“There are distinct pros and cons to having the first art show of the year. An upside to the situation was that junior Meghann Snow, had an unusually long time span of three weeks to display her abstract paintings. The downside is that there are fewer people around to see them in late August and early September.”
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There are distinct pros and cons to having the first art show of the year. An upside to the situation was that junior Meghann Snow, had an unusually long time span of three weeks to display her abstract paintings. The downside is that there are fewer people around to see them in late August and early September.
It’s slow during the first week of classes; the new art students are still finding their way around the building and the rest of the Akron campus is not even aware of the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art. As a result, Snow’s gallery exhibit has come and gone, with little notice.

Snow displayed her paintings from the past three years in three logical groupings. To the right of the door, a set of four paintings in solid pastel colors challenged the viewer to find meaning. Up close, they looked like the frosting on big rectangular cakes. From across the room, they looked more like a set of kitchen sponges.

To the left of the door was a series of circular forms, on darker backgrounds. These pictures could be a lot of things. Various viewers might imagine whirlpools in water, primordial galaxies out in space, or Britney Spears, depending on what they want to see.

On the long wall opposite the door hung a diverse grouping that shared the same exuberant style of broad strokes and bright colors with each other, but little else.

I wanted to show that my paintings are all different, Snow said. It seems that most of my work might come across as being experimentive. I try new things all the time. I am always changing my work one way or another. Not that I’m not happy, but I look for new strategies for my medium.

While most of Snow’s paintings and their titles are ambiguous, one clearly shows a hand with colored lines pouring out of it, and another depicts two people. Since one of the figures is much smaller than the other, it could be a child.

The artist’s purpose is not the portrayal at something definite, nor the communication of a particular emotion.

Snow said, I like the painting exciting and different. I want it to catch the eye. Though my work, I’m not trying to communicate anything. It’s more about what the viewer can make of it.

For Snow, the paint is crucial. The paint, for me, comes to life. For me, it’s the paint that creates my work, along with my emotions and what I’m feeling. But using paint is powerful. Each color, each stroke, is what creates my work, she said.

She doesn’t use an easel, but paints in her basement studio with the canvas flat on the floor.

I open the canvas, and walk around it, and then dive in. Once I start, I always have to finish. I can’t stand around the painting for countless hours, staring; I mostly just do it, Snow explained.

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