Gray Gallery To Host New Exhibits This Month

Quincy University’s Gray Gallery, which is located in Brenner Library, has recently opened a new exhibition featuring microsm paintings by Keith Andrew.
The exhibition will be open through Feb. 24. From Feb. 27 to March 24, the Gray Gallery will feature photography by John Sevigny. Both exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Andrew has been an artist since he was 6 years old. He grew up on a farm and attended school in Mendon, Illinois.
He received one of the first bachelor of fine arts degrees offered at Culver-Stockton in 1976 and then went on to graduate school at the University of Mexico in Mexico City.
Andrew was influenced by ancient art and bright colors of modern art.
“I was very lucky to have as much freedom to be as creative as I could be,” Andrew said. “I strive to create colorful and thought provoking artwork. This particular show is for the students.”
Sevigny’s collection of photography, called “Tropicalísimo,” represents the heat, humidity, salty air and frequent conditions of poverty that cause things and people to fall apart south of the Tropic of Cancer.
“Tropicalísimo” consists of 40 digital photographs that were taken in Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador between 2012 and 2014. They look at people and things as they corrode but still remain, as they are bound by rust, wire, string and the sheer force of human will.
“As a native of pre-gentrification Miami, which was not the glitzy place it is today, I use small cameras and good shoes searching for faces, scenes, textures, colors and light I remember from my home and my childhood,” Sevigny said. “There was violence there, so there is violence in these photographs. There is also beauty, culture and life, as there was when I was growing up.”