"Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek" Exhibit on Display

The collaborative installation art project, “Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek,” will be on display in Wallman Hall at Fairmont State University in February. The exhibit is a tribute to the species that perished in Dunkard Creek in 2009. An opening reception is planned from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2, in the Brooks Gallery, located on the fourth floor of Wallman Hall on the FSU main campus. Creator and organizer of the exhibition, Ann Payne and other artists will be present for the reception.

The exhibit will be on display through Feb. 24. The Brooks Gallery is open Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For special viewing arrangements, contact Curator Marian J. Hollinger at (304) 367-4300 or mhollinger@fairmontstate.edu.

The exhibition features 90 artists representing 90 species— including mussels catfish, mudpuppies, shiners, darters, minnows and insects, in a variety of media— who are united by a shared physical connection to the Monongahela Watershed.

The exhibition began in the Arts Monongahela Jackson Kelly Gallery in Morgantown last September and has subsequently been at the California University of Pennsylvania and the University of Charleston. It will continue to travel throughout the Appalachian region for the next two years.

The exhibition raises questions about how water is managed and who benefits from the way resources are allocated.  It invites viewers to consider the wider effects that occur when our need for energy is permitted to trump our more fundamental needs for clean water, clean air and the health of the ecosystem in which we all live.

“I felt as though as an artist, I wasn’t able to participate in the conversation about what went wrong in Dunkard Creek,” said Ann Payne, organizer of the exhibit. “I’m not a scientist, and I’m not a politician, and I’m not an energy company representative. But I am a resident who cares deeply about how we as a society treat the natural world.”

A panel discussion titled “Environmental Awareness Panel Discussion II,” sponsored by the Faculty Exchange Program at FSU, is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. Feb. 21 in Multi-media Room A of the Ruth Ann Musick Library. The panelists are Sue Kelly of the FSU Department of Language and Literature, “Ecofeminism”; Marian J. Hollinger of the FSU Department of Art/Curator, Brooks Gallery, “Art and Nature: Implications of Romanticism?”; James Kotcon of the Department of Plant Pathology, West Virginia University, “Botanical Ecology”; and Tadashi Kato of the FSU Department of Psychology), “Environmental Psychology and Jungian Archetypes of Nature.” Kato also will moderate the panel. The gallery will be open for the panel discussion, so that attendees may view the Dunkard Creek exhibition.

For more information about events of the School of Fine Arts, visit the Fine Arts Tatler: The Blog at http://fineartsfsu.wordpress.com or visit https://www.facebook.com/FSUfinearts.

Brooks GalleryMarian HollingerTad Kato“Reflections: Homage to Dunkard CreekAnn PaynefacultyJames KotconSue KellySchool of Fine Arts