Art Show Crafts Community

From a humble pipe and drape tent to a large professional gallery space, the Harvard Student Art Show has grown quickly since its inception. Now in its fifth year, the show will feature over 40 artists with more than 50 pieces in a new location at 65 Mt. Auburn Street. As part of this weekend’s Arts First celebrations, the show opens on Thursday evening with a reception and runs an open gallery until Sunday afternoon. As in the past, this year’s show intends to provide artists across the Harvard community with a unique gallery space for their work.

According to executive directors Anna H. B. Ondaatje ’13 and C. Gamze Seten ’13, preparations for this year’s show began immediately after last year’s showcase, which was held in a different venue on Mt. Auburn Street, the space that now houses Petali Flowers. Since the show’s humble beginnings as a tent outside of the Science Center, it has occupied a variety of venues in its four years, including places such as Farkas Hall. “Every year we try to get a better space—this year we have an actual hallway gallery that is very nice,” Seten says. The space has two floors with professional track lighting that proved useful in setting up the show, she says.

One of the students in this year’s show is returning artist Kathryn C. Ryan ’13, a Crimson editorial cartoonist and art director of the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. Ryan has a watercolor piece featured in the show that differs stylistically from the work she typically does with the Crimson and the Lampoon, and she appreciates the opportunity that the gallery provides to showcase her original works. “There’s so many talented artists at Harvard that aren’t necessarily involved in the arts, but this is a way where they can put their pieces out there and not make any huge time commitment because it’s so well put together,” Ryan says.

In addition to watercolors, this year’s show also features prints, etchings, photography, oil paintings, video installations, sculptures, and even blown glass pieces. These pieces come from across the Harvard community, and artists hail from not only the undergraduate community, but also graduate schools and the extension school.

This year’s show also features several business innovations. Similarly to the previous year, the event benefits from corporate sponsorship by PayPal. According to Alisha S. Patel ’14, director of public relations and marketing, this year reflects the showcase’s increased focus on being a promoting the artists’ work beyond simply the gallery itself. “We’ve launched a new catalog that’s going to be a fantastic addition, because it allows both artists and visitors to take away images of the art and information about the artist,” Patel says.

Ondaatje and Seten are very excited about the ever-increasing potential of this event for the Harvard art community, especially with new features and a specialized space for the showcase this year. “One of our goals for the show…is not only creating a professional gallery space for Harvard artists to display their work, but also we want to create a sense of community in the art world at Harvard, much like there already exists for…some of the other big extracurricular categories,” Ondaatje says.