The 15th annual Faculty Invitational Art Exhibition, part of the Jubilee Festival of Arts and Humanities, began Tuesday and will continue until April 3. The work of every faculty member in the art department will be featured in the show, as well as the work of invited guest artists.

Michael Williams, assistant professor of sculpture for the art department, is the gallery director in charge of the event.

“It will be new work from current faculty and we also invite one or two artists that we know in our mediums to bring work as well,” Williams said. “I’ve got two Baton Rouge artists I’ve invited to the show.”

John Pellitteri is one of the artists Williams has invited. The two also attended graduate school together at LSU. Pellitteri will give a lecture as a part of Jubilee’s Art Day on April 3 at 12:45 p.m. in 210 Talbot Hall.

Mark Shumake is the second guest artist and a graduate of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is known for working with glass and steel in the art of sculpture.

Williams shared the reasons why he holds the position of gallery director, which makes him in charge of the exhibition.

“Right now I’m acting gallery director, and I will be this semester and next semester and possibly some more semesters on because I’m the new guy,” Williams said. “Mostly everybody else has done it for several semesters running. It’s kind of my turn to carry the torch.”

Williams will not be attending his first coordinated Faculty Art Exhibition because he will be taking some of his advanced students to the National Honor Emporium Conference in Birmingham.

“For us, we’re working all the time to bring in new artists for the students to be exposed to, so that’s always exciting,” Williams said about the show’s involvement in Jubilee. “It’s unfortunate I won’t be here for my first one.”

Ross Jahnke, professor of printmaking, works in the exhibition as well. He said although the faculty art show has been a tradition for years, the event underwent change to better appeal to its audience.

“We’ve always had a faculty art show, but since 1994, we’ve had invited artists. We all sort of wanted a change of pace back then, so we came up with this new format because faculty shows are pretty boring,” Jahnke said. “It’s something that every art school does once a year so that the students could see what the faculty do. We decided to invite people and to have a theme and have the people we invited to the show come and do workshops as well.”

The faculty is not limited to the number of pieces they can contribute to the art show.

“I’ll probably have a bunch of things because I paint and I make prints, so I’ll have some of both, and the invited artists will have one or two pieces as well.”

Jahnke said the art department and the Jubilee festival were not always associated but eventually joined together with the festival’s creation.

“We’ve been doing this longer than Jubilee. They sort of adopted us into the program since we always do this in the spring. It’s been a big part of Jubilee ever since Jubilee started,” Jahnke said.

The Faculty Invitational Art Exhibition will end on April 3 with a free reception in the Ameen Art Gallery from 3 to 5 p.m.

(Bridget Mire)

(Bridget Mire)