Sechrest Gallery adds new exhibit
Clarissa Sligh’s “Self-Portrait as Red-Crown Crain.” Sligh is one of the artists whose pieces are featured in the traveling exhibition. Photo by: Clarissa Sligh
By Niki Maragos// Staff Writer
High Point University’s Sechrest Art Gallery is home to a new exhibition entitled “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate.” The gallery was brought to HPU in hopes of uplifting student’s spirits and showing all that visit the gallery that they are bigger than the hate that is presented to them.
The exhibit showcases 39 different artists that took anti-Semitic and racist pieces of literature and in turn created dynamic and empowering art.
The exhibition has been travelling around the United States for the past six years after spending its first two years in Montana alone in 2008. The Speaking Volumes website, speakingvolumes.net, explains how “the Holter Museum of Art invited artists across the country to respond to, integrate, or transform the books in provocative ways” after a leader of the “Creativity Movement” gave the Montana Human Rights Network over 4,000 volumes of their sacred bibles. With the Creativity Movement being a white supremacist hate group, these texts were full of racist and anti-Christian ideologies. Now, as a partner with the Holter Museum of Art, “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” has ventured out from its southern states and travels across the United States and displays their pieces of empowered rebellion to individuals of all different backgrounds.
“Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” took those books and manipulated them in a positive way so that each piece would spread love. With attempts to change thoughts of dislike or non-acceptance to empathy and encouragement, the exhibit aims to greatly impact many members of groups that are singled out because of their gender, religion, sexuality, race, disability, age, social or economic class and origin. “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” aims to make all individuals feel whole and united. HPU describes the exhibit as “visually powerful, thought-provoking, sometimes humorous, always challenging, and ultimately deeply moving.” “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” is a travelling exhibit that will be home to HPU for only a short amount of time. The opening night at the Sechrest Art Gallery in the Hayworth Fine Arts building will be held on Thursday, Sept. 8 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. During that time, local artist Owens Daniels from Winston-Salem, whose art is featured in the exhibit, will be giving an artist talk. He will only be on campus to speak during the first night.
After opening night, the gallery’s hours will be 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday until December 7, when the exhibit moves on to its next destination. The gallery is opened to the public and no tickets are necessary. HPU strongly encourages all of its students to take the time to visit “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” while it is still available for viewing at our institution. To learn more about “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate”, visit the Sechrest Gallery page on the High Point University website: www.highpoint.edu/artdesign/sechrest-art-gallery/