Just in time for the end of the semester the Student Art Gallery (SAG), located in the Lydia M. Olson Library on the first floor, has put up its most recent exhibit with a theme of Monsters and Mythos. Unlike past themes, rather than being decided together by the students that run the SAG, this one was chosen as a result of a contest.

Students are encouraged to pop in and see all the art that students across campus have submitted to the show.

“There was a poster competition held in mid-November or late October,” said Ilah Wilson, a monitor at the SAG and the winner of the poster contest. “You’d create your own poster and come up with the idea for the show. I really like fairy tales and folktales and I think monsters and myths are a pretty broad category that I could use for it, [also] it was alliterative which I really approved of.”

As the winner of the poster contest for the art show, Wilson not only decided the theme for the exhibit but was actually the judge for the final show. Normally, the judge is a member of the staff whose area of study relates to the theme of the particular event and allows them to choose which piece emulates the theme of the show the best.

In addition to the more traditional 2D art, there were jewelry pieces and sculptures submitted to this art show.

“Mushnik” by Sonja Madsen, senior art and design major, is a sculpture of a vicious looking Venus flytrap made out of aluminum, found objects and leather, that won best in the show. The honorable mention was “Horns of Odin” by Gloria Alexander, a post-baccalaureate student majoring in history, who created a set of jewelry including a necklace, a pair of earrings and a brooch in a Norse-inspired shape made entirely out of metal. 

While this is the last exhibit in the SAG for the semester, there’s going to be more in the coming semester. None of the themes are set in stone according to Delaney Pickett, the art director for the SAG, but they are planning on partnering up with the Social Justice Club.

“Everyone, as long as you are an NMU student, [can submit art to the art gallery],” Pickett said. “We really do encourage our students because this is something that they can put on their resume, but we really love receiving work from any other major. A lot of science majors will send in their art because they do it in their free time.”

While this gallery is running until the end of the semester, the different shows last about three weeks with five different shows that happen throughout the semester.

“We want students to come to the art,” Pickett said. “We just want people to know about us as most people don’t know where we are located.”