MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery is featuring two new exhibits through April 7, showcasing some of the best in student art alongside work by a San Antonio, Texas-based collage artist and photographer.

“Watermelon Room,” an acrylic, watercolor and chalk work on acrylic panels by MTSU senior studio art major Erin Potter of Williamson County, Tennessee, is part of a new Student Art Alliance Juried Show open through April 7 in MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery. The gallery is open to the public weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The MTSU Department of Art’s Student Art Alliance Juried Show features the top work of 11 current students as judged by an MTSU art alumnus, while “The Photography of Kathy Vargas” includes her ventures into “magic realism” via multiple exposures and hand coloring.

The Student Art Alliance show, which is being exhibited in Room 210 of the Todd Gallery, includes works by:

• sophomore graphic design major Lauren Beele.
• junior art education major Shane Hicks.
• sophomore graphic design major Rickie Le.
• junior studio art majors Noelle Dederer, Cesar Pita and Romerus Greer.
• senior studio art majors Brianna Brescka, Mika Mollenkopf, Patrick Newby, Suzie Pettey and Erin Potter.

Brady Haston, a 1992 Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate of MTSU, served as the student show’s juror.

Haston is currently an associate professor at Nashville’s Watkins College of Art and Design and a successful artist with nearly a dozen solo exhibits and the same number of two-person, group and curated shows so far in his career.

The Vargas exhibit is in Room 224 of Todd Hall.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, who currently teaches in the art department at the University of the Incarnate Word there, Vargas has said that much of her work is based on her research of Mexican and pre-Columbian myths and literature and the ghost stories of her father and grandmother.

San Antonio, Texas-based photographer Kathy Vargas, whose work is part of a new exhibit at MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery on display through April 7, created this piece, “I Was Playing Out My Fantasies When Reality Reared Its Ugly Leg #2,” a gelatin silver print, by adding her signature hand-coloring and collaged elements.

The exhibits are on display during the Todd Gallery’s regular hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. It’s closed on weekends and state and university holidays.

A searchable, printable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap. Off-campus visitors visiting the exhibits should obtain a special one-day permit from MTSU’s Office of Parking and Transportation at www.mtsu.edu/parking/visit.php.

The Todd Gallery’s “Hatch Show Print: A Retrospective” exhibit also has been extended until April 7.

It opened Feb. 18 and celebrates the career of MTSU Professor Emerita Christie Nuell through her art and that of a trio of Hatch artists.

Set in Room 224A in Todd Hall, the exhibit features work by Nuell, Hatch master printer Jim Sherraden, Hatch manager Celene Aubry and Hatch artist Heather Moulder.

Sherraden and Moulder are MTSU art alumni and were students of Nuell’s during her 31-year career at the university.

Brothers C.R. and H.H. Hatch founded their printing firm in 1879 in Nashville. Their company now produces 500 to 600 posters each year with their same techniques, using hand-carved blocks laid out in reverse on plates, inked and run through antique letterpress machines by hand.

For more information about the Todd Art Gallery, including parking and directions, contact gallery director Eric Snyder at 615-898-5653 or eric.snyder@mtsu.edu or visit www.mtsu.edu/art.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)