For Casey Parmerlee, the past semester has been all about building up to the "Double Vision" art show, a gallery dedicated to immersing students in philosophy and art.
Last spring Parmerlee, a senior painting major, was interviewed and accepted into the Making Ideas Visible seminar class, sponsored through the Virginia B. Ball Center. Since then, she has met with other art majors and philosophy majors every school day for two hours to collaborate on creating both artwork and philosophical essays to be sold in the gallery and published in a book. The class has ended up focusing on the subtopics of aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, existentialism, feminism, metaphysics and political philosophy.
"We all had the same interest in the same topics," Parmerlee said. "I had been painting about female sexuality for a while and gender issues, and there were like two or three philosophy majors who had the same interest."
Because each student was required to write philosophical essays and create art, Parmerlee has found that her artwork has benefitted from working with the philosophy majors.
"I have done more painting because I am a painting person," Parmerlee said. "It was all about not only working the philosophy and being inspired by the philosophy — that's a huge part, don't get me wrong — but there's also a part where you should lend your creative hand to it. [The seminar] helped my paintings develop a backing."
The Making Ideas Visible seminar is one of the two seminars sponsored by the Virginia B. Ball Center each semester, and is a large part of Ball State University's immersive learning program.
Joe Trimmer, the director of the Virginia B. Ball Center, said the center "is actually the birth place of immersive learning." He said he also believes this seminar offers complete immersion for students.
Parts of the immersion process for this seminar include picking the artwork for the gallery, setting it up and selling the art. The students were lucky enough to secure a building that was formerly rented out by a medical group.
"It was an empty store space, and they went in there and cleaned it up, painted, and now they are hanging work," Trimmer said.
Not every piece made it into the show. The class chose the pieces that they felt represented them best, Parmerlee said. Parmerlee will have about five pieces in the show.
The prices for the art will range anywhere from $50 to $1,000 and all of the proceeds from opening night will go toward the "community partner" of the class who has helped them through the semester, Gallery 308's K-12 Art Education Initiative Program.
The opening of their gallery tonight from 5 to 10 coincides with downtown Muncie's Art Walk event, when all of the art galleries are open on the first Thursday of the month. Parmerlee is hoping that this will help them get more students to come to the gallery.
"It is a great opportunity for younger students to get acquainted with downtown Muncie and get acquainted with what junior and senior students are doing," she said.
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