New exhibitions opening this week at the West Virginia University Creative Arts Center’s Mesaros Galleries include works by nationally recognized artists Carol Hummel and Jenny Odell. Both exhibitions will be open Oct. 10 through Dec. 10, and a reception for the exhibitions will be held Oct. 24 at 6 p.m. at the galleries.

Hummel, whose exhibition titled “Telling Yarns” will be on view in the Paul Mesaros Gallery, studied graphic design and photography at the University of Cincinnati in the early 1970s. She later returned to school at Kent State University and received a bachelor’s degree in photojournalism before her Master of Fine Arts in sculpture. She finished her MFA in 2004 and has been prolific in her work since that time. She does sculptural work, as well as photography, video, and writing.

Hummel recently completed a unique art event on the Creative Arts Center grounds in conjunction with Morgantown’s 2013 celebration of “The Year of the Tree,” where she worked with students, faculty, staff, and community members to cover a large tree with crocheted yarn. Hummel has created similar installations in Cleveland Heights, Ohio; Chicago; Drangedal, Norway and New Delhi, India.

Jenny Odell, whose digital prints from her “Satellite Series” will be in the Laura Mesaros Gallery, will present a visiting artist lecture on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 5 p.m. in Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A). Odell is a San Francisco native with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Design from the San Francisco Art Institute and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Her work has been featured at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Google Headquarters and Les Rencontres D’Arles in France. It has also turned up in TIME Magazine, the Atlantic, the NPR Picture Show, Pop-up Magazine, Rhizome, Guernica and ESPN Magazine.

In all of the prints in the exhibition, Odell has collected things that she cut out from Google Satellite View: parking lots, silos, landfills, waste ponds.

“The view from a satellite is not a human one, nor is it one we were ever really meant to see,” she said. “But it is precisely from this inhuman point of view that we are able to read our own humanity, in all of its tiny, repetitive marks upon the face of the earth. From this view, the lines that make up basketball courts and the scattered blue rectangles of swimming pools become like hieroglyphs that say: people were here.”

Managed and programmed by Curator Robert Bridges and the WVU School of Art & Design, the Mesaros Galleries organize a diverse and exciting schedule of exhibitions throughout the year. The galleries are committed to showing experimental work that is innovative both in terms of media and content. The Mesaros Galleries and the WVU School of Art and Design also host contemporary artists of important or growing reputation who work in all media in the Visiting Artist Program.

All Mesaros Galleries events, including art lectures, exhibitions and receptions are free and open to the public.

Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, from noon to 9:30 p.m. The galleries are closed Sundays and University holidays. Special individual or group viewing times may be arranged upon request.

For more information, contact Robert Bridges, curator, at 304-293-2312.

-WVU-

cl/10/10/13

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304.293.4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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