USI’s Campus Art Guide brings a new layer to the campus experience

If you pay close attention, you’ll see that USI showcases many pieces of artwork in various locations around campus. Many of these pieces blend into the background of our daily activities, but there’s a rich history behind the artwork we pass every day, and the USI Art Collection Committee has created a helpful resource to articulate that history.

The USI Campus Art Guide was initiated by David A. Bower, USI Foundation President and Vice President for Development and Alumni Engagement. Bower spoke with Susan Colaricci Sauls M’16, Director of the University Art Collections, about overseeing the project, which Betty J. Worthington generously underwrote through the USI Foundation. The brochure content and design were produced with help from alumni Bridget (Eckerle) Huck ‘20 and Masor Borowiak ‘21. “Bridget worked on laying out the information and pulling it all together for each piece of artwork, and then Masor designed the layout,” she said. “They put it all together, gave it to me and then I had it published.”

The first edition of the guide was published in May 2022.

Huck graduated in 2020 with a degree in studio art and public relations and advertising. She always enjoyed art and considered herself a creative person, but after taking a few art classes at USI, she discovered a deeper love for art.

“Art always has been and always will be a big part of my life. I ended up really wanting to focus on art further into college,” Huck said. “I added it as a second major, so I could be a part of the James A. Sanders Gallery Fellowship, which is where I ended up working on the campus art guide.”

Recipients of the James A. Sanders Fellowship are required to spend one semester with the University Art Collection and one semester with the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art. At both, recipients are assigned to a project that helps them grow in their academic career path and helps “support the mission of the organization.” When Huck worked at the University Art Collection, Sauls thought she was a good fit to help create the Campus Art Guide.

“When I started working on it, it was in the early stages,” Huck said. “It was just an idea at the time. I did some groundwork, went around campus, wrote down directions to these different art pieces and things like that.”

Sauls hopes students will use the Art Guide to help navigate campus, especially UNIV 101 classes. A treasure hunt activity has been prepared for UNIV 101 instructors so students can use the Art Guide to find different pieces across campus.

“Not all people are north, south, east west kind of people. So, it’s nice to have landmarks,” she said. “This gives people more visual landing points on campus where they can pull themselves together and find out where they’re going. Hopefully, UNIV instructors are using that as a tool.”

Huck added the most difficult part about creating the campus art guide was highlighting art that students may not see. “If you’re someone who has classes mostly in the Liberal Arts Center, maybe you don’t know about the pieces that are in the Education Center,” she said. “It’s making it easy to understand where they are if someone’s looking for them. I hope students would go on a scavenger hunt or an adventure looking for these pieces they see in the Guide and would like to see in person.”

The University Art Collection isn’t necessarily an accumulation of a dollar value. It’s a collection of pieces, each with a different story, that can inspire people from different disciplines.

“I don’t like to value our collection in dollars. I like to think of the story it tells about us and our campus,” Sauls said. “The artwork in the Rice Library is predominantly by students and faculty because I want to tell the story of who taught art on our campus, who their students were and how they progressed. All the student and faculty artwork tells the story of art on our campus.”

“There are just so many pieces people don’t know about,” Huck said. “The University has a vast art collection. That’s probably the most rewarding part–letting people know we have art from nationally recognized artists on campus. It plays into the whole package of what USI has to offer.”

“Any student on campus can be inspired by artwork, and it’s surprising to find out there are a lot of creative and artistic people who are in other disciplines,” Sauls said. “It provides some inspiration for them.”

The idea for the art guide emerged around USI’s 50th anniversary with the top 50 pieces in the University Art Collection. There were so many pieces that the Art Collection Committee couldn’t choose the top 50. The committee decided to include highlighted pieces from each building that were accessible to the public. Huck researched and fact-checked the information on each piece in the booklet and Sauls helped pull donor records.

“It did take a long time,” Sauls said. “COVID really derailed us as it did just about everything.”

“I’m really thankful to Susan Sauls and Masor Borowiak who put together the rest of the guide,” Huck said.  “I’m thankful to them both for letting me be a part of the project and finishing it. It’s been cool to see it finally completed after all these years.”

A lot of student artwork isn’t listed in the physical copy because Sauls is in the process of creating a digital campus art guide that can be updated to rotate new student work in and out. While the physical art guide is in its final format, the University Art Collection is working on digitizing the entire 4,000-piece collection and creating a virtual gallery space in the University Archives Digital Collections online space. This project is also operated by students and is expected to be completed in three years. The Digitization Project is being underwritten through the generosity of Neal Franklin and John M. Lawrence '73 through the USI Foundation.

“We have three student photographers that photograph artwork, and then we also have three students that are reviewing and editing metadata for the artwork,” Sauls said. “All the projects we do, I try to have students working on because it provides them a skill set they can take if they go into working in museums or galleries.”

The guide is now accessible online at USI.edu/university-art-collection/campus-art-guide.

Any student interested in working on digitizing the University Art Collection can email Sauls at scsauls@usi.edu.

This story was written by Tegan Ruhl, University Strategic Communication student worker.