Just a block south of the Mission Inn, one art studio is open to The People’s Art Gallery, run by Marian Semic.
The studio is host to its own collection of art during every first Thursday of the month for the Art Walk, but is also open to support artists by exhibiting their work, free of charge.
Colson Knight, a California Baptist University graphic design and digital media graduate was one of the artists whose artwork was on display at the Art Walk downtown on Thursday, Feb. 2 from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
“I kind of had this theme for the show” Knight said, “everything I did in it [the show] was found, they’re all either pictures found on the Internet or my hard drive, and all the wood I used was found in the dumpster.”
Knight considers some of his work as accidents.
“Everything that I do is a happy accident,” Knight said,
As a recent graphic design alumni, Knight got to experience being a part of an art gallery for the first time in which he shared 11 of his pieces.
The art gallery is home to several different artists from the area, all with different styles, backgrounds, taste and vision, making each piece of art their own unique expression.
According to Knight, a lot of his inspirations for his pieces were modernism, artists like Wim Crouwel and Joshua Davis, the design company “Experimental Jetset” and even the film “Helvetica.”
“You need to go out and explore,” Knight said. “You can’t just stay on campus, don’t limit yourself to your own space.”
Knight feels a lot of the abstract and randomness that he uses as inspiration for his pieces are found outside.
“There are certain things you’ll find that just speak to you that you’ll never find on your computer,” Knight said.
Knight was a part of the Senior Art Gallery: Dazzle, which was put on during the fall semester of 2011. Through this new experience, Knight attributes the professors at CBU and how they invested in him.
Knight is grateful to the professors he had while he was at CBU for showing him all the artists he knows today, and for pushing him to see things the way he does now.
“Duncan Simcoe showed me how to draw correctly when I never took a drawing class,” Knight said. “That goes miles, just learning how to sketch.”
Knight plans to keep persuing what he does and continue to experiment with different styles of art in hopes to one day make a living for himself.
On Mar. 1 Knight will be back at the Semic Art Studio for another gallery, which will be free to attend. The gallery will have three other artists, who will be raffling off ten of their own screen prints to raise money to support local art.
