The Rowan University Art Gallery at 301 High St. hosted the opening of an exhibition from the Rowan Arts Collective on Monday. Displays of pieces curated by the collective were shown as well as the first, second and third prize winning works chosen by guest juror, Sidney Mullis.

Headed by their president, junior arts major Leann Carlson, the Rowan Arts collective is a student run organization that encourages students from all majors to create art and facilitates the student’s ability to exhibit their work.

“This is our fifth annual juried exhibition,” Carlson said. “We’re the only art club open on campus open to all majors. I think the exhibit is mostly majored students this year, but some non-majors will submit too. We hired Sidney Mullis, who’s our current artist in residence for the art department, to be our juror. She curated the entire show. There’s about 28 submissions that got in, and a first, second and third place were chosen.“

Sidney Mullis is currently serving as the coordinator of the John M. Anderson Endowed Lecture Series, a visiting artist program out of Penn State. Running from Jan. 16 to Feb. 24, 2018, Mullis brought her exhibition “Legs Together” to the Rowan Art Gallery. Her work on display addressed such topics as gender, sexuality and identity.

Third place was a self portrait done by Nicholas Palermo using a lithograph on paper.

Carlson’s work, titled “Still Life with Skull and Crystals,” was awarded second place by Mullis.

First place was awarded to the archival print photograph, “Mitch,” by Nicholas Hentz.

The Rowan Arts Collective juried exhibition shared the gallery space with environmental artist Diane Burko’s own exhibit titled “Vast and Vanishing,” which looked at glacial recession and climate change.

Mediums of art featured at the exhibition included oils, watercolors, inks, jewelry, sculptures and digital paintings.

In attendance at the opening was the Rowan Arts Collective’s treasurer, Noah Hough, a junior chemical engineering major.

“This is a tradition we started four years ago,” Hough said “We got it moved into the gallery space last year and all of this is just student art. We put up flyers around the art building, but anyone can apply to it, whatsoever. I’m an engineer and I submitted a couple things last year. It’s really an art show for the student body.”

For questions/comments about this story, email arts@thewhitonline.com or tweet @thewhitonline.