art exhibit Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

WVU Community, Affected By Cuts, Puts On Art Show

More than 40 university faculty, students and alumni from the ceramics, prints and sculpture departments are coming together at a local art gallery to put on an exhibition of their work titled “Deep Cuts.”

Earlier this month, West Virginia University affirmed its decision to cut 28 majors and more than 140 faculty positions.

Now, more than 40 university faculty, students and alumni from the ceramics, prints and sculpture departments are coming together at a local art gallery to put on an exhibition of their work titled “Deep Cuts.”

Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with WVU professor and owner of Morgantown art gallery Galactic Panther, Eli Pollard to discuss the exhibit and the effects of the university’s cuts.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Schulz: Can you tell me a little bit about your teaching at the university?

Pollard: Well, that’s rapidly changing as has been the case for quite a while now. I do teach at the university currently, but this looks like it will be my final semester. I started here in 2008, in the humanities department. I had about 300 students a year teaching Western Civ. Unfortunately, all the faculty from that department has been fired, let go, which was kind of mind-blowing considering the amount of students I had for about $23,000 a year. We made a lot of money for the university, but it wasn’t quite cutting it, I guess.

I was able to transition over to the design department, which has been great. I’ve taught fashion design for them. I’ve taught interior design courses for them as well. Landscape architecture, I do a lot of drawing and foundational courses and portfolio courses for those departments. And I’ve been teaching and designing community development and also developing study abroad courses, which have been amazing for the students. We’ve gone all over.

I started in Central America, then things got a little bit difficult working in Central America, I wasn’t allowed to go there anymore. So I started working more in Europe, and I’ve taken students all over Europe, and we’ve had incredible experiences over there. It looks like my last one of those is going to be Greece this winter. If any students are listening, you have until October 1 to sign up for that program. But I just got word last night that I won’t be able to run those anymore either, which is a huge loss, again, to the students.

Schulz: Western Civ and design, those are two, at least to my mind, pretty disparate topics. How did you end up there?

Pollard: Doing backflips to survive here is kind of the short answer. But in more detail, humanities and western civilization has a lot to do with art history. We had people in that department that had backgrounds in history, and we had people who had backgrounds in fine arts and literature. And because there’s so much content covered in the humanities, in western civilization, each of us were able to kind of develop the course with our own kind of unique perspectives. That fine arts perspective, of course, transfers very nicely into design work, which is a lot of what I do as well.

Schulz: What has been the impact on your role? Are you slated to receive one of these potential RIF notifications in the coming weeks?

Pollard: Yeah, just these past few days, maybe four or five days ago, I was told my position teaching is over. And I had always understood that there was a possibility to continue the education abroad courses if my regular teaching had to come to an end. They have just apparently switched that stance and now I will no longer be able to teach those as of last night or the night before, I was told that one. So, they’re both done.

So my focus is here on the gallery now, which is fine. I’m still trying to kind of grapple with, I’ve been here for 15 years teaching now. It’ll take a moment to adjust, but I’ve had a lot of warning, like I said, my first department was completely slashed. And then I took an impact from an earlier budget cut where I went from full time to adjunct staff. So, I’ve been kind of grappling with this before all this headline news hit. It’s just unfortunate now because I’m seeing so many people I know and respect facing the same kind of future, basically.

Schulz: Are you from West Virginia originally?

Pollard: No, I was born in Florida, but I moved here when I was three, my family’s from here. So, everything except born here, pretty much. My parents, my mom and my stepdad had to leave the state for similar reasons. They were teachers in the school system, well, teacher and school psychologist, and everybody’s getting pink slips in education. So, they headed out of state. I ended up coming back for school. So, I’ve been back and forth many times.

Schulz: You know obviously this has a much wider effect, which is why we’re going to be talking about this event happening later this week. But before we get into that, can you tell me a little bit about the background of Galactic Panther and this space? I understand that it’s not exclusive to Morgantown even.

Pollard: I started Galactic Panther, working on renovating this space right before COVID hit. So, we pretty much opened up here in Morgantown during COVID, which was tricky, of course. It’s already tricky to have an art gallery. To make it extra tricky. I’m on the outskirts of Morgantown and to make it that much more challenging it was opening during COVID. So, kind of a dreamer’s tale I guess. But it’s worked to a certain extent, the gallery is still here in Morgantown. And because of my efforts here, I had a partner who was interested in assisting with opening a second space in the DC area.

We are focusing on art exhibits, of course, as a gallery but we have events in there with live music, and a friend of mine has been doing sound baths if you’re familiar with that, which is kind of a beautiful form of meditation, where he brings in his Moog synthesizer and does full analog sound baths where you just kind of let the sound wash all your troubles away. So some healing events and music events and art events are kind of the real focus.

Schulz: So tell me a little bit more about this week’s event on Friday.

Pollard: This Friday, the 29th from 5:30 to 9:30 is when we’ll be having an event.

Schulz: And what is the event? I understand that it’s titled “Deep Cuts.”

Pollard: It is. “Deep Cuts” is an exhibition from the WVU printmaking, sculpture and ceramics departments. This includes faculty, students, and alumni. So, it’s quite a large grouping of artists, we’ve got about 40 visual artists involved. Many are, in the area, household names, I would say, a lot of talent coming in. I’ve also gotten music booked for the evening as well, by alumni of these departments.

Schulz: How did this all come together?

Pollard: This is something that I came up with, it just felt like a need. There was a necessity that this happen, I felt, and I didn’t see that anybody else was offering this. So, I reached out to the art department. They were very positive in the response and have had a strong hand in curating this exhibit. They’ve reached out to many students and alumni to expand our voice, so to speak. Everybody seemed to really appreciate the idea, so we’re all coming together. And I’ve gotta start running now and make sure we’re all ready for Friday.

Schulz: So many exhibitions are often so focused on a topic or a subject or a medium. I think it’ll certainly be interesting to see so much variety in one show. What are you hearing from the people that are contributing to the show about the need to do this now? Because it seems kind of bittersweet to have simultaneously such a great plethora of local artists coming together, but also the reason behind it is, obviously, a bit of a weight to say the least.

Pollard: Yeah, it is bittersweet. And I have heard a lot of frustration coming from the artists as they’re bringing their work in. It’s just a blow, not just to the students at the university and to the faculty, but to the community. As I mentioned, these artists are doing things like the Morgantown Studio Tour. If that faculty has to leave, then that is going to leave, probably, with them. One of these artists designed our state quarter, one of these artists teaches at BOPARC for everybody’s kids in the summertime. So, there’s huge impacts here, culturally, beyond what’s happening at the university.

These impacts culturally, of course, will have eventual economic impacts, which brings us full circle. Which makes you wonder why these are even happening if the folks making these cuts are doing this for economic reasons. They’re mistaken. They’re deeply mistaken because these are the people that build the economy of a community. They build a community and they build the economy, so if you’re getting rid of the people that do this, you’re shooting yourself in the foot ultimately. That’s part of the message that we’re here to convey.

Schulz: Is there anything else about this situation about this process more generally, that I haven’t given you an opportunity to discuss?

Pollard: This is a free event, it’s Friday from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Donations are greatly appreciated for snacks and musicians and things of that nature. Buying artwork is highly encouraged, we would accept payment plans because this is supporting artists. It also, from day one, Galactic Panther, we have given a portion of all sales to local food banks, and this is no different than any other event. So you’re supporting the artists in the gallery and local people in need as well. So please come out. Please be respectful of the neighborhood but come out numbers and be heard.

I don’t know that I’m the spokesperson for the full process of what’s happening at WVU. I’m just a kind of a modest megaphone for the artists in the area and the community that’s being affected at large. I think this is a great opportunity this weekend to come together and discuss this. This is maybe beyond the 11th hour, but there’s a lot of intelligent people here. If our voices can be heard, maybe we can come up with a positive solution here.

“Deep Cuts” will run through November by appointment at Galactic Panther, 462 Dunkard Ave. To book an appointment to see the exhibition after Friday, contact Eli Pollard at eli@galacticpanther.com

New Art Exhibit Reflects Loss From Recent Academic Cuts At WVU, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, Education Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with WVU professor and owner of Morgantown art gallery Galactic Panther, Eli Pollard to discuss the exhibit and the impacts of the university’s cuts.

On this West Virginia Morning, West Virginia University (WVU) earlier this month affirmed its decision to cut 28 majors and more than 140 faculty positions. A new art exhibition titled “Deep Cuts” by university faculty, students and alumni reflects this loss.

Education Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with WVU professor and owner of Morgantown art gallery Galactic Panther, Eli Pollard to discuss the exhibit and the impacts of the university’s cuts.

Also, in this show, for people with mental health challenges, life can be complex. Add the trauma of incarceration, and they’re caught up in a system that’s not designed for treatment. Despite that, many people with mental illnesses are behind bars. Sometimes without support or medication.

On the latest episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay hears the experiences of people who say the suicide watch cells and paper clothing designed to protect them while in jail, were instead humiliating. We listen to an excerpt from the episode.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Caroline MacGregor produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Morgantown Art Exhibit Aims to Celebrate, Humanize Unhoused Neighbors

Issues of housing and homelessness can be very complex. A group called Humans of Morgantown is using art created by unhoused citizens to bring a humanizing perspective to the discussion.Chris Schulz spoke with Corbin Mills and Jordan Stosic about the group’s “Neighbors Beyond Neighborhoods” exhibit.

Issues of housing and homelessness can be very complex. A group called Humans of Morgantown is using art created by unhoused citizens to bring a humanizing perspective to the discussion.

A digital version of the art exhibit can be viewed at humansofmorgantown.com.

Chris Schulz spoke with Corbin Mills and Jordan Stosic about the group’s “Neighbors Beyond Neighborhoods” exhibit.

Schulz: What is the Humans of Morgantown Project?

Mills: Humans of Morgantown is a partnership between Morton Hall Agency, the WVU College of Media and the Morgantown City committee on unsheltered homelessness. We have a bunch of backers and fantastic partners we’re working with.

What we’re doing with Humans of Morgantown is really just trying to tell the story of our unsheltered neighbors, and then maybe shed light and create a conversation.

We have an exhibit set up in Morgantown Art Party on Walnut Street. It is every Saturday and Sunday until April 21, which is our closing exhibit on Thursday night.

One thing that’s a pretty common misconception is that people don’t sometimes look at their unsheltered neighbors, like people who have passions and hobbies and goals and dreams. A lot of our unsheltered neighbors are fantastic artists. This is a place where we could really show off the talent, what they have, and what they bring to the community.

Schulz: Jordan, do you have anything to add to that?

Stosic: Humans of Morgantown is a space and it’s a way for our community members to meet each other, learn about who our neighbors are, and sort of work to understand the experiences of our neighbors experiencing homelessness and create some sort of a destigmatizing notion.

Schulz: Jordan, can you explain to me how this project came to be?

Stosic: Over the last four months, our Humans of Morgantown team has been developing this concept for an exhibit where we really settled on creating a space where our community can meet, learn, and understand the experiences of our neighbors

Mills: I think our favorite thing has just been getting to know everyone in the community that we wouldn’t have had otherwise the chance to meet. Whether that’s the unsheltered artists that we’re featuring in our exhibit, whether that’s the people at Friendship House, who are doing fantastic social work, like recovery coaches, and peer support specialists.

It’s been really great to see it all come together, and to really create those connections and build those relationships with people that we may have otherwise not been able to do.

Stosic: Definitely. And that’s something he mentioned, the Friendship House. That connection was absolutely huge for us. With the help of everyone at the Friendship House, we were able to feature a lot of great work.

On our opening day we had a couple of musicians come by and play on the keyboard, play some guitar. We had so many artists produce paintings, mixed media work, we had sculptures. There’s a whole plethora of things

Alexandria Holsclaw

West Virginia Public Broadcasting

A sculpture on display at the “Neighbors Beyond Neighborhoods” art exhibit at the Morgantown Art Party.

Schulz: So Jordan, can you tell me a little bit about the focus on the unhoused population? Why choose art as the way to communicate your message?

Stosic: Housing status is not expressive of morality, value, humanity. So creating a space that’s fun and creative was sort of our idea where we can show the value and the fun and the life and humanity through art, and their own forms of expression.

Schulz: Corbin, what can you add to that?

Mills: A person is so much more than their housing situation. And I think there might be a misconception that some people have that a person’s housing situation kind of defines who they are. And what we discovered is that that’s just absolutely not true.

Art is a great way for us to tell these stories, because it’s kind of a universal medium, right? Everybody understands photos, everybody understands paintings, everybody gets their own little take away from it. So being able to use something as universal as art to tell those stories that people may not have otherwise been hearing has been successful. For us, it’s been a really rewarding part of the process.

Schulz: What do you think is the importance of this type of project right now?

Mills: I think what a lot of people realized over COVID is that community is everything, especially when you may not have the chance to see people in person or spend time with people socially, like you may have before.

Your relationships, whether it’s with friends or family or even people that you live next to where you see them every day in your daily life, all that stuff is really, really important. It’s crucial to having a happy and successful life. And we wanted to just remind people that that level of community can be extended to everybody, and everybody benefits from that level of community. Everybody benefits from those like, you know, good vibes and positive friendships and relationships.

Stosic: Which is why we did choose to title the exhibit “Neighbors Beyond Neighborhoods,” because we really wanted to challenge people’s idea of what it means to be a neighbor.

Is that someone you just see at the store or constantly see at the park down the street? Is it someone that sends their kids off on the same school bus? You know, what really does constitute a neighbor?

Schulz: Corbin what’s been the biggest standout to you?

Mills: At the end of our exhibit, after walking through, you get a chance to write your thoughts down and your reflections on a post it note. So by the end of Saturday at like 4 p.m., when everyone had left and the exhibit was kind of winding down, we as a team went over and had the chance to take a look at what people were saying after they’d gone to the exhibit.

It was really powerful to see what people had written down. You had people saying, “Wow, you know, I never knew that the people around me that I see every day were this talented. I’ve never considered the circumstances of the things that I saw today, in today’s exhibit.”

Schulz: Jordan, what was the standout for you?

Stosic: The standout for me I think would have to be getting to see how this exhibit was sort of intended to do meet my neighbors. Actually getting to now walk down the street and be like, “I know Doug, I know Dana, I know April.” It’s honestly so nice as well, because that is a friendly face, someone you can wave to.

The exhibit featuring their stories is something that I hope gives everyone else that same sort of feeling of, “Wow, I now know a couple more people in my community and have some friendly faces to smile at.”

Mills: Yeah, I actually have something to add now that I was thinking about as Jordan was talking.

The standout moment for me was seeing the people whose art we featured coming to the exhibit and see themselves and their work being celebrated by everyone in a way that they really had not been able to experience before. And to see them see other people appreciating and loving what they were creating was really, really rewarding.

Art Exhibit Explores Appalachia's Connection to Wales

Across the Atlantic Ocean — 3,586 miles away from West Virginia — you will find Wales, which is part of the United Kingdom. The western side of Wales is lined by two channels from the Celtic Sea. And inland is quite mountainous. Within those mountain towns, you will find similar folk culture to Appalachia.

“The nature of the people and the landscape is very similar. Plus, many people from West Wales came over here. So we’ve got those really strong connections,” said Peter Stevenson, a Welsh artist, writer and storyteller.

These strong connections inspired Peter to host an art exhibit at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown, an expansive art exhibit dedicated to the Wales-Appalachia connection.

History

Many of Appalachian’s ancestors migrated from Wales to Appalachia. There are other strong historical connections between the two regions. For example, both have a long and complicated history with the coal industry, and both have a strong mountain culture – a culture that includes music, art and storytelling.

Some of the Welsh artwork on display. Much of the artwork Peter brought with him on the plane from Wales.

Peter has family who immigrated to West Virginia in the 1960s. So, Peter has listened to many Appalachian folktales, and he has found many similarities to Welsh folklore. Similar characters appear in both traditions, like fairies or little people and granny women – older, eccentric women who either create charm or mischief.

Peter Stevenson and Ro Brooks, executive director of the Monongalia Arts Center.

But the stories differ slightly. Peter thinks the Welsh brought over their folklore when they immigrated to Appalachia hundreds of years ago, but the stories changed slightly over time to become more Appalachian.

“Within these stories which appear to be the same they take on something from the landscape and nature of the people in that landscape and they’re subtly different,” he said.

The Exhibit

Figures and drawings of Welsh ‘Granny Women’ that are part of the MAC exhibit.

Peter organized the art exhibit on display in Morgantown to further explore the connections.

The exhibit is one big story that contains many little stories, it is a bit like a fairytale book come to life at the Monongalia Arts Center, featuring Welsh and Appalachian artists.

There are dolls made to look like witches with a black triangle hat, drawings of mermaids in the Monongahela river and a woman who turned into a swan. There are a lot of bright colors and characters that make one’s imagination run wild.

Peter is a professional storyteller. When he tells a story, one feels spellbound. He tells the crowd a folk story using a cranky – a storytelling device likely familiar to Appalachians.

A cranky is like a picture book except with drawings all on one long scroll. It is contained within a frame with two handles that move the scroll, and it is typically accompanied by a story.

The Story of Beti Grwca

The story Peter told at the exhibit opening is about an old granny woman named Beti Grwca who lived on the west coast of Wales. She often would gaze out her window toward America.

“Thousand wrinkles around the eyes, a single yellow tooth wobbling unnervingly in the breeze from her breath and a single gray hair in the middle of her chin,” Peter said.

Peter turned the cranky as he spoke. The pictures are drawn in a heavy black ink. Beti looks like a kind, but mischievous old woman out of a children’s book.

Peter explained that Beti could make love potions. She would make them for all the town folk. But sometimes she mixed them up, and in Peter’s story, much to the town’s dismay, Beti accidentally made a farm woman and a man of nobility fall in love. But they ended up living happily ever after and having dozens of babies.

A miniature crankie made by Peter. Crankies are often used to tell a story.

Peter turned to the final image on the cranky, and revealed a picture of Beti with a sly smirk pointing to her love potion bottle and a trail of red hearts.

“Old Beti is still there. She’s still there in her little cottage. She’s got even more wrinkles around her eyes, her solitary yellow tooth fell out years ago, but her little gray hair is still there and she twirls it and looks out across the water to America,” Peter said. “And thinks to herself, maybe my love potions would work in West Virginia.”

West Virginian Art

The first floor of the exhibit features the Welsh artists and their interpretation of folktales. The second floor is dedicated to West Virginian artists, such as, Eddie Spaghetti.

He is based in Morgantown and works in many art mediums, including crankies. One of Eddie’s crankies on display is titled ‘Light in the Darkness.’ It is accompanied by a poem that Eddie wrote in tiny print underneath the drawings.

“I put a magnifying glass onto it, that magnifying glass is a real attention-getter – you can’t help but to look at stuff,” he says.

Another of the West Virginian artists featured in the exhibit is accomplished sculptor Jamie Lester. Some of his well-known work includes the Don Knotts and Jerry West statues in Morgantown.

Jamie Lester’s piece representing man’s connection to coal. He is one of many West Virginian artists featured in the exhibit.

Jamie’s piece on display in the Wales-Appalachia gallery reflects man’s connection to coal. Something that is a big part of Appalachian and Welsh history. It’s a sculpture of a man’s body merged with a coal operation, and the coal tipple is connected to his head and shoulder.

“He’s being like fed coal, he is coal, coal is in his blood, he’s being force-fed coal,” Jamie said. “And his arms are tied behind is his back and one of his arms is breaking the structure of the tipple, so you get the feeling he’s being tormented, but there’s the possibility of him breaking away from his tormentor.”

This sculpture and all the many other pieces from Appalachia and Wales are on display at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown. The exhibit will be up through the end of this month, when it will travel to Wales for display.