Jeff Turner
CONTRIBUTOR
The University of Nebraska at Omaha’s (UNO) Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition began with a special reception. The exhibition, on Feb. 23, offered a diverse array of artwork from UNO Students.
The artwork featured was selected from over one-hundred entries by this year’s guest juror, Amanda Smith. Smith is the chief curator at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and collaborated with Jeremy Menard, the curator of the Weber Art Gallery.
“I work in the gallery, but I also do a lot of work with students,” Jeremy Menard, Curator of the Weber Art Gallery said of the student works featured. “It’s really nice to see really strong examples of their work and to see it in diverse mediums.”
There are a plethora of scholarship opportunities for UNO students participating in the exhibition, including a $750 scholarship offered by the Friends of Art and the Bertha Mengendoht Hatz scholarship that offers up to $900.
That same night, the UNO Art Club was curating a second show. “I have a very recent piece in here,” organizer Holly Rae Tharnish said. “It’s an old typewriter with paper clay heads on it. That’s one I just finished a couple of weeks ago, so I was really excited to see that it got in.”
Out of everything she’s done at UNO, Tharnish is most proud of her oil paintings, which is the concentration of her Bachelor’s Degree.
“It’s been a lot of fun, it’s been helpful to get that experience as a student,” Tharnish said
on curating the show organized by the Art Club. “The art world is competitive, so working as a curator while still being a student has been good experience.”
UNO student Alec Paul won “Best of Show” for his work “Pelts,” winning a $900 scholarship from Bertha Mengendoht Hatz. Other recipients of the Hatz scholarship for $500 include UNO students Erin Paulson, for “Feet and Foliage,” Linda Hellfritsch for “Reclining Nude (American Woman),” Mark Sabaliauskas for “No Good Memories in Flesh,” and Taylor Lazio for “388 Socks on the Wall.” Holly Rae Tharnish’s “The Gaze of Dictation” won the Friends of Art scholarship for $750.
The UNO Juried Student Art Exhibition will continue through Thursday, March 29 in Room 129 of the Weber Fine Arts Building. The Fine Arts Building is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. Patrons and UNO students interested in purchasing artwork featured in the gallery are to contact Curator Menard at jmenard@unomaha.edu.
