Blue Connection: From the Edge

Blue Connection, Millikin University's student-run retail art gallery, will showcase the artwork of Millikin senior artists Kat Scarim and Katie Stitzel on Friday, March 4, from 5 – 7 p.m.

The After 5 Live exhibit, entitled "From the Edge," will feature a collaborative demonstration of live printmaking. The event is free and open to the public.

Kat Scarim, an art therapy major from Palos Park, Ill., likes to "experiment with layering different solid shapes over her chaotic line work – juxtaposing the organic with the geometric, the recognizable with the abstract and the known with the unknown."

Most recently, Scarim has been working on flattening out and reducing shapes to simple contour lines. This method is reminiscent of children's artwork – honest and unbiased.

Katie Stitzel, an art major from New Athens, Ill., says her work has "recurring themes and my prints represent fleeting memories. I work in fields of translucent layers, wiping away and reducing areas of stiffness and formality. I use colors that I hold dear to my heart from experiences I cherish."

Creative stimulation spurs Stitzel's work, from an old song on the radio or a familiar scent.

Blue Connection, located at 117 N. Water St. in Decatur, Ill., strives to highlight fine art students that are a rising success in their fields and provide a public venue for Millikin students to sell and showcase their artwork.

Focused on arts and specialty businesses, Blue Connection is used by students in Millikin's Arts & Entrepreneurship Program to grow their businesses. Millikin's Arts & Entrepreneurship Program is a six-credit course sequence providing learning-based business opportunities for students to practice self-employment.

The program utilizes curricular-based, experiential activities and student-run ventures to give students a live laboratory experience in developing, launching and growing a business. Rather than learn before doing, students are expected to learn while doing by first launching a micro-venture in the program's introductory course The Art of Entrepreneurship. Then, students explore growth through Blue Connection.

For more information on Millikin University's Blue Connection, visit millikin.edu/blue-connection or contact the gallery at 217.428.0112.