Art exhibit to bring light to biases in America

The Northwest Art Club's students have created an exhibit called "Biases of America," which delves into various biases prevalent in society, including those related to race, religion, feminism, mental health and gender.

The exhibit will be presented during the end of Black History Month and continue to the beginning of Women's History Month. Some of the pieces that will be shown are paintings, sculptures, murals and interactive pieces.

Caylea Dill is a senior majoring in art education and the president of the Art Club. Her goal when she became president was to bring new ideas and build a stronger community. When the Art Club was choosing its display theme, it had to think about what would bring the most creativity to the artist.

“It's an important theme, we really wanna create more representation,” Dill said. Bias of America was the theme that the Art Club finally decided on. Dill mentions biases are ongoing and even if people don't think they have any, everyone has their own internal biases. The members split up and thought of their own vision of biases and have been working on turning these biases into artwork since September 2022.

The Executive Board decided it would do a group immersive piece. The board members are Treasurer Avery Andell, Secretary McKinley Daniels, Historian and Service Chair Devin

Kernes and Dill. The board decided to focus the project on feminism. It was inspired by its own board which is led by all women. Dill wants to be able to challenge their viewers with pictures and quotes from magazines from the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Dill also has independent projects she is working on like bias in religion and a series of portrait paintings eliminating stereotypes that will be part of the exhibit as well. Daniels will be doing a separate piece as well, she is creating a sculpture touching on the topic of mental illness and health. Many of the other members outside of this group project will be creating artwork touching on their visions of biases.

“The past two years I’ve been on this journey of exploring what are my own biases,” Dill said. “I took this class, multiculturalism, and I had a great teacher. She made it known that everyone has biases, and it's not something to be ashamed of, but it's something that you work towards to better yourself.”

The Executive Board's piece involves a revolving darkroom door that Dill found in the basement of the school. Inside will be a mood board of feminine figures and things that have been said about femininity in the past. When people enter the dark room, they will hear audio from interviews where they asked people in the community about what feminism means to them.

Avery Andell is a sophomore majoring in broadcasting and production. Her role in the group project is the audio portion, with the help of Wil- liam Murphy who is a television and video engineer in the School of Communication and Mass Media.

“I am excited to see the finished project because we’ve had a lot of different stages and ideas of what we were gonna do so to finally have something locked down that we all feel good about, just to see how it finally turns out is exciting,” Andell said.

Daniels is a senior majoring in biomedical sciences. She joined to still be able to express herself through art and meet new people. She is most excited to see their art come together in the final pieces as well as see viewers' reactions and what questions they have after their experiences in the exhibit. Through the immersive piece, she believes femininity is not secluded to women and is more than just women in dresses and makeup.

Her sculpture piece is a selfportrait of her own mental illness like PTSD and anxiety that affects her. Her vision is someone who can look solid on the outside but can be fragile mentally.

“The thought process behind it is like what you see on the surface is not what is always happening behind the scenes,” Daniels said. “Mental illness has a lot of different faces and is expressed differently in other people like some people handle it a lot stronger than others.”

The exhibit will be open at 5 p.m. Feb. 20 in the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building. An opening presentation by students and Northwest Assistant Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion Justin Mallet will begin at 5:30 p.m.