During the spring, the University of South Carolina Aiken Department of Visual and Performing Arts hosted an exhibit featuring historically significant representations of Polish culture. The exhibit, “Struggle to Solidarity,” was held in the campus Etherredge Center and showcased a collection of posters donated to the university by the late Leonard V. Kosinski, Ph.D., and his wife Mary J. Wiesen-Kosinski.
The exhibit was presented by upper-level graphic design students, including Katherine Kruckow, Brandy McSorley, Raven Mitchell, Natalie Prouty, and Amber Schumacher, under the direction of Professor of Art Dr. Michael Fowler.
Fowler says, “In the fall of last year, we constructed a class around what is involved in planning an exhibit in terms of selecting work, writing labels, and generating publicity. It is important for students to get experience in what it’s like to mount an exhibit from start to finish.”
Posters became a significant art form in Poland during the World War II and Cold War eras. Because there was no large art market during the Soviet occupation, many artists earned their living by creating state-sanctioned posters containing subversive messages. The posters were used by the Polish people as a form of communication and rebellion against their occupiers. USCA’s collection is comprised of 49 posters, of which 20 were selected for exhibit.
Dr. Fowler to his left are Natalie Prouty, Katherine Kruckow and Brandy McSorley at the exhibit opening
Senior design students were tasked with cataloging the artwork, creating promotional materials, designing the physical layout of art in the exhibit space with consideration to both subject matter and audience, as well as coordinating the logistics, budget, and legalities required of an exhibition of this scale. McSorley also located the donor’s grandchildren and incorporated their perspectives and contributions into the exhibit.
“As students, we take a Capstone course in which we mount and exhibit our own work, but this was an opportunity to promote and acknowledge the contributions of others in the field of art,” McSorley says. “With this class, we were able to utilize all the technical skills we learned in previous classes and apply them towards a project that allowed us to become educators ourselves.”
Throughout the process, students faced unexpected challenges, discovered new approaches to their work, and learned there is more to developing an art exhibit than meets the eye.
Schumacher says, “I learned there are different programs that can accomplish the same task. When designing the catalog, we used Adobe InDesign, which I wouldn’t have chosen, but it effectively completed the layout. I gained experience with that program and learned how it works.”
“As art students, we often only think about the creation part, but I learned there is a lot more involved in getting art out into the world,” McSorley adds. “When a person walks into a museum or art exhibit, it is easy to see the displays without considering the effort required to get to that stage. There are swaths of people working independently and together who make those moments happen.”
The students agree that this experience was a valuable tool in helping them prepare for their next steps.
“I think the exhibition is something I would enjoy doing professionally. It is immersive and very much about storytelling and thinking about the audience and the message you want to convey. I enjoyed seeing all of these things come together,” McSorley says.
Schumacher adds, “This opportunity gave us insight into the process of not only art-making but production and distribution. I would like to go into more business-oriented art, and this was good practice for the planning that goes into that.”
To build on the success of the exhibit, the Department of Visual and Performing Arts hopes to frame and display the more than two dozen posters remaining in the Kosinski collection. Fowler says, “A follow-up exhibition would allow us to further our efforts to honor Polish cultural contributions and the generous gift of the Kosinskis while providing additional graphics students exposure to this aspect of environmental graphics.”
For more information, contact Leigh Thomas - thomas29229@yahoo.com