Perspective Gallery

The Underwater Wonders of Toms Creek

March 14 – May 10, 2023

Explore the Underwater Wonders of Toms Creek in this community created immersive art exhibition highlighting Toms Creek, a local waterbody that flows into the New River and home to the Bluehead Chub (Nocomis leptocephalus), the rock-moving minnow taking center stage in this installation. Created in collaboration with Perspective Gallery, the Virginia Tech Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, and sponsored by a major SEAD Grant from the Virginia Tech Institute of Creativity and Technology (ICAT), the two year project involved the community art-making of hundreds of painted fish, theatre workshops, and educational programs using the nexus between science, art, and technology to encourage personal attachment to local watersheds and ultimately a community connected to the natural beauty around them.

Flex Exhibit: Stephanie Fan

(Located in the hall gallery adjacent to Perspective Gallery.)

I'm currently in my thesis and final year as an architecture student here at Virginia Tech. Over the years, my idea of architecture has continuously molded and changed with what I’ve learned, but my priority will always be constant: experience- the way we approach and interact with architecture, the way a design greets you, the atmosphere it creates, the language it speaks.

I’ve recently had the privilege to explore some beautiful architecture around western Europe, and naturally I wanted to document a fragment of that beauty in my own lines. In this collection of drawings, I’ve shown how I document my own observations, ideas, geometry, and experience of the spaces.

The tools I use are simple: my trusty sketchbook, a 0.5 mechanical pencil, and a 0.05 finetip pen. Though minimal, the potential of these three materials are indefinite. Plus, it's a lot easier to travel with less! I’ll begin by quickly mapping out the geometry, the proportion, and valuable structural information with my pencil.

After getting a good enough basis, I’ll pull out my pen and start drawing the bolder lines. I like to keep the pencil sketches in the drawing because it has been an essential part of the process from the beginning. Anyways, I don’t carry an eraser. In a sense, my process resembles constructing a building- structure first, surfaces, and then embellishments.