Senior exhibition: “Recollections”

“Recollections” marks first EOU senior art show this spring

Contact: Cory Peeke, Nightingale Gallery Director, 541-962-3584

LA GRANDE, Ore. March 8, 2017 – The Nightingale Gallery of Eastern Oregon University is presenting the first installment of spring senior capstone exhibitions with work by graduating art majors Jacob Gunnels, Peter Maley and Lara Welford.

Entitled “Recollections,” the exhibit opens Friday, April 7 with a reception for the artists from 6-8 p.m., and encompasses work involving photography, painting and sculpture.

About the artists

The large, grainy, black and white photo prints of Jacob Gunnels impart the weight and emptiness of sadness and loss. In many cases, Gunnels obscures or even crops out the faces of his models entirely, further evoking the sense of a vague yet haunting memory. The ambiguity of the work emphasizes wholly on the emotion of loss: A loved one without a face. Gunnels is from Pendleton.

Peter Maley’s work struggles with the identity of lost household objects buried in the earth. His ceramic “tablets” portray these objects not as trash, but rather as a part of the landscape, slowly eroding away and blending back into the scenery. Maley utilizes clay – itself a part of the earth – as a method of blurring the line between what is natural and what is considered to be “man-made.” Maley is from Condon.

The work of Lara Welford utilizes various types of paint on large non-traditional surfaces to explore old family photographs, re-imagined as dreamlike recollections. Welford has drawn much inspiration from her ability to recollect vivid spiritual dreams and her paintings attempt to explore further the boundary between reality and the dream world. Welford is from Kilauea, Hawaii.

See “Recollections” through April 28 in the Nightingale Gallery in Loso Hall at EOU. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.,  Monday through Friday.

For more information, go to www.eou.edu/art or follow the Nightingale Gallery on Facebook and Instagram.

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