(Photo: Andrianna Veatch)
By: Andrianna Veatch, Staff Reporter
Regis University has a deep and rich artistic identity, from the sculpture of Christ on the green to the many religious arrangements to be seen in any building. Coming in just about every size and medium, the art on campus is very much an important factor of the school’s history—every piece is worth a thousand words.
Hanging on the fourth floor walls of Claver Hall are a set of eight plasma-cut, metal images based on the Genesis story of Creation. They were produced by Dennis West, and first commissioned by Regis for the Main Cafeteria as part of the “Faith and Art” series. While the first seven depict recognizable figures easily related to that Bible story (man and woman, stars and planets, etcetera), the eighth is a bit of an oddity: a chaotic image of colored metal plates cut in strange shapes, silhouettes of industrial factories and the Empire State Building. It stands out starkly amid the other images—a symbol of work not made by God’s own hand, and unlinked really to the rest of the set…an eighth day of the week.
Artists begin with a very specific inspiration and idea, but in the end it becomes a thing of public enjoyment and everyone gets their shot at it. A hundred little associations lend themselves to shaping that ‘shot’. The image now hangs on the wall of a science building dedicated to the healing of others, an atmosphere that gives an air of advancement and bright future to West’s work. The picture is still chaotic, still split down the middle, but now perhaps it reflects not man’s power to destroy (as we did with the Garden), but to create.