By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez Arts & Features Editor The Mazmanian Gallery held an opening reception for “Reciprocity,” an exhibition featuring work by faculty from the Department of Art Design & Art History on March 3. It is on display in the gallery from Feb. 26 through April 5. Ellie Krakow, the director of the Mazmanian Gallery, organized the exhibition. The gallery holds many shows, but it’s rare for one to be focused on the faculty of the Department of Art Design & Art History, she said. “Maybe once every five to eight years.” It was fun to organize a show that features her colleagues, she said. They received artwork mostly from the Art & Design faculty, but one of the art history faculty contributed work as well. The department used to be the Department of Art and Music, and because of that there’s a member of the music faculty performing too, she added. Her piece in the show is “Fountain,” which is part of her most recent body of work, “Comfort Corners,” Krakow said. This body of work is “abstracted figure sculptures, so they have an element that’s like the body, and an element that’s abstract and taken from hospital spaces,” she said. While working on it, she was thinking about how someone lies down in a hospital bed, she added. So she made a figure that’s lying down and about to get a colonoscopy. She was also thinking about “the art historical form of the reclining nude,” she said. There is a picture of the back of a waiting room chair on the front of the butt hole, she said. The upholstery has a wavy pattern reminiscent of the intestines. “I’m thinking a lot about how you see the inside of the body, or if you can see the inside of the body,” Krakow said. The exhibition shows that the faculty has very different strengths, she added. “As a whole, we can make a whole art conversation happen,” she said. It is a special opportunity for the faculty to be able to show their work where students can see it, she said. A great deal of teaching is the exchange of ideas between students and teachers, she said. Teachers learn much from what students do, so it’s nice for this to go the other direction. “Hopefully that just keeps the dialog between us very fertile and helps everyone move forward as artists,” Krakow said. The plaque by her art says it focuses on objects that fail - “(w)heels can’t turn; belly buttons are tethered to familiar but unrecognizable technological equipment; rather than information, ‘screens’ display close-up photos of textures from medical spaces.” She hopes her work inhabits the space between flesh and technology, the plaque said. Paul Yalowitz, a professor of art, made sketchbooks. They’re titled, “Monster Sketchbooks or Making Friends,” and inside are mostly monsters, he said. “I’ve given in the past my classes the assignment to do a drawing a day, and so that’s what I was doing,” Yalowitz said. A new monster was drawn every day, sometimes with a name or a funny story, he added. He doesn’t have a specific plan when drawing these monsters, he said. Instead, he lets the drawings tell him the story as he draws. Sometimes they start as doodles, other times as a squiggly line, and sometimes as shading a shape, he said. As he draws it, he thinks about what he could write about it. It’s fun to make something that didn’t exist before, he added. It’s a nice outlet that helps him communicate and relax. It gets him excited because he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, he said. He gets to see what develops on his pages. It’s important to keep working every day, even when it’s difficult to think of a new idea, he said. “You have to keep thinking of new things, and that’s fun to kind of stretch yourself beyond what you think you’re going to do,” he said. The plaque by his art asks a question - “Please look through the books and find your favorites, there should be something for everybody. Which would you send to a friend? Which would you send to an enemy?” During the exhibition, Krakow gave a short speech to the crowd. Teaching and learning is a reciprocal relationship, she said. “I can’t explain how much our lives as artists are enriched by what you do and what you bring to the classroom, but it’s really nice to be on the flip side,” she said. She introduced her “former department buddy” Christian Gentry to the crowd. They used to be in the same department before the recent name change, she added. Gentry, also known as Maribo, is a professor of music from the Communication, Media, & Performance Department. Gentry works as a sound artist, composer, and performer based in Framingham, Krakow said. He creates chamber and solo works with electronic elements, she added. He performed for about half an hour in front of the Mazmanian Gallery. Tim McDonald, professor of art, made a series of drawings in the summer of 2024 using water-based media titled, “clouds and water.” There are 55 drawings in the series, and 17 of them were on display, he said. He used a chance-based system to figure out how they would be displayed, resulting in the gaps, he said. Most of the work is both abstract and observational, he said. They’re based on objects he’s seen or used, such as a longleaf pine needle. He said he likes to create because throughout his life he’s felt compelled to. As a kid, he began by copying the comic strips of the daily paper, he added. His inspiration comes from what’s often called the natural world, he said. “I prefer to think of it as wildness, because it’s all around us, it’s in us,” McDonald said. McDonald has collaborated with Gentry before, he said. “These were two pieces that are kind of going toward the performance he’s going to do in collaboration with my exhibition at the Danforth,” he said. Several years ago, Gentry recorded the sound of McDonald drawing, making an ambient soundscape out of it, he added. McDonald is always impressed by the work of his colleagues, he said. “Great people and great artists,” McDonald said. Gentry and McDonald are collaborating in “Sonic Improvisations,” which will be shown at the Danforth on May 4. The plaque by McDonald’s art says he sees “the moment of making a mark as an embodiment of imagination, where mind and body become one.” It’s an original experience. Melanie Cataldo, a visiting lecturer in the Art Design & Art History Department, made several small paintings. Their names are “Curious baby,” “Let it snow,” “Speedy witch,” “Part of one,” and “Giraffe.” The paintings are of moments in between things, without any set goal, she said. The plaque by her art lists some of these moments - “These characters were painted in quick moments between things - dating dinners, snowstorms, Halloween, the accidental killing of a beloved plant (was it really an accident?) - little moments.” She gives herself a certain amount of time to do the painting, which can range from 30 minutes to two hours, Cataldo said.