Presbyterian College’s Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery has showcased exhibits from artists around the US in addition to student exhibits.

Currently, the art gallery hosts an exhibit entitled The Afterlife of Abandoned Objects by artist Julia Oldham that includes watercolors, drawings, animation videos, and a documentary video.

Oldham lives in Eugene, Oregon and holds a BA in Art History from Saint Mary’s College of Maryland and a MFA from the University of Chicago. Her work has been featured across the US.

“I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, and always knew I wanted to be an artist,” Oldham said. “It was really useful and fun to do a lot of research and writing in my art history classes in college, and those skills have served me well as a professional artist.”

Oldham cites her childhood as a main source of inspiration for her work.

“My upbringing as the child of a physicist and of an avid gardener instilled in me an interest in both science and nature from a very early age,” Oldham said. “Telling stories about science, and using scientific concepts as metaphors, became a major interest for me as an artist. I explore both scientific history and science fiction with my work, and I frequently collaborate with scientists to realize projects.”

Dogs are a dominant subject of Oldham’s work. One of the animations in The Afterlife of Abandoned Objects tells the story of Laika the space dog, who was sent into orbit by the Soviet Union in 1957.

“I volunteer at the local humane society working with behaviorally challenging dogs, dogs that are under-socialized and have been neglected or abused. I try to help them learn skills and how to trust people. It’s so important to me,” Oldham said. “I think that stories about dogs sometimes affect people in different ways than stories about people do.

“People can be very emotionally moved by dogs, and I think we sometimes get a little desensitized to what happens to people in the onslaught of overwhelmingly troubling current events and news, as well as the ubiquity of violent movies and video games. So maybe stories about dogs can be a path back to our own humanity and empathy when we’re feeling numb and lost.”

Harper Gallery’s director, Ann Stoddard, reached out to Oldham and asked her to bring an exhibit to PC.

“We used a few of my animated works as a starting point, and then through conversations and emails we decided to also include Fallout Dogs, my documentary about the Chernobyl dogs, a number of process drawings for my animated works, and a new body of watercolors that I’ve been working on,” Oldham said. “It’s fun having this range of media in the show, because I think it tells an interesting story about my process as an artist.”

After PC’s exhibit closes, Oldham plans to participate in artist residencies at Mass MOCA in North Adams, MA and Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, OR.

“I am also working with a curator who is developing a series of group exhibitions about how artists learn from nature,” Oldham said. “One of the projects I’m working on is a multi-media sci-fi exploration of a fictional organism called a Dendrotope, which is a tree that has evolved to become a higher dimensional being to escape the dangers of earth.”

Oldham has several pieces of advice for PC art students.

“Find subjects that you’re obsessed with and make art about those things! Learn skills and get good at making things, and then break rules and make things that look weird! Be serious and dig deep, but don’t forget to allow for a sense of play and joy in your work,” Oldham said. “Experiment and make mistakes, learn from failure, and try not to be discouraged by criticism.

“Connect deeply and intensely with your peers and collaborate with them! College is such a magical time, and these friendships are forming who you are as people and artists. Take classes outside of the art department if you can, in a subject that you are excited about, and pull what you learn about and love in those classes into your art practice. The ideas that go into art making are just as important as the art making skills.”

You can visit Oldham’s website at https://www.juliaoldham.com/.

A reception for the exhibit will be held at Harper Art Gallery from 5:00-7:00 PM today, February 22nd. Oldham will join via Zoom at 6:00 PM.

If you’re not able to make the reception, don’t miss visiting this incredible exhibit before it closes on March 8. The Harper Gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday from 12-5 PM. You can follow the gallery on Instagram at @harpergallerypc.