BY ELLEN ROSSOW
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Yesterday, the Roland Dille Center for the Arts gallery opened its newest BFA exhibit. For students of  the art department, involvement in this showcase marks the end of their journey at MSUM as shows of this nature feature works from students who are close to graduation.

Although this exhibit has been installed and ready for viewing since yesterday, the opening reception will be held on Thursday. This reception will offer students not only a chance to mingle with other viewers and eat delicious food, but also an opportunity to meet with those whose work is being displayed.

The only guidelines of entry were that the pieces must have been created as coursework for an MSUM class. The students were
able to enter almost anything they wanted into the exhibition. This, as well as the fact that the featured students come from a variety of emphasizes, promises that the exhibition will have a vast array of works of various mediums and subject matters.

Printmaking senior Dwight Winger is one of the students whose work is being showcased.

“My works in the show are a collection of landscapes from the area around my hometown of Portland, N.D.” Winger said. “I had the goal of expressing the landscape using a variety of printing processes such as screen print, lithography and mezzotint, while I was looking back upon what the idea of what ‘home’ was and is to me.”

Entirely different from Winger’s work is that of drawing and painting senior Erika Mathison, who is also being featured in the exhibition.

“My two largest pieces are nude human figures,” Mathison said. “I snuck some little symbols of death in there. They’re easy to spot – they’re skulls.”

The not-so-subtle idea of death is found throughout her pieces for good reason.

“I’m kind of trying to give the idea of humans being at ease with death, comfortable with it, and that it is going to happen,” she said. “I’ve done this in the two pieces by having the models lounge easily either right next to or near the skeletons.”

Mathison also has pieces in the show portraying anti-rape ideas.

“They have a bit more weight to them,” she said. “The females look directly at the viewer as if asking, calling for help, only for it to never come. One of the two has wedding rings on both the male and female figures to show that married people get raped by their spouses as well.”

Meanwhile, illustration senior, Chantel Fugere’s work discusses the strength of women in different mythologies.

Those interested in learning more about the works in the exhibition should attend the reception on Thursday. Attendees of the reception will have a chance to discuss the works with those who produced them, something that is not available at many galleries.

Thursday’s reception will be from 4 to 6 p.m. and is open for anyone interested. The exhibit will remain up until March 13 when it will be taken down to make room for the gallery’s next show, a juried exhibition judged by Hilary Wilder.