The Schuster Art Gallery, located on the first floor of the Center for Communication and the Arts, continues its 2014-2015 season with “The Christmas Show.”
Following the large success of their Juried Exhibit from the Northwest Pennsylvania Artist Association, the show will include regional photography and features work from the Photographic Arts Society of Northwestern Pennsylvania. The exhibit will run from Saturday until Feb. 15.
Lori Steadman, director of the Schuster Art gallery, said the show features “Fine Arts Photos,” and believes it will draw a good crowd.
“Group shows bring more people,” Steadman said. “We can always count on those people in the show to bring their friends, their family, even their date, and that gets more traffic through the gallery.”
The show will feature more local works than other shows, being described as a “regional show.”
“We are trying to look for art more locally this time around,” Steadman said. “As you start looking farther, you run into travel costs.”
In terms of the gallery itself, art scholars from the area are very excited about the new location, especially Steadman.
“We get a lot more traffic through the gallery than we did before,” Steadman said. “We have received many gracious comments about the location, as well as the new look and the art itself.”
It was also mentioned that changing the show every so often brings traffic through the gallery as well.
“That plays right back into the fact that group shows bring more people,” Steadman said. “As we get more patrons, word gets out and we gain notoriety by word of mouth.”
The gallery is also becoming a place where students can become involved in the arts in a way that fits right into their schedules.
Senior communication arts major Ashley Dolnack visits the building every day and said, “I like that the gallery is no longer in the library and more accessible to students.”
“Some of the professors on campus are starting to use the gallery as a resource for their classes, which is wonderful,” Steadman said.
“We love getting student involvement in the gallery, especially when it ties right back to their academics.”
The Christmas Show will have its “Gallery Night” on Dec. 5 in the Schuster Gallery.
The show itself wraps up in February, when the Gallery will bring in a show called “Dante’s Inferno: The Nattini Illustrations.”
It will feature the work of Amos Nattini, who will have “high quality reproductions from his 1921 edition of Dante’s Inferno,” according to the Schuster Gallery website.
You can find more information on these exhibitions at http://www.gannon.edu/Visitors-and-Community/Area-Attractions/Schuster-Gallery/.
TOM BARTON
