Ouachita Stories

Ouachita Baptist University will host Stephanie Chontos, Katie Hopmann and Jeff Sharp’s senior art exhibits in Mabee Fine Art Center’s Hammons Gallery and Verser Theatre Gallery March 10-21. The exhibits are free and open to the public.

A reception will be held March 15 from 1-2 p.m. in Verser Lobby for Stephanie Chontos and Jeff Sharp’s senior exhibit, “Symbiotic,” referring to the interdependent relationship between their art and design. A reception for Katie Hopmann’s exhibit on illustrative storytelling, “Show Me a Story,” will be held March 17 in Hammons Gallery from 5-6 p.m.

The exhibits serve as a culmination of the students’ art studies during their time at Ouachita.

“I’ve been brainstorming ideas for my senior exhibit since I was a freshman at OBU,” said Hopmann, a studio art major from Cypress, Texas. “However, my style and focus have shifted many times as a college student. I wanted to present a unified body of work, so with a few exemptions, most of the pieces in this body of work have been made within the last year.”

“It will basically be a show of all the things I’m capable of doing and how far I’ve come at Ouachita,” said Sharp, a graphic design major from Bryant, Ark. “I’m going to include my favorite art and works of graphic design that I’ve done over the past few years.”

“I really want to display the level that I’ve reached as a designer for the past couple of years,” said Chontos, a graphic design major from Wylie, Texas. Chontos started planning the exhibit over winter break and added, “The process has helped me realize who I am as an artist and shown me the areas I excel in and am passionate about.”

Hopmann’s exhibit will feature some of her favorite illustrative works and the process she took to produce the images. She added, “The goal of illustration can be to explain or illustrate a text, but it can also enlighten a reader, spiritually and mentally. As a storyteller, I am interested in communicating ideas through pictures. Sometimes I use words, but my purpose in drawing is to communicate what words cannot.”

Chontos and Sharp’s joint exhibit reveals how they each combine their skills with art and design when creating. A variety of media will be displayed to showcase each of their unique skills.

“The intention I strive for in my art and design is to transform my emotion into a physical form through any possible medium or idea,” Sharp said. “It is not necessarily required to communicate the message instantly. My goal is to allow the viewer to observe and think about it and what it means to them as a work or art, which was the same process I went through by creating it.”

“As a designer and artist, I strive to create work that communicates with people in a way that they can both understand and appreciate. I approach each design project as though it were a puzzle to piece together,” Chontos explained. “For any art I design, paint or draw, I base my success on whether people understand my intended vision. To me, my piece isn’t successful if people don’t understand it.”

Regular gallery hours for the exhibits are 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, contact the School of Fine Arts at (870) 245-5129.

By Chelsea Whelpley