By Rebekah Frank

The art building was buzzing with activity on May 13 as students, faculty and community members enjoyed refreshments and food while walking through the art gallery admiring the diverse, colorful and arresting works of art.

EWU President Dr. Rodolfo Arévalo started the event with a quick speech about the symposium, its history, the work involved and the importance of this event.

He explained the symposium started when students or faculty members sat under a tree discussing a subject with a small group. He said the goal of every symposium is for students to present to an audience.

“We try to replicate the process of the symposium as really that,” Arévalo said. “Giving the students an opportunity to work with one faculty member to do what we do best at Eastern, which is quite frankly to start something big, and you start something big by creating something small at the beginning. It is a very important building block.”

EWU sophomore Christopher Steele presented a six-piece ceramic project which he called “The Journey to Conceptual.” It consisted of six ceramic vases. The first focusing on a functional form, the second two morphing towards sculptural and the last three being conceptual.

“The idea of ceramics being both functional and conceptional can have a huge impact and really give the artist more options to go. It was kind of last minute. I had about two weeks to get it finished and put together,” Steele said.

The crunch time Steele was under showed the most in the last three vases. The ceramic strips making up the last three appear to be just thrown together in a pile. However, when looking at all the pieces together, it appears that they are showing the process of tearing a vase apart. As one looks from the first to the second to the third, the pieces slowly become more and more unfinished.

EWU senior Jennifer DeBarros presented a piece called “Tossed and Found.” It consisted of old colorless photographs that she recolored with colored pencils and pens and updated the clothing.

“[I wanted to] re-bring some life to photos that had been tucked away and passed on and no one really cared about. It was my way to bring a photo back to life through line, color, design and just pattern and kind of reinvent a new visual story on it,” DeBarros said.

DeBarros said she never would have thought she could encompass her photography medium into art the way she did.

“I am kind of liking it; this is the first show I have ever done,” Steele said. “It was a really like just kind of a confidence builder to be like ’I am not just a photographer.’ Like you can do a lot of different things and be proud of it and have people like it too.”

EWU junior Amy Ueckert said she liked the idea of taking ordinary things, using them in different ways and incorporating it all into a 3-D piece.

“I like to really enlarge things, and then I found it really interesting using string and thread and different things and creating large structure stuff out of clearly not very much actual stuff. Seeing what you can do other than just tying stuff together.”

EWU senior Joseph Snodgrass presented a piece called “The Education of the Modern World.” His project was a publication in which he developed a problem to solve.

“My problem that I developed was first for incoming design students, but really it applies to all students it is to sort of inhibit a sense of intellectual curiosity and wonder to enhance reasoning to look at things in different perspectives,” Snodgrass said.

Snodgrass began this piece for his BFA thesis project, but decided to showcase it in the symposium. His publication consisted of four essays, one of them discussed the subject of Peter Pan and the sense of Neverland. It encompasses the whole idea behind the wonder, intellectual innocence and curiosity of a child.

“Mankind in general has gone through this period as well but we are kind of entering a phase where we have to discover that same curiosity we had figuratively as children,” Snodgrass said.

Two EWU freshmen, Emily Sherman and Cassidy Schreiber, were attending for the first time. Schreiber said although it had just started she enjoyed what she saw so far. She really liked the art, even though she felt she missed the point of some of the pieces.

“I need people to explain art to me sometimes,” Schreiber said.

“It’s kind of cool to see what [the art students] have been doing all year,” Sherman said.

EWU assistant symposium coordinator Sarah Cornwell was very pleased with the start of the symposium. She said she was really excited that this is the largest symposium yet, and is already thinking about ways it can be improved and enlarged next year.

“More presenters, more types of projects and it is broader. Just the fact that it keeps getting bigger is just cool,” Cornwell said.