Art from three Union artists will be reaching a wider audience. Amanda Rohde, sophomore art major, Katie Williams, junior art major, and Sarah-Anne Winchester, junior art major, will have their work displayed at the West Tennessee Regional Art Center in Humboldt April 1-25.
The show is part of the University of Tennessee Martin’s Artists of the Twenty-First Century competition, which the university hosts every year. Artwork from the winners of this competition is displayed in the gallery.
Katie Williams will have three portraits from her series titled “Thank You” displayed.
“They’re portraits of people that have served me in ways that they’re probably not even aware,” Williams said.
The portraits are made of chalk and charcoal on tarpaper, a process which Williams said is similar to complex finger-painting.
“Because I’m a graphic designer, a lot of my work is client work, not gallery work,” Williams said. “So this series is all I had that was fresh and new.”
Williams said she still does not know to what extent she will continue in gallery work.
“This is nice to get my foot in the door and see if I enjoy working with a gallery and working with a show,” Williams said.
The gallery will also display a dinner plate and a small pitcher created by Sarah-Anne Winchester.
“For our ceramics class, we were assigned different objects, and we had to make 10 of them each week,” Winchester said. “These were the ones that were best glazed and the ones I got the best response from the professor about.”
Glazing is a process where ceramics are coated in chemicals and heated at high temperatures in a kiln.
“It gives it that glassy effect,” Winchester said.
Winchester said she hopes to one day own her own pottery studio, but for now she plans to work in workshops and internships.
Amanda Rohde has two photographs displayed in the gallery. The first photo is called “Exhale.”
Rohde said she was taking photos for a friend and asked if she could take a few personal photographs afterward using the models. She used a slow shutter speed to capture the motion of a model’s hair.
“It’s kind of like an abstract fashion photograph,” Rohde said.
Her other piece is titled “Venny” and features a Memphis taxi driver. Rohde took the photo for a class assignment involving street photography, where she approached strangers on the street and photographed them.
This is Rohde’s first time being featured in a gallery, but she says she hopes to do more gallery work in the future.
“Most of my work tends to lean more towards functional rather than gallery,” Rohde said. “But every once in a while there’s something that I really love that’s worth putting in a gallery.”
