.png)
The San Marcos Activity Center, and the Walkers' Gallery housed inside of it, has been closed since mid March, due to the coronavirus pandemic, but gallery organizers found another way to keep the shows going.
The Walkers’ Gallery debuted its new website with the 22nd Annual Artworks in the Community exhibit featuring work by Texas State faculty, students, alumni and staff and is issuing a call for art for the next show.
In the call for art online, artists from near and far are now invited to submit one to three artworks in any medium for the next online exhibit, "Conversations With Mother Earth." Art can be submitted directly to the website by May 17 and the online exhibit will be up through June.
"We all know the advantages of having real artwork up close and personal," Walkers' Gallery organizer Linda Kelsey-Jones said. "Nothing really replaces seeing the textures, brushstrokes varieties of scale, and being able to stand around with children and friends to have conversations about works that draw your attention."
But Kelsy-Jones said there are some benefits to virtual exhibitions.
"From a curator’s point of view, being able to arrange and rearrange the artwork without a ladder, for example," Kelsey-Jones said. "It is a more democratic presentation as well, large and small artworks all look, well, about the same size. And lighting — well, that is a key to the beauty of an onscreen image — everything is so luminous. No light bulbs to change, shadows, glaring sunshine. And the artwork can be seen anywhere on the planet by anyone with a phone or computer."
An oil on canvas entitled "Layla" by artist Maria Sanchez.
The Walkers' Gallery invites the community to “let their fingers do the walking” and visit walkersgallery.org to view the curret exhibition, submit a work and, for those with friends and family in far places who might enjoy seeing the artwork, share the website.
"We had always hoped to have a website," Kelsy-Jones said. "All it took, so it seems, was a bit more than two decades, a global pandemic and an out of work filmmaker and voila — better late than never."
