By Reed Essex

essexree@grinnell.edu

Although Grinnell boasts a number of attractive spaces to display art on campus, most of these spaces are only open to submissions from a select few. But thanks to this semester’s Art SEPC, the Grinnell art scene will start to expand its scope of inclusivity. This Saturday, Oct. 1, artwork from students of all disciplines will be on display in a pop-up show entitled “Home Improvement.”

“One of the goals we had that we talked about in our first meeting was creating more community within the art department at Grinnell, but also within the wider community of people who are interested in art, whether they end up taking art classes here or not,” said Olivia Caro ’17, one of the organizers working to put the show together.

“We came up with the idea of doing the pop-up show as a way to hopefully reach out to students more.”

Members of the SEPC are working hard to make sure that the show itself is accessible to all students on campus. Located at Art House on Park Street, the show does not require students to be art majors and is accepting all types of submissions in the hopes that students can have a place to showcase their work.

Since this is the first pop-up show hosted by the SEPC, the group is looking forward to seeing how the experience goes.

“We all just want to do this thing and find out what we want it to be” said Tim Dooley ’17, another member of the SEPC. “There’s a ton of art on campus, we have so many awesome publications, and we have the Smith Gallery, but what’s exciting about this is that it’s really the first place where people can come together and talk about the art that their peers are making.”

Going forward, Dooley, Caro and the other organizers want to create a more inclusive and collaborative art scene on campus that allows students who wouldn’t normally have the chance to display their work to come to the forefront.

“[We want to create] an art community that is accessible to anyone that wants to participate in it,” Dooley said.

Over the next couple months, the SEPC plans to host several other pop up shows around campus.

“We want this pop up show to be a continuing thing,” Caro said. “People should come to the show, people should submit art for the next one. We need spaces for the shows [in the future] we need people to submit art, so as long as we have the support from the rest of the campus, I would really love to see another two or three by the end of the year.”