Board members speak to the significance and process of the upcoming collaborative event
By SAVANNAH ANNO — [email protected]
Creating their own portable gallery walls from the ground up and converting the Art Building’s basement into an exhibition space, neither Open Walls Collective (OWC) nor The Basement Gallery (BG) are unfamiliar with bringing a complex vision to life. This June, the student-led organizations will be teaming up to showcase the work of graduating UC Davis artists, displaying as many different mediums, voices and themes as possible.
“We had multiple meetings during winter quarter to discuss potential collaborations,” Lead BG Director Shaelyn Smith, a fourth-year art studio and design double major, said. “Once we were introduced to the idea of creating a joint senior show at the Pence, we were sold. Bringing graduating student artists deeper into their professional practice excites us, so we figured this show would be a very fitting send-off.”
In the planning process since March, the senior show will be hosted at the local Pence Gallery. While it will be The Basement Gallery’s first time curating a space outside of their home-base, Open Walls Collective previously worked with the Pence Gallery to host “Are you better than AI?,” an interactive exhibition including one secretly Artificial Intelligence produced work.
“One of the key differences this year is our mindful curation,” Open Walls Collective member Krishna Das, a fourth-year art studio major, said. “I made an effort over the past few quarters to pay close attention to my peers’ unique voices and mediums, and it’s important to us that the spotlight we are creating for our community highlights how they want to be seen.”
Crediting the Pence’s Education Director Katharine Schultz, a UC Davis alumna and past member of BG, for the opportunity, OWC will return to the space in hopes of building even greater momentum as an emerging art collective.
“It’s exciting,” Das said. “She once helped run The Basement Gallery as a student, and now she’s generously providing us with the space to showcase the incredible talent of our graduating seniors. Through this collaboration, we all want to establish a working relationship between the undergraduate community and leading local, regional entities.”
With enough space to fit both organizations’ ideas and curation practices, the June 7 senior show is projected to be one of the largest events yet for both groups.
“In The Basement Gallery, we usually try to choose a proportional number of mediums based on what’s submitted and at least three sculptures to fill our space,” BG Director of Communications Abby O’Sullivan, a third-year art studio and cinema and digital media double major, said. “However, at the Pence, we have a lot more room to fill and are thrilled to be able to accommodate as much work as we can. This show is a celebration of everything these seniors have accomplished, and it’s important to include as much of their work as we’re able to.”
No stranger to the concept of a senior show, The Basement Gallery has been inviting groups of graduating art studio majors to exhibit their final works for years. Hosting a different show almost every week of each spring quarter, BG allows student artists to experience the process of creating an exhibition from start to finish: the artists curate, install, host and de-install their own show.
Lola Jung, a fourth-year art studio major and BG preparator, who last year referred to herself as “The Basement Gallery’s biggest fan,” discussed the value of the senior shows in a past interview with The California Aggie.
“I love the student-centered nature of it all,” Jung said. “I think it’s really good at actually preparing art students for a future career. A big factor that college art curriculum lacks in general is practical application, actually getting involved in the art world, in the people, and actually setting up art in a gallery.”
In this new expansion of senior shows into the Pence, soon-to-be-graduated students will be able to see their work celebrated and curated within a professional art institution, furthering the BG and OWC’s collective mission to highlight and set artists up for success beyond their time at UC Davis.
Months in the making, The Basement Gallery and Open Walls Collective continue to plan and curate the upcoming show, currently working through a long list of art submissions.
“As a third-year, I feel like this show will be incredibly bittersweet for me,” O’Sullivan said. “I’m so proud of us and everything we’ve accomplished, and this show is going to be a celebration of us. The Pence show will give us one last chance to put an exhibition together while spending time with each other.”
Join both organizations as they reveal the final coalescence of student artists’ unique and moving works on June 7 at the Pence Gallery.
Written by: Savannah Anno — [email protected]
