Senior Art Exhibit Opens Monday posted 3/3/09
The first of three senior exhibits features Leeann McMichael and Matt Nesbary

ADRIAN, Mich. - An exhibition of works by Adrian College seniors Leeann McMichael and Matt Nesbary opens Monday, March 9, in Adrian College’s Stubnitz Gallery. A reception for the artists takes place from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 15. The exhibition continues through Saturday, March 21.

McMichael’s work reveals her devotion to detail and her exploration of grids in unusual media. The first body of artwork is created on the Etch A Sketch™. The second is comprised of various types of paper--including scrapbook paper, a calendar, other students’ discarded charcoal drawings, and Japanese origami paper--to create a series of origami-based works, one of which is a wall-sized, interlocking mural. Although the materials sound impersonal, the drive to repeat the same simple procedures over and over, until complexity results, is a very personal compulsion. Likewise, the Etch A Sketch™ works’ images and the fascination with origami are based in the artists’ memories.

Matt Nesbary is a painter and digital artist who creates energetic, dreamlike images that incorporate both abstract and realistic elements. Whether packed with crowds of figures or featuring lone airships, the works’ fantasy and sci-fi themes mix with abstract shapes and elements of design to create surreal landscapes with transformation at their core. Both the oil/acrylic paintings and digital works contain visually exciting imagery in high contrast, vivid colors. Nesbary’s ongoing transition from relatively flat, painterly collages to more precisely rendered illusions of three-dimensional environments is especially apparent in his new digital artwork. Yet even as his spaces become easier to comprehend, the artist seeks to retain a sense of mystery. In this transitional period in his work and life, Nesbary’s artworks visually reflect change through compositional devices such as warping images and transforming patterns.

The exhibition, the first of three this spring, is a requirement toward the completion of the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

All Stubnitz Gallery events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursdays. The Gallery is closed on Sundays. Stubnitz Gallery is located in Downs Hall on the College’s campus. More information may be obtained by contacting Catherine Royer at 517-264-3903 or via e-mail at croyer@adrian.edu.