Taylor Wieland, a 2014 Perry High School grad now studying art at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, is one of five student artists chosen to show work in the Arts on Grand Exhibition running daily through Nov. 14 in Spencer.
Selections were made among artworks by BVU students produced in the spring semester, making Wieland’s the only freshman work picked for exhibition.
“I’m very excited for the show,” Wieland said. The exhibition officially opens Tuesday, Nov. 2, she said, and a reception is planned for Friday, Oct. 6 at 6 p.m. at the Arts on Grand gallery at 408 Grand Ave. in Spencer.
“It was really awesome being chosen out of about 25 people,” she said. “I had no idea that my work showed such promise to others. I just really like working with different materials, and people seem to enjoy it as well. I’m also the youngest and was the only freshman to be chosen last year, so it was interesting to see myself already in competition with people taking more advanced classes.”
No mainstream, oil-and-canvas plastic artist, Wieland uses a variety of nontraditional media for her art, such as textiles, waste paper and found objects.
“My art is not traditional,” Wieland said. “The materials I work with are all used. Essentially, I create my pieces from used fabric, book pages or anything that I find that can be used in a nontraditional way. For example, a piece I am bringing to Spencer is a jacket from navy cotton fabric and torn paper from a Spanish comic book that I brought while I was in Ecuador last year. The jacket is paired along with a textile I created with printmaking ink. This and another dress with be displayed on human forms made out of paper and wax.”
The Spanish comic book from Ecuador makes a connection with Wieland’s other area of study: she is majoring both in art and Spanish at BVU. Academic art students are often required to make more or less elaborate theoretical statements to go along with their art. For the Arts on Grand show, the student artists were asked to make a personal statement to accompany their works.
“My statement for this show is about my personal story of difficulties with reading and writing, though my pieces convey this message in a subtle and unexpected way,” Wieland said. “I like the simplicity and mystery of it.”
Visitors to Friday’s reception will also hear brief speeches from the artists. Refreshments will be served.
Wieland said she likes college and welcomes the challenges it is bringing to build on the solid base she acquired at Perry High School. Hard at work in the middle of her sophomore year, she said she has “learned a couple things about the journey of college. It’s nothing like high school. My schedule has yet to be an eight-to-three schedule of classes every day. Classes are much more spread out, and I have hours in between. Time management is the number one priority. You have the choice to do whatever you want during those hours and at night. I typically do homework or work on art projects for at least six hours every day, but I do that because college for me is about experience and knowledge. I’m a very curious person, so I love reading about new things or how to be inventive with my art. My advice is to fall in love with what you sign up for, because you’ll be doing a lot of it.”
