Adam Sullivan, freshman library and information science major, surveys figure drawings in the School of Art gallery. SAM TWAREK | DAILY KENT STATER

Credit: Jason Hall

The 2007 Drawing Invitational was home to a display of works that were anything but paper and pencil yesterday.

The invitational featured a wide variety of multimedia, which attracted passersby on its opening day in the School of Art Gallery in the Art Building.

“The whole point of the show is to show a lot of different varieties,” said Anderson Turner, director of galleries at Kent State.

Viewers were greeted with flat files from the Pierogi Gallery in New York. The flat files are artworks stacked on top of each other in a closed drawer. The artist-run Pierogi Gallery has monthly shows that feature the work of emerging artists in a wide variety of media and style.

Spectators in the School of Art Gallery put on clean white gloves and sifted through stacks of artists’ works.

“(The drawings) may not necessarily be the best work they’ve ever made, but it’s still interesting to see a gathering of their original works,” Turner said.

The files originate from the Pierogi Gallery but were sent to other parts of the world.

“The flat files have been traveling all over the United States and in Europe,” said Darice Polo, curator for the invitational.

Miroslav Cukovic’s pieces, titled “Forth World Countries,” are a series of four ink-on-tracing paper pieces. They had to be gently moved and handled because of their delicate nature.

Spectators were welcome to move around the rest of the gallery to view fixed works hanging from the walls.

The fixed art works ranged in media including ink prints, graphite sketches, graphite and watercolor, colored pencil, digital collage on paper and vellum, gel pen and burnt carpet.

One work by Kristopher Jones of Grand Rapids, Mich., incorporated coffee and tea along with watercolor.

“I thought the exhibit was pretty cool,” said Brittany Resnover, junior fine arts major. “There were a lot of different materials used in the pieces.”

Resnover said she heard about the gallery from the first day it was set up and stopped in yesterday to get a look.

The largest single piece in the gallery belongs to Dragana Crnjak of Boardman, Ohio.

His untitled piece incorporates the use of charcoal smeared into various dotted shapes on two pieces of the wall. Those pieces jut out to form an extended point where the two walls meet.

Polo said the purpose of the invitational is to bring a drawing exhibit back into the forefront of the gallery. She said there hasn’t been a drawing exhibition at Kent State for a few years.

“The department is growing, and I think the students will really benefit from this exhibit,” she said.

A small showing in the atrium outside the gallery displayed figure drawings from a class taught by Polo.

“I thought a small exhibition of student drawings would compliment the drawing invitational,” she said.

Turner said he is expecting a larger turnout at the School of Art Gallery reception on Friday.

Contact College of Art and College of Architecture and Environmental Design reporter Sam Twarek at [email protected].