91传媒

Faculty Exhibition at 91传媒鈥檚 Nightingale Gallery, exhibit opens January 10, 2025

Faculty Exhibition at 91传媒鈥檚 Nightingale Gallery, exhibit opens January 10, 2025

LA GRANDE, Ore. 鈥� A presentation of recent works by 91传媒鈥檚 Art Department faculty will take place Jan. 10 through Feb. 7 in the university鈥檚 Nightingale Gallery. The biennial 鈥淔aculty Exhibition鈥� provides viewers a glimpse into the artists鈥� varied studio practices. The exhibit opens with a reception and gallery talk by the artists on Friday, Jan. 10 from 5-7pm.

This exhibit is a showcase for the wide array of studio work created by the faculty teaching in the university鈥檚 Art program. On view will be a collection of works by professors Susan Murrell, Cory Peeke, Nathan Prouty, Michael Sell, and Heather Tomlinson. The exhibit and gallery talk will give viewers significant insight into the most recent studio practices of the five artists.

Susan Murrell will be presenting the installation 鈥淔lowstone.鈥� The work was created collaboratively with Portland artist Hannah Newman and explores the end of day as it relates to the end of days. 

Murrell says of the work, 鈥淪unsets, depicted as solitary figures, propagate into a forest or family of stalagmites. The sunset in Flowstone is depicted in multiple ways – as a sculptural figure embedded with sediment, a flat movie-poster double, a cast shadow, and the absence of the form itself. Whether the light show cues a romantic conclusion to the hero鈥檚 journey or a pause in the everyday, sunsets hold the promise of endless repetition while evoking nostalgia, beauty, melancholy, and hope.鈥�

Cory Peeke will exhibit a selection of mixed media collage/drawings. His works employ the use of a variety of adhesive tapes, charcoal and found images to explore aspects of memory and anxiety. 

Peeke states 鈥淢y work is a study in anxiety and control, impermanence and obscurity.  They are manifestations of my relationship to the imprecision of memory. The memories that we hold on to and the memories that hold on to us.鈥�

Explorations focused on plenty and excess through the lenses of signs and symbols, transparency, and the formal qualities of the cylinder and the jar as delivery strategies are the motivation for Nathan Prouty鈥檚 recent studio practice.

鈥淚 am captivated by the paradox of abundance鈥攈ow excess simultaneously invites and overwhelms, concealing nuance beneath its surface,鈥� says Prouty. 鈥淯ltimately, my practice reflects the absurdity and complexity of modern life, where the ordinary and the profound collide in unexpected ways.鈥�

Michael Sell鈥檚 current photographs are part of his diaristic approach to making art while contributing to the vernacular image feed in which nearly all of us participate. Creating portraits or documenting pickup cricket matches, his work explores the dichotomous relationships between ambiguity and narrative, clarity and obscurity, and vitality and mortality.

The natural beauty of abstract forms and colors found in nature serve as inspiration for Heather Tomlinson鈥檚 tufted fiber artwork. This magnified, nature-based inspiration is then transformed by current events, emotions (cue anxiety) and tensions in the living of life day-to-day.

鈥淭hese disparate bodies of work come together to expose not only the dynamic complexity and diversity of the artists working at 91传媒 but also allow the audience and ourselves to make connections between the works and the concepts that each of us explores,鈥� says Cory Peeke, Director of the Nightingale Gallery.

See the exhibit through Friday, February 7, between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The gallery talk by the artists and reception will be held from 5-7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 10. For more information, follow the Nightingale Gallery on and .
To request images of artwork for publication or to schedule an interview with the artists please contact Gallery Director Cory Peeke at cpeeke@eou.edu.