By: Benjamin Wilson

Being displayed in the basement of the chapel on the campus of West Virginia Wesleyan College is the newest addition of art for the art exhibitions done here in what is called the Sleeth gallery. 

The old Sleeth gallery was located in McCuskey but is currently going through renovations. While this is true, Professor Crystal Brown found ways for allowing new artists to come throughout the semester and participate in expressing and sharing their art with the students and community here in Buckhannon, West Virginia. 

“Blake and Hannah March Sanders are artists and educators working collaboratively as Orange Barrel Industries, a creative and curatorial partnership that travels around the world presenting lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and demonstrations in printmaking, drawing, and fiber art installation,” Brown said.

The most recent of these exhibitions was done by Blake and Hannah March Sanders, crochet artists who express themselves through print press work, as well as utilizing many different mediums and materials to display their work through crochet. Blake has a background in print pressing and Hannah has a background in crochet and other art techniques that make them the perfect team in creating their art. They build and make pieces that represent themselves and their lives such as weight loss, environmental safety, as well as what it takes to be a parent, husband or wife, and a person who has children and what those implications are and mean to them. 

“Our work juxtaposes the nuclear family and over-consumption of natural resources as

complementary metaphors, rife with drama that can leave an impact far from home,” Brown said. “Collaborative pieces are slip knotted together in a delicate crocheted balance, a give and take that mimics the efforts of our domestic partnership to share duties at home, much the way we feel stewardship and accountability of this planet should function.”

They have a total of 5 pieces or so, some that are interactive and have to do with weight loss and a person’s body image, while other pieces are meant to be looked at and interpreted through the materials used as well as the print pressed images placed and attached over the crochet artwork. Hannah and Blake utilized old shirts, bags, strings, yarn, as well as many other materials to make this possible. 

“5 large scale pieces that run the length of the wall and onto the floor; the viewer is welcome to interact with the work by touching the fiber and navigating around the space,” Brown said. “One piece invites the viewer to take a zine from the scale to read and keep.”

The gallery itself is open Monday through Friday with different times of availability for each day of the week. Appointments are also able to be made if someone wants to go alone or with a group in their own time. Other questions concerning the Sleeth Gallery or the art being presented can be found or asked through their website or by email which is, http://sleethgallery.wvwc.edu or sleethgallery@wvwc.edu.