Exhibiting Excellence benefits the community and university

The Rosemary Berkel & Harry L. II Crisp Museum on Southeast Missouri State University's campus will be host to the Exhibiting Excellence exhibit beginning Feb. 9. Nearly 100 pieces of artwork will be on display, including drawings, sculptures, paintings, fibers, ceramics, printmaking, mixed media and photography.

What's different about this exhibit is that all of the artwork was created by 11th and 12th grade high school students.

Thirty-six years ago, Dr. Edwin Smith, a former member of Southeast's art faculty, founded this exhibit in hopes of allowing the region to have an opportunity to celebrate the arts.

Exhibiting Excellence is a juried exhibit. A juried exhibit is one in which a juror or jurors select which items are to be shown and which artists should be awarded prizes. This year's juror is Jennifer Kennedy, a member of the art faculty at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. It is the juror's job to select which pieces will be displayed in the exhibit out of the hundreds of entries. Then she must select winners for each category and who wins the Best-In-Show Award. This award also comes with the Dr. Edwin Smith Art Scholarship of $1,000 if the student plans to attend Southeast and major in art.

Over the past few decades, several benefits have come from this exhibit. Southeast's vice president for enrollment management and student success Dr. Debbie Below said that students not only get to enter their artwork in a competition, they also get a chance to be exposed to a university campus setting.

"It begins to break down barriers for some students," Below said. "I occasionally run into students who say 'I've never been there,' or 'I was nervous to come to campus.' We don't want students to be nervous about coming here."

According to Below, Exhibiting Excellence is one of the many ways the university uses its campus to serve the community.

Not only has this exhibit benefited the high school students, but it has also been an excellent opportunity for students at Southeast as well. Carol Horst, an art education instructor and Southeast's high school art exhibition coordinator, shared that she uses this exhibit as a way for her students to practice being a part of a juried exhibit.

"[My students] collect the artwork, they help distribute the artwork [and] they help install the artwork," Horst said.

Horst explained that this exhibit gives her students a chance to learn by experience and hands-on application.

Art education students can especially benefit from this exhibition. As art students who someday hope to be the art teachers, they are given the opportunity to interact with young artists much like the ones they will one day instruct. Horst said her students also are able to network and connect with art teachers in this region and learn what they expect from their students and what they are teaching in the high school classrooms.

Horst's art students are also able to communicate and learn from Kennedy, the juror. Because of the high number of entries and the limited space in the museum, the juror has to cut down the number of pieces to an amount that is appropriate for the size of the exhibit. While doing so, she can explain to Horst's students why she did or didn't choose certain pieces. This allows them to learn to be objective and open-minded when it comes to visual art.

The opening reception will be from 2-4 p.m. on Feb. 9 in the Crisp Museum at the River Campus. Awards will presented at 3 p.m. the same day. The exhibit is free and open to the public until 4 p.m., March 16.

"It's a great celebration," Horst said. "I hope you can go."