The Nicholls Art department is currently hosting its annual juried exhibition of student artwork in Talbot Hall’s Lula Ameen Art gallery. The show will be on display today with a reception and awards ceremony to be held from 2:30 p.m. – 4 p.m. Local artist Patricia Sills judged all art entries submitted into the show. Sills is also a professor of art at Loyola University in New Orleans. Only 70 percent of all the total artwork submitted was chosen for display.

First place awards will be given in each of the following categories: ceramics, design, digital art, drawing, graphics, painting, papermaking, photography, printmaking and sculpture. Merit awards will also be presented. The art department’s honor fraternity, Kappa Pi, has established a prize of $50 to be awarded as a Student’s Choice award. The Best in Show prize of $100 will be granted to the overall winner in all categories.

All art students were eligible to submit their work for entrance into the show. Each artist was allowed to submit six works of art to be judged for admission into the display with no more than three selections in any one category of art.

The exhibit features various original student art created in 2004 and 2005. Some works were created as class assignments.

“I entered the pieces that I liked, and my professor entered in others because he liked them,” Adam Bourgeois, art senior from New Orleans, said.

Ideas for other entries were created by the artists themselves.

“I’ve been photographing flowers for three years. I look for the shadows and negative space that they create naturally,” Tiffany Rousseau, art senior from Houma, said. “I chose these pieces because I like the color that they present and the abstractness of them.”

Faculty and students arranged the show, over 60 entries crafted by 39 different artists, with great care.

“We’ve tried to install the exhibit so that the pieces talk to each other,” Stephen Brown, event coordinator and assistant professor of art, said.

Students agree that the process of displaying the artwork was a helpful learning experience.

“Hanging the show taught us how to properly display our work,” Rousseau said.

The event’s sponsors within the art department have been pleased with community reaction to this year’s event.

“I think the public response is indicative of a great deal of talent. It shows a vital and creative spirit that is very much present in the department of art,” Brown said.