Student art transforms campus spaces

MFA candidate Xia Gao, who won a 2005 David and Edith Sinaiko Frank Graduate Fellowship for Women in the Arts, will exhibit her work in the School of Human Ecology’s Gallery of Design Wednesday-Sunday, May 3-14.

Gao says that nature, maps, Chinese board games, computer circuitry and the Yin Yu Tang, a Qing Dynasty-family house transported to Salem, Mass. inspired “Across/Adaptation, Transition, Evolution.”

Using textiles, shadow and pattern, Gao says she intends to sculpt interior space in the gallery. She says that the surface patterns and layering effects she employed in the exhibition express her experience of cultural identity, human growth and the process of cultural transformation over time.

A reception for the exhibition will take place at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 7, at the gallery. For more information, contact Jody Clowes, 262-8815 or clowes@wisc.edu.

On the other side of campus in Memorial Union’s Porter Butts gallery, MFA candidate Kathleen O’Connell will present “Toward New Invisible Cities,” an exhibition of books and other printed objects as “visual translation of travel and memory,” O’Connell says. The exhibit is on display from Friday, May 12-Friday, May 19. For more information, call 215-9118 or e-mail ksmconnell2@wisc.edu.

In the Alumni Association lobby and boardroom, Melanie Kehoss will display her installation “Life Slices,” figurative form and fiber, through Thursday, May 25. E-mail kehoss@wisc.edu for information.

All exhibitions are free and open to the public.