By Alexandra Bonano
Correspondent
As water has become a prominent, ongoing theme within the TCNJ Art Gallery and efforts to reach those beyond the campus community are in full swing.
The gallery’s fourth event surrounding the exhibition,“Spring Eternal: Art, Water, Change,” was held on March 6 at 5 p.m. It, once again, included the Water Bar service along with a new poetry portion that was open to the public to participate in, but was mainly meant to encourage the Girl Scouts of America Troop #70641 in reading the poetry themselves. The exhibition was free and open for the public to enjoy.
The poetry, interactive art and entire exhibition event was overseen by Margaret Pezalla-Granlund, the director of the TCNJ Art Gallery. She also assisted the College in its efforts to reach out to the Girl Scouts and make it possible for them to join the event.
Elizabeth Mackie, a professor in the Department of Art and Art History, served as a “water tender” with the help of a student assistant, Cara Giddens, a senior fine arts major.
Morgan Sivy (’18), who is now an English graduate student and art gallery assistant, was in charge of creating the packets of poetry in preparation for the event. This encouraged participants to participate in the reading session.
“I used to be a Girl Scout and we never did anything that was extremely memorable to me that wasn’t something like a huge trip,” Sivy said. “They get to visit a college campus and they get to see a college gallery ... I think that’s important too just to see that real people make real art and that they can be exposed to it and that they themselves can make art too.”
The poems collected all related to the theme of water. Sivy included works by more famous writers and poets, such as “Rain” by Shel Silverstein, “Going for Water” by Robert Frost and “April Rain Song” by Langston Hughes.
The popup event also featured an interactive arts and crafts station, where the Girl Scouts could get involved in the gallery by creating some of their own art.
The poetry reading and art station stayed true to the theme of the Water Bar by allowing younger generations to explore their own creativity and speak on the importance and innovation behind water.
“I think things like this that are small but memorable,” Sivy said. “Kids not only get to see art and see that they could do art or that there’s different mediums of art, but also to see what college is like.”
