Joe MacGown's Art Blog: Recent Local Shows successful at EMCC and MSU

Friday, April 17, 2015

Recent Local Shows successful at EMCC and MSU

"Secret Messages Revealed"

Had a great time at the reception on March 26 for my one man show entitled "Secret Messages Revealed" at the East Mississippi Community College campus in Scooba, MS. I enjoy talking to students about my art and this was no exception. I was actually a part of their "Pine Grove Arts Festival" celebration, in fact, I was an attraction almost! Cool. The art staff there at EMCC, Terry Cherry and Lisa Spinks, are really great folks who have stirred up a love of arts for the students there. An additional perc for doing the show was a guaranteed sale! Yep. They purchased my piece entitled "Inquisitive Fish." A nice one for sure.

Inquisitive Fish

Here are a few pictures of the reception. Notice the great frames! All done at Chalet Arts in Starkville, MS. Thanks!

"Dreams and Delusions"

Just this week, we had the opening at MSU for a small show called Dreams and Delusions, which featured me, Laurie Burton, and MSU student Ben Grace. This was only up for a couple of weeks or so, but lots of folks got to see it as it was held in the MSU Student Union Gallery, a place typically chock full of students. However, the reception itself was quite small, and largely consisted of people we invited on our FaceBook event page or personally invited. This was quite a contrast to the show at EMCC in which basically every art student in the department came to the opening. Very few MSU art students showed up, which I found disappointing. In general, I have found this to be this case here in Starkville, with MSU art students typically not attending shows in which they have no stake. We did have some interior design students come though, which was cool. Despite the low attendance, I still think it was a good show. The refreshments were very tasty! And, I got some of my runner buds to come by telling them about the free food. To be fair, though, I believe they enjoyed the art as well! We probably had less than 20 pieces up total, with Ben having 3 pieces, Laurie 4, and I maybe had about ten smallish pieces. This gallery space is small, but quite nice, and this is pretty good spot for small shows. But, guess what? Its not how always important how many people come to a reception, but rather, who those people are. As it turned out, I sold a third of what I had in there...YAY.

Colten McMickens and Matt Thorne, two of our Entomology Museum Crew

Destine Lalas and Thomas Cermack

Ozzie Rendon (a long time friend and huge fan of my work) and Brent Funderburk, MSU art professor

Joseph St. John, excited about something!

Sally Laughlin, looking at my piece called "Scavenger." She wanted to buy it, but someone else had just got it!

Ben Grace, with Ozzie and Brent

Michelle Neumann and her daughter

Jim Turner and Brent Funderburk

Here are some photos I took of some of the pictures before the show got going. As with the show at Scooba, almost everything in this show was framed by Chalet Arts in Starkville! Thanks guys! And thanks to Emilie Cravens for letting us have this small show in the gallery!