What: Being There
When: Sept. 24-Dec. 27
Where: David Owsley Museum of Art
Editor's Note: The original online story misquoted Robert La France, the director of the David Owsley Museum of Art. He described the exhibit as containing images of "palpable presence," not palatable.
Every day, people go about their lives — traveling to work, downing cups of coffee — but they might not be pausing to enjoy the moment.
Mark Sawrie, an associate professor of art, wanted to remind people that there is more to life than just rushing through it. That’s the idea behind “Being There,” a temporary David Owsley Museum of Art exhibit he curated.
The exhibit is in the Brown Study Room on the ground floor of the museum. It opened in September and will be there until Dec. 27.
Robert La France, the director of the Museum of Art, approached Sawrie over the summer to curate an exhibit. It’s the first time a professor has guest-curated an exhibit since La France took over last year.
He wanted to create a new venture called "Faculty Insight,” where the museum and Ball State faculty interact with each other. The faculty member is invited to peruse the museum's various collections of artwork and create an exhibit around any idea they can imagine. All exhibit pieces must come directly from the museum.
"Being There" is a collection of various traditional black and white photographs of simple places — the inside of a burned beach house or a plain bedroom. Sawrie spent the summer going over "hundreds and hundreds” of photographs. The photographs came from the museum’s storage room, which is where they are kept and preserved when they aren’t on display.
La France said Sawrie has accomplished the goal behind his exhibit.
“There are certain photographing images of palpable presence, … of something you can almost touch. It created an environment, and it’s just like being there when you look into this image," La France said.
The faculty insight program also allows professors to use their exhibits as teaching tools in their classrooms. Sawrie has already created an assignment called "Figure vs. Environment,” for which students create or find situations where the environment and the subject form a story that the viewer has to interpret. He has brought his students to the exhibit to give them inspiration on their assignment.
“They seem to enjoy it. They asked lots of questions,” Sawrie said. “They spent a lot of time looking at the photographs and investigating them. The one thing I want them to do is create a photograph that people can’t just walk by or view in a split second.”
Sawrie said all electronic devices should be put away while people view his exhibit.
Technology is useful, he said, but it distracts and takes people away from their surroundings. He applies this concept to life as well as the exhibit.
“We all exist. We all have limited time on earth, and no one is going to guarantee that you have a special life,” he said. “Only you can guarantee that you have a special life, and if you don’t stop to pay attention to the world around you, then you are going to miss out on a lot of things. You won’t be able to go back and get those things.”
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