“MESH: Redefining Art at Temple” exhibited the artwork of students from a variety of academic backgrounds. | Bree Hansteen TTN
On April 9, student organization Art of Business/Business of Art hosted a multi-disciplinary art show entitled “MESH” in the architecture building. AB/BA works to bridge gaps between schools and colleges within the university that may otherwise have had no means of artistic connection, said Laura Harris, the organization’s president.
“The basic idea behind the club is to bring together and facilitate collaboration between students at Temple,” said Harris, a sophomore marketing major. “A lot of the time – especially with business and art, and even communication – the students don’t have overlapping classes and really don’t interact or learn with each other, but in reality those fields are very related.”
AB/BA named the art show “MESH” by virtue of the art show’s purpose. The show aimed to combine the creative efforts of students from all areas of the university.
“We really are collaborating and ‘meshing’ different schools together,” Harris said.
Twenty-five Temple students participated in the art show. The show has been in development since January of this year, but members of AB/BA said they thought of the idea for the show early last fall. MESH also served as a fundraiser for the organization. If an artist chose to do so, he or she could put up his or her work for silent auction. 20 percent of the proceeds would benefit AB/BA, and the other 80 percent would go directly to the artist.
Haley Adair, a junior photography major and exhibitor at MESH, said the art show displayed not only traditional fine art, but also exhibited items that “aren’t just considered fine art.”
“We have written papers and plays and poetry and things that you probably wouldn’t see in any gallery show,” Adair said.
The exhibition halls in the architecture building were covered with prints and paintings, while multimedia screens depicted original videos, among other things.
Adair said AB/BA gives students of all disciplines a great opportunity to express themselves in ways they might not have had otherwise.
“Everyone is creative in their own way,” Adair said. “A lot of times, if you’re not an art student, you don’t have any opportunity to make your art, or you don’t have time, or you don’t have a reason.”
For the MESH show, Michele Wiesen, a sophomore graphic design student at Tyler, created a lithograph print. The piece depicted the interior viscera of a female, wherein another female was resting inside.
She said the inspiration for the piece came from a distinctly intimate moment in her life – a romantic exchange between her and her girlfriend.
“It was probably one of the first times we were together, and she was laying on my chest, and she told me that she wanted to burrow her head in between my lungs and nestle and wrap herself in my intestines. My first thought was to describe that image to other people, and they didn’t understand that I thought it was a beautiful image.”
Wiesen said she wanted to communicate the beauty of the moment but found it difficult to do so in words.
“Art is so important, and that piece is so important because it really is the only way that I can think of that I would have ever been able to describe the beauty of that moment to anyone,” Wiesen said. “I don’t think any other medium or means of communication could translate to another human being how that moment felt to me, and I think it’s really amazing that there is the whole language that doesn’t even have to do with words.”
Finnian Saylor can be reached at finnian.saylor@temple.edu.
*Editor’s note: Grace Holleran served as an editor at The Temple News. Kara Milstein serves as an editor of The Temple News. Neither played a role in the editing process of this article.
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