The staff and faculty of Missouri Southern have invited the campus into their living rooms.

Val Christensen, assistant professor of art, has coordinated the "Living with Art: Art from the Living Rooms of MSSC Faculty and Staff" exhibit at the Spiva Art Gallery. This exhibit features a variety of privately owned art that previously adorned the walls of Southern's staff and faculty. Now, their personal collections are on display for the campus.

"One of the things about a campus community is students tend to look at their professors as being fairly one-dimensional," said Christensen. "Doing this points out the fact that members of the campus community have many different kinds of interests."

The works submitted show the variety of interests of the staff and faculty at Southern.

"We have a diversity of images," he said. "Many of them are revealing of the interests of the faculty members."

The idea for the exhibit came from Christensen, who believed sharing the art would not only provide a visually pleasing experience, but also allow students some insight about their instructors at Southern.

"It occurred to me that there are people on campus that probably do have works of art that they live with every day," he said. "Being in the art department, I'm always concerned about getting the idea across to students that this is something that can touch their lives."

Charlie Kemp, director of the Spiva library, submitted two paintings he purchased while living in Oregon.

"We used to go to an art auction out there monthly," he said. "We picked up several nice pieces."

Two of those pieces he purchased at these auctions are now part of the exhibit.

"One is a painting by a man named [L.H.] Sinberg," he said. "He's an Oregon artist and they refer to him as the 'dean' of Oregon landscape painters."

Kemp also contributed an oil floral painting by Oregon artist Coleen Nuttal. He has been a collector of art for many years and felt the exhibit was a good opportunity to share part of his collection.

"We have lots of paintings in our house," he said. "Those are just two of the ones that I particularly treasure from our Oregon days, so I thought I'd like to share them with the community."

Christensen encourages students and faculty to come view the exhibit, which opened Monday, April 3, and will be open until April 21. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Published by The Chart on 4-7-00

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