The Office of Student Leadership and Engagement is the new home to student-produced art space.
The first three University of Tampa students to display their artwork in the organization’s office are seniors Julia Ponzek and Samantha Burns and junior Cliff Klein. The OSLE gallery opened in late September with the students’ work.
Instead of doing a grand-opening, they decided to do a closing show.
“We had a really good turn-out, for it being the first time,” said Megan Frisque, OSLE’s assistant director of Civic Engagement.
“It’s hard to picture how bare our walls must have been without these paintings,” said Frisque.
The bright and striking pictures give a more upbeat and vibrant feel to the office.
In just two days, Ponzek completed the nearly floor-to-ceiling painting of a nun titled Sister Angelica.
The nun appears jaded and slightly disgruntled, with a cigarette dangling from her frowning lips. This colorful, comic piece hangs in the meeting room at the front of the OSLE office.
Frisque has been working in conjunction with assistant professor of art Chris Valle for the past two years to coordinate the unique gallery.
“The main hold-up was getting the tracking in order to hang the paintings,” explained Frisque.
The tracking was a generous gift from the graduating class of 2009.
Soon after May graduation, the work began and finally, the office was prepped and ready to go, but both Frisque and Valle agreed that the new gallery would be more likely to gain attention if it opened at the start of a school year.
So this September, Burns, Klein and Ponzek were the guinea pigs chosen by Valle to have their work displayed.
“The goal is for students to have a place on campus to do solo shows,” said Burns.
“There’s really nowhere else on campus where you can see student artwork.”
Her work highlights brushing and texture techniques with a strong attention to details in her figures.
Cliff Klein’s art is on the opposite end of the spectrum, broadening the range of styles represented in the OSLE gallery.
“I focus on the relationships between colors with a childish aesthetic,” said Klein.
Even in the chaos of colors, shapes and lines, definite objects and themes can be interpreted from Klein’s paintings.
In one of them, a blue 3-D box appears in the foreground, with an explosion of bright colors filling the background.
Although this was the first and last time that Ponzak and Burns will have their artwork on display in OSLE, this new makeshift gallery presents a great opportunity for future art majors.
Preparing their work for any gallery is an invaluable experience for any artist.
The OSLE gallery also gives UT artists and their work some exposure, the only other location that displays student work being the Scarfone-Hartley gallery in Bailey.
“This is a college campus,” said Frisque.
“And student artwork should be shown.”
The next OSLE gallery exhibit is expected to be on display early next semester.
Sophie Erber can be reached at serber@spartans.ut.edu.