UNI’s Art Gallery was packed with students, parents and faculty members on Monday night in anticipation of seeing the Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition. This year’s exhibition began with an opening awards ceremony in the Kamerick Art Building, followed by a reception in the UNI Art Gallery.

The pieces that earned awards were chosen by this year’s Juror, Jamal Currie. Currie is the Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. One of Currie’s grandparents worked in the Art Department at UNI in the 1950’s and 60’s, and his grandmother gave the department a large endowment for the future.

Multiple awards were given to students who had entered their works into the exhibition. The awards are as follows:

Who Won:

Madelyn Stillman won the Design Alumni Merit Award. James Lange and Krayton Evenson both earned the Rod Library Purchase Award. Deo Rai earned the UNI Department of Communication Studies Merit Award.

Eden Bell and Caitlin Mary Margarett earned the Harry and Rita Guillaume Award. Mackenzie Miller and Craig Johnson earned the Dr. Jeffrey Funderburk and Dr. Deedee Heistad Purchase Award. Heidi Schmidt earned the Harry K. Watts Scholarship Foundation for Graphic Design Students.

Abby Krei earned the UNI Office of Vice President and Provost Purchase Award. Sean Berg earned the UNI College of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences Merit Award. Rylie Lawrence earned the UNI Public Art Incubator Award. Melodie Anstey earned the College Hill Arts Festival Merit Award. The Raymond Performance Award went to Nicholas Blake, Anastasia Chloe, Taylor Hansen and Shannon Williams.

There were also Merit Awards given to Hanna Seggerman, Jonathan Etringer and a group of art students involved in a fifteen-minute video performance. The students involved were Anastasia Chloe, Dylan Eigenberger, Shannon Liza Williams, Michelle Patrilla, Marcelina Weaver and Taylor Hansen.

Students React:

“I was excited! I mean, nobody ever expects that they are going to win,” Hansen said. “It took us all semester to plan and film, so it took lots of different people’s expertise. I did a lot of the editing, and other people did the planning and other elements of the project. It’s cool to see it all come together, and collaboratively we decided to put it into the Juried Student Art Exhibition.”

Darrell Taylor, the Director of the UNI Gallery of Art, talked about this year’s exhibition and its juror.

“Each year is a different juror, and every juror has their own particular interests and concerns that they bring to the job of being a juror. The juror that we had last year was looking at a completely different body of artwork than Currie was looking at,” Taylor said. “Currie’s particular concerns were students who were creating artwork that had some kind of political or social commentary.”

As for the students who were involved in the exhibition, Taylor says that the recognition and awards received will help them with finding a career later in life.

“In most cases, this is the very first professional show that any of these artists have been a part of, and very possibly the first award they have received in a professional setting,” Taylor said. “So, this exhibition, plus any awards that any of these students have received, are going to find their way onto resumes when they go forward onto graduate school or into their professions.”

The Juried Student Art Exhibition will be open to the public through Saturday, April 14, in the Kamerick Art Building Gallery.