Inside the bustling campus of Winona State University, the building that is home to Winona State’s Art and Design students, Watkins, goes seemingly unnoticed by the rest of the university. Watkins is located beside two of some of the busiest math and STEM buildings, Gildemeister and the SLC, and has two art galleries for its students and various art showings.
Watkins is the home of Art and Design Department’s four majors and two minors, where students can major in art teaching, graphic design, I-Design or studio art. Students are also able to add minors in history of art or studio art. These majors and minors are able to contribute art to the building’s galleries when there is enough funding for their work to be displayed.
Second-year student Caitlin Nelson is a studio art major and history of art minor. She discusses how she feels as a Winona State art student. Between the pricey art supplies required for their classes and the long three-hour classes where concentration is difficult, she feels that the Art and Design Department can be a lot to deal with. Although Nelson has a difficult time with these aspects of their classes, they note how their advisor is helpful in providing resources for future careers and jobs. Even with this support from professors in the Art and Design Department, Nelson still feels that the department tends to go unnoticed by Winona State as a whole.
“I think the university should collaborate with the Art Department more for events and other projects,” Nelson said. “I feel we don’t get to participate in very much and nobody ever knows anything about the Art Department outside of people apart of it.”
Additionally, Nelson mentions how this lack of collaboration and participation with the Art and Design Department is overshadowed by Winona State’s focus on its science and business majors, and Watkins.
“Most of the focus is on nursing or business classes and I do feel the Art Department is under-represented, the art building is a lot smaller than we need and it’s so old and falling apart,” Nelson said. “The teachers even complain about the building all the time.”
From the perspective of a professor in the Arts and Design Department, an Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting, Alessandra Suply, goes into detail about how she feels the department is let down by Winona State. She details the lack of funding for the department and the disappointing condition of Watkins.
“We are teaching in the lowest-rated building in the MinnState System, and we badly need updated facilities,” Suply said. “We need funding for updated equipment and supplies.”
A restriction that is featured when discussing the Art and Design Department’s limits is the insufficient funding that they receive from Winona State. Suply explains the difficulty she has with getting more funding for the shared classroom materials, so she has to take from the funds she is given by Winona State to provide her students with shared materials rather than what her funds are ideally supposed to be used for.
“My course fee (the money we collect from students for painting and drawing classes that buys shared materials like canvas rolls, gesso, larger packs of paper etc) haven’t changed in at least 25 years, and I haven’t been able to get those fees updated to what is needed.”
Second-year creative digital media major and studio art minor student, Eva Keck, also expresses the lack of acknowledgment of the Art and Design Department at Winona State. Keck details how the department tends to go unnoticed and untouched even at Winona State career fairs.
“I feel like Art is one of the understated ones,” Keck said. “Where at career fairs it’s like ‘Oh! Art! We don’t really have anything for that.’ because I feel like it’s a lot of psychology stuff that they do. Which is awesome but it doesn’t help me.”
One of the times that Keck was able to be recognized for their work was for an assignment that required students to collaborate with a school organization to create pieces of art reflecting different countries that would be displayed at an event. At this event, students in the class were able to have their art viewed by many people and celebrated.
Both Nelson and Keck are intrigued by the rumors of the new CECIL building and how a new building would be helpful for Art students to have better opportunities and a better building to have their classes in. The addition of a new building would be helpful in reinvigorating excitement for the Art and Design Department by highlighting the need for a new setting for the students.
There are common sentiments that are felt by the students and the professors in the Art and Design Department, where they have a difficult time being recognized and acknowledged by Winona State whether their building is worse for wear, their funding is insufficient for what they need, they are overshadowed and pushed to the wayside by Winona State’s more celebrated majors in the sciences.
