UNO Galleries Celebrate ‘100 People’
By Corbin Hirschhorn, KVNO News
January 16th, 2020
Omaha, NE—This Friday, UNO Art Gallery and UNO Criss Library will host Watie White’s, 100 people, a public arts project that will soon comprise 100 individual portraits of members of Omaha’s community.
A working artist from Chicago, White arrived in 2006, when Omaha’s neighborhoods and artistic persona were both markedly different from today.
In the decade to follow, White became a fixture of Omaha’s arts community, showing in many major galleries, making murals, portraits, and woodcuts, contributing to a growing scene. The attitude among the city’s diversifying artists changed, however, in 2016. White was engaging in public arts activism at the time, especially with Omaha’s refugee community. He felt the need for a more substantial project.
This was the beginning of 100 People, an attempt to honor 100 of Omaha’s artists, advocates, and leaders through portraiture. White chose 100 for being a number that was daunting, and just on the edge of impossible for him. The process for each piece begins with a woodcut of the model, which can then be printed and distributed. Enlarged murals will be fixed in locations all over town.
100 People’s opening reception is tomorrow, Friday January 17 at UNO’s Weber Fine Arts Gallery and The Criss Library Osbourne Family Gallery from 4:00-6:30pm. A panel discussion with Watie White will take place from 7:30-9:30pm. In the case of inclement weather, all events will be postponed one week to Friday, January 24. For more information, find the event on the College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media page at unomaha.edu, or find the event on Facebook.
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