EXHIBITS: MUSEUM SHOW DISPLAYS WORK OF SEMO FACULTY

Sam Bishop ran his pixel mosaic photos over to the University Museum as the 2000 Faculty Exhibition was being hung Tuesday afternoon. Amy Kephart still needed a name for her triptych urn, and the lid was due out of the kiln later that night.

If the exhibition opening today at the University Museum is designed to teach by example, Southeast art students may be relieved to learn that deadlines motivate professors just as much as they do the rest of us.

The public is invited to a reception for the artists from 4-6 p.m. today. The show continues through November.

A faculty exhibit has many purposes, says Stanley Grand, director of the University Museum. Students can see how the techniques they have been taught are used to make art. And the art professors put themselves and their work before the public, a process Grand calls "sifting and winnowing."

"... It's important that artists set professional standards for themselves," he says.

Other faculty members in the show are Louis Bodenheimer, Ronald Clayton, Lane Fabrick, Diana Hansen, Pat Reagan, Sarah Riley, Edwin Smith, Katherine Ellinger Smith and Andrea Torrence.

The work stretches from Katherine Ellinger Smith's tiny collages to Andrea Torrence's ceiling-height drawings, from Reagan's delicate dyed silks to Edwin Smith's welded metal sculpture.

Bishop's photos are of familiar doorways -- one is the Southeast Missourian's -- made to look unfamiliar.

Riley has named two works after the Garden of the Gods, the popular Southern Illinois hiking area, but she has provided her own gods.

Fabrick, who has a solo show opening today at the Lorimier Gallery in downtown Cape Girardeau, is a painter represented by a torso series. Hansen's oils are subtler in both color and subject matter.

Though Kephart is a ceramicist, one of her contributions to the show consists of colored paper incorporating ceramics motifs. It's called "Family Portrait ." At Grand's suggestion, "Ancestor Box" is the title she chose for the stacked urn.

Clayton has two new large paintings in his dream-like series of unfinished buildings opening onto natural splendor.

Edwin Smith's metal sculptures, "Strong, Standing Tall" and "Cradling Three Stones" are dark and imposing.

Bodenheimer has contributed a series of 80 tiny drawings based on a charm from India that pregnant women wear for protection. As her artist's statement reveals, the charm has a personal significance for her.

Reagan's flowing dyed silk cloths hang from the wall. One is titled "Blood," the other "Water."

Ellinger Smith's tiny collages are from a series titled "Myths and Legends of the Bootheel." Elvis and a hound are two of many images that appear.

This kind of exhibit is good for both the students and the faculty, Grand says. "Sometimes the faculty is held in an exalted place where nobody talks about their work.

"... This sort of turns the tables, "Grand says.