Interspersed throughout the corridors of Nicholson Hall stand evidence of the creative endeavors and artistic flair behind the University’s architecture and landscape architecture students.
The pieces are part of the third annual College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture All-Student Exhibition titled “Diaspora,” which runs all this week and is open to the public.
The exhibition was open to all students at CALA: architecture, landscape architecture, undergraduate and graduate.
The spirit of the exhibition is found in the school’s displacement from the Architecture building, which is under renovation and reconstruction until 2002.
The word “Diaspora” means people with similar cultures spread apart.
Third-year graduate student Aaron Mullins entered a photographic journal titled “Visions.”
“The objective of the journal was to set up a format for seeing, containing a collection of photographs and sketches from Spain, Portugal and Italy,” Mullins said of the project, which was originally designed for a study-abroad exhibition.
Any creative endeavor comprised by a student could be submitted, ranging in media and purpose. Some work was designed during courses taken at the University, while other work was produced outside of the classroom. Entries varied from photographs, still-life paintings, collages, architectural models and moving three-dimensional sculptures.
Ryan Kronzer, a third-year graduate student, entered a series of photographs titled “Toil,” which he finished last year for a black-and-white photography class.
Of the more than 100 submissions, 24 works were chosen for exhibition in the show by a selection committee composed of practicing architect Laurel Ulland and Kinji Akagawa, a professor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
To ensure confidentiality, names of the students were not given to the committee until after judging. Five of the 24 works were then recognized for best of show. Judging took place last Saturday.
The committee looked for “work that made a proposition, displaying one’s attitude about the world,” Ulland said.
She looked for work that said, “I’m looking at the world in this manner, so therefore, I’m going to do this.”
Akagawa said he tends to look for entries that have an “interdisciplinary nature to the work, compounded layering. Looking at the world through a social and anthropological view.”
The exhibition began Monday and was followed by a reception in the evening, which gave students and faculty a chance to explore the new “swingspace,” exhibition coordinator and graduate student Susan Nackers said.
“Pieces will be displayed throughout the halls of Nicholson as a way of getting the people to move through the work and the buildings,” she added.
Following Monday evening’s reception, some exhibition pieces were moved into the temporary architecture library on 1425 University Ave., while others stayed in Nicholson Hall.