DSC Sears Art Museum Gallery Presents New Fall Exhibit

The Sears Art Museum Gallery at the Dixie State College of Utah Dolores Dore’ Eccles Fine Arts Center will present a new fall exhibit, featuring a number of mediums and subjects, which will be on display in both the Gallery and the Fine Arts Center Grand Foyer. The exhibit, which is free to the public, opened Friday, Sept. 18, and will run Monday-through-Friday through Nov. 20, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

In addition, a special Art Talk forum, highlighting the featured artists in the exhibit, will be held in the Gallery on Thursday, Oct. 8, at 6:30 p.m. The forum is free for the public to attend.

Inside the Gallery, DSC will present a number of watercolor selections from its permanent art collection, along with several recent acquisitions. In addition, longtime DSC art professor Glen Blakley will share various ceramic pieces he has created over his career from his special collection.

On display in the Eccles Fine Arts Center Grand Foyer will be a pair of thought-provoking exhibits by local artist Pamala Bird and photographer Ernesto Perez.

Bird’s exhibit, entitled “Feminine Archetypes Around the World and Through the Ages,” will provide a fresh, empowering perspective in femininity through the use of cast paper. Created by the vision of a contemporary woman, who has been profoundly impacted by her study of the art and mythology of the archetypal feminine in ancient cultures.

Bird designs her pieces by creating latex molds, making the paper pulp in her kitchen blender from cotton linters, followed by casting the pieces. She then “patinates” the pieces with acrylics and oil washes.

“There is a great deal of time invested in sculpting each piece, in addition to the time invested in research and design,” Bird said. “I use some of each particular culture’s art styles and iconography, and the attributes to each individual goddess, but I have also added my own vision.”

Perez will present his photographic display entitled “Footprints of Humanity,” which according to Sears Art Museum Gallery curator Kathy Cieslewicz, is timely, fresh and new. “Footprints” features 20 images taken in St. George and surrounding areas, which depict places that have somehow become invisible to the common eyes, while illustrating what has been discharged and left behind.

“What drives my work as an artist is the search of the perfect lighting conditions to capture the essence of these sites,” Perez said. “The final objective is to deliver a message that is able to move our emotions of what these places were and are about. They also show how our new ambitions have buried the past.”

For more information on the Gallery and the exhibits, contact Sears Art Museum Gallery curator Kathy Cieslewicz at 435-652-7909 or at cieslewicz@dixie.edu.