By Luke Glaser

UK art shows are usually an opportunity for art students, under the careful tutelage of instructors, to showcase their work.

The Tuska Art Gallery, though, paints a different picture.

The Tuska Center for Contemporary Art, located in the Fine Arts Building, is currently the home of the UK faculty’s art exhibit.

“This is all my faculty’s artwork,” third year graduate student Natalie Baxter said. “I come to support them.”

The exhibit gives UK faculty a rare opportunity to show rather than instruct, to bring what they know to the forefront.

The Tuska Center offers a wide array of faculty work.

Media include everything from the traditional painting to the more modern digital pieces.

Garry R. Bibbs, an associate professor in sculpture,  created a large metallic piece entitled “Love on a roll.”

“It’s a poetic piece showing the love relationship between man and woman,” Bibbs said, “the ins and outs of any given relationship.”

“Love on a roll” is a sculpture that dominates the floor pieces with its sizeable presence.

A large sphere at one end represents love being  a cycle of ups and downs, and the globe lies on a track whose other end is encircled by a small ring.

The idea being that love brings the large globe through the much smaller ring, Bibbs said.

“It represents the difficulties in relationships,” said Bibbs, who was inspired by his life, relationships and love for relationships.

Rae Goodwin, an assistant professor and director of foundations and art studio, was literally a part of her piece, “Imperceptible shift.”

Very ambiguous in her descriptions, Goodwin invited inquisitive students to walk around her piece and guess as to its meaning.

A medley of furniture pieces, fabrics and ribbons, “Imperceptible shift” elicited many responses, though most did not come close.

“It’s an image of my uterus and fallopian tubes,” Goodwin said. “The evolution of something being created.”

Goodwin said she created the piece to fight back against the “separation between sex and family.”

In a crucial part of her exhibit, Goodwin sat quietly knitting as students ventured around her. When further questioned about the piece, Goodwin would smile mischievously and say, “I’m waiting.”

Students, faculty and staff, however, do not have to wait for this exhibit, which showcases many more pieces created by UK art faculty.

Other works include Beth M. Ettensohn’s “Bronze Beach — Tide & Sand Scultpure,” a hands-on piece that allows anyone to dig into the sandy work and help create an image, and “Sisyphus,” a digital projection that allows a tiny person to crawl up your hand.