how a gallery works, how to set up, how to navigate those kind of challenges,” Clinton said. “I also learned a lot about how I approach my topics when they’re beyond a classroom, not just personal, how to present them, how I like to talk about them and what I want to say about my work.”

The opening of the spring semester’s Midway Exhibition had higher attendance than what is normally expected, according to Jackson. Clinton said that one of the most fun parts of displaying his work was showing his mother his art in person, instead of just snapping a picture or giving her descriptions of what he had been working on.

“I was very happy and impressed with the turnout, especially for a Midway show,” Jackson said. “Midway shows usually, there might be sparser turnouts because you’re only halfway there. In this case, we didn’t know what to expect. The gallery director and myself were very very pleased with the people who were there and how the art was received.”

Though Clinton was worried that Wohletz’s intricate paintings would steal the show, he said that he was pleased by the audience interaction with his pieces. Clinton noted that viewers were tentative to interact with his pieces at first, but that after some time people began to fiddle with the interactive features and understand the art.

According to Clinton, the exhibition is a great way for students to grasp the usage of galleries and displaying one’s work in a professional way. There is more to a gallery than just the art, and the show is a practice in all the unseen organization and paperwork that goes into getting art out of the studio and onto the main stage.

“Since the B.F.A program is the way to introduce students to the art world and its more serious practices as a whole, it’s been the most I’ve learned throughout the program both on a personal and a more general scale,” Clinton said.

Alexa Solis can be reached at alexasolis@sagebrush.unr.edu and on Twitter @thealexasolis.