IIT STUDENT-PLANNED ART GALLERY OPENS NATIONAL EXHIBIT
Student cross-curriculum project art@IIT opens professional gallery with reception Innovative Rapid Prototyping Sculpture exhibit features national artists, runs through
Students in a cross-discipline, interprofessional project will see their plans come to fruition as art and technology merge as Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) celebrates the opening of the first exhibit in the new IIT Art Gallery. The gallery, developed by the student group art@IIT, will open with a reception for the university community and guests from 5:30-8:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 10.
Located in the Kemper Room at Paul V. Galvin Library on IIT’s Main Campus, the IIT Art Gallery is the product of a semester-long student project to develop a business and marketing plan for exhibit space that would feature the art of technology. The reception will open with the Chicago debut of the International Rapid Prototyping Sculpture Exhibition, which highlights the process of rapid prototyping, in which a physical model is produced layer-by-layer to lend a tangible form to a creative, digital visualization.
Eighteen sculptors are featured in the exhibit, including nationally known artists Kenneth Snelson, Michael Rees and Keith Brown. Many of the artists are using this new technology after working for years with traditional materials. An additional exhibit will showcase work by four digital artists who materialize virtual sculpture expressing the beauty of mathematically generated forms. The exhibition includes a variety of processes and material from starch to metal.
“With rapid prototyping, the artist has a powerful tool to physically materialize only what previously was possible virtually or impossible to construct in traditional sculpting materials,” said Architecture Professor Robert J. Krawczyk, gallery director. IIT’s Art Board and President’s Office also sponsor the exhibit. “We are excited to have this inventive art form kick off the art@IIT program, which will include works from campus and national artists with a focus of art of technology.”
The current exhibit will run from 12-10 p.m., Monday-Friday; 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday; and 2-10 p.m., Sunday, through Dec 19. For more information, contact art@IIT at http://art.iit.edu or 312.567.5293.
Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting technological university awarding degrees in the sciences, mathematics and engineering, as well as architecture, psychology, design, business and law. IIT’s interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum prepares the university’s 6,200 students for leadership roles in an increasingly complex and culturally diverse global workplace.
