In Focus: BSU Professor Presenting Solo Art Exhibition “Worth Repeating”

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The Talley Gallery, located in Bemidji State University’s Bridgeman Hall, has been a professional art gallery since the 1940s. This gallery is housed in the Technology, Art & Design Department, also known as TAD. This year, Associate Professor Mitchell Blessing is presenting a solo exhibition called “Worth Repeating.”

Blessing shares that he has always worked in a way where he has scavenged and looked for the beauty in refuse and things thrown away, whether it be the dust on the floor or the scraps around him.

For Blessing, this show is more of a process of collection by not only collecting materials in order to display that collection, but by being a collection of thoughts and ideas that are meticulously placed into his art.

Blessing says, “[t]eaching requires organization and process, it also requires memory and practice. Some things we say and do are worth repeating and some are not. We often do and say things without thinking deeply about them and their consequences. These days, it is becoming more relevant to throw out things we ought not to.”

Because art galleries are meditation spaces by nature, Blessing wanted the gallery to be a space where people could be captured within the moment. By doing so, he has purposely placed words on the wall with unusual spacings in order to “slow people down.”

The exhibit will be up in the Talley Gallery at BSU until next Thursday, October 7.