Dixie State University’s Art Department has partnered with the Southern Utah Art Guild to give students the opportunity to get their work recognized. The Arrowhead Gallery will dedicate a “Student of the Month” wall to showcase a new student’s artwork each month throughout the rest of the fall and spring semesters.
Featured students are chosen each month by gallery helper Morgan Clements and Professor of Art Dennis Martinez. Fred Joslin, a senior art major, was selected as the October student of the month.
“Fred is an oil painter who does a lot of great landscapes, and he is really great at drawing,” Clements said.
Joslin said he enjoys the impressionist style because of the mood that can be created with it.
“It creates more feeling,” Joslin said. “Instead of being as real as you possibly can, you create more of a feel of something, and you are able to express yourself in it as well.”
The November student, Daniela Goncalves, a senior art education major, is known for her abstract art and was referred to Clements by College of the Arts Adjunct Abraham McCowan.
Goncalves said she enjoys various styles of art, but especially assemblages, a work of art made by grouping found or unrelated objects together.
Goncalves said: “I like it because you are finding junk and things that are usually thrown away, but then you are putting those things together that wouldn’t normally be used with each other. Then, when you see it all together it just works.”
Clements said this partnership between DSU and the Southern Utah Art Guild is meant to get students’ artwork seen out in the community, which Joslin and Goncalves are appreciative of.
“I feel honored,” Joslin said. “I appreciate Morgan Clements for thinking enough of my work to want to show it in a gallery.”
Goncalves shared the same enthusiasm and said: “It’s really exciting. It is a way to get my name out there, and it really helps to get that kind of exposure.”
Joslin and Goncalves said they advise any aspiring artists to keep at it if it’s what they love to do.
“It has to come from the heart and soul,” Goncalves said. “It is a way to express yourself, so as long as you are doing it for yourself, then who cares how many people don’t like it.”
The next exhibit will be held on Nov. 2 from 6-8 p.m. at the Arrowhead Gallery in the Electric Theater on Tabernacle Street.
