UNA’s art gallery is currently showcasing two art exhibitions, ranging from pieces created by faculty members to multimedia artwork created by students.

The digital media exhibition showcases work done by students in the fall semester and the current semester from several multimedia classes, while the faculty exhibition showcases many different forms of art from the Department of Art‘s professors and instructors.

“We’ve got a very well-rounded department now,” said Wayne Sides, director of the Art Gallery and professor of art. “I think this year it shows it about as well as any, from the commercial end to the fine arts end.”

Both shows will run until April 8, with the faculty exhibition taking place in the upper floor of the gallery and the students’ digital art exhibition running in the lower floor of the gallery.

The digital art exhibition showcases multimedia art, print design, motion graphics, typography, and several other forms of multimedia and digital media artwork.

One of the projects on display for the digital arts exhibition is a collection of several designs done by students of print design as a proposed logo for Shoals Woman magazine.

“They already chose four designs and asked us to improve,” said Naheem Kim, assistant professor of arts, on Shoals Woman‘s involvement with the students‘ project. “They will eventually choose one of the four as their design.”

According to Kim, the final design chosen by Shoals Woman will be shown during their annual Shoals Woman of the Year event, and will be used to create pin designs and graphics on several publications.

Other projects created for the exhibition include stop-motion videos with a focus on going green and a selection of websites created by students for mock companies and parodies of existing websites, like replacing Apple‘s line-up of products with actual fruit.

The faculty exhibition includes an even more varied range of artwork, which ranges from oil paintings to photography to pieces that mix several different types of media into one work.

This variety of artwork showcases all the many skills that the faculty possesses, but, according to Chiong-Yiao Chen, chair of the Department of Art, getting the exhibition together was not easy.

“The faculty had to do this on their own time,” Chen said. “We don’t have a professional staff or gallery curator, or installation personal.”

The only dedicated help they do have, Chen said, was one work-studies student who is currently undergoing training in putting together exhibitions, especially with exhibitions as diverse as this group show.

“It’s always nerve-wracking for the faculty; we never know if it will go together,” Chen said. “A lot of time is spent tweaking the visual aesthetic of each piece.”

The exhibition mixes pieces of art of largely varying sizes, from a work reminiscent of a walk-in theater created by professor of art Fred Hensley to small pieces of pottery.

One piece of pottery, a Raku Bowl, shows obvious flaws in its creation, but according to its creator, the improper glazing on the bowl is actually being used to make a point.

“It shows and reminds students how glaze is liquid glass before it cools, and how it can look on a bowl,” said Ron Shady, professor of art.