This (untitled) painting by Borden Capalino '03 will be on display is Fisher Hall Friday. New Arts Gallery Opens Friday in Fisher Hall and on the Web by Gabe Graff
(Second untitled painting by Borden Capalino.)		FEBRUARY 14, 2002--Tomorrow at 5:00 P.M. Oberlin College’s new online arts gallery will be unveiled--twice. The web site will go live, and at the same moment the doors will open on a new physical exhibition in the Art Building’s Fisher Hall gallery, where real and virtual works will be displayed side by side. Selected student and faculty paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installations will be on view, and next to them on the walls will be projections of other works from the online gallery. Audio and video pieces will be available via special viewing stations elsewhere in the gallery. At the opening, Assistant Professor of Art Rian Brown will show her short film The Settler, with new music by Assistant Professor of Computer Music Tom Lopez. Student musicians whose work is featured in the audio gallery will perform, and food and drinks will be served. "The online gallery is designed as a common space to showcase Oberlin's creative community," says John Appley, assistant director of college relations and head of the project. More specifically, it’s a web site within Oberlin Online that digitally houses all sorts of student and faculty art, including photography, sculpture, installation art, video, music, and even performance work. The site contains pictures, streaming video, MP3s, and profiles of individual artists. "The Oberlin Online web site is one of the better academic sites I've encountered," says Lopez. "But it is primarily a source of information, not artistic expression." Now that will change. While the Fisher Hall exhibition will be on view through February 22, the new online gallery will be a permanent feature of the College’s web presence. "Virtual, web-based galleries have global visibility," says John Donalds, media engineer for the art department and a collaborator on the project. "With this site, the College has made it easier for our community to display its artwork with the medium of the Internet." Lauren Harkrader ’02, a studio art major whose work is featured in the gallery, has a similar vision. "We hope this will help people realize that compelling, thought-provoking works are being created at Oberlin." The site will serve the on-campus audience as well. Says Appley, "There is so much going on here that members of the Oberlin community don’t always have a chance to go to a particular exhibition or performance." The project started last year when Appley had the idea that Oberlin Online was an ideal place to bring Oberlin art and artists together under one virtual roof. Although individual online galleries already existed, they featured one department or one medium. After much hard work and collaboration among faculty, staff, and students from various offices and departments, the project is now ready for prime time. The plan is to have annual shows in Fisher to accompany the online site. OCOG may even start doing curated shows along with the featured artists. "This is a work in progress," says Appley. "The gallery, like the web, will be constantly evolving." An untitled photograph by Chris Szkrybalo '03.
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