Bucknell Samek Museum opens annual student art exhibition in Lewisburg

A steady flow of students, faculty and Lewisburg visitors moved through Bucknell’s Samek Art Museum as the annual student art exhibition opened April 15 at 7 p.m. in the Elaine Langone Center, giving the university’s campus gallery a public spotlight and turning the show into a community stop as well as a student showcase.

The exhibition runs through May 17 and presents a wide sweep of work made in Bucknell art courses over the academic year. Framed photography, mounted drawings and paintings, digital media, sculpture, 3D-printed carvings and papercraft all share the gallery, creating an installation that feels less like a single-class display and more like a campus-wide snapshot of student creativity and technical range. Samek says faculty in the Department of Art & Art History select noteworthy pieces from across the year, which helps explain why the show feels curated rather than crowded.

That structure gave the opening event extra weight. George Ferrandi, a current Ekard Artist in Residence, and Joe Scapellato, the Margaret Hollinshead Ley Professor in Poetry and Creative Writing and an associate professor of English, helped present the major student awards. Ferrandi named Deuce Geter’s A Helpful Hand, a cyanotype of a rake and boots, for third place, Carson Bielen’s Desolate Night, a black-and-white photo of a grocery-store sign, for second place, and Caroline Williams’s Untitled Triptych for Best in Show. The winning work drew attention for its craftsmanship and for the way it echoed historical Asian ink drawings.

Scapellato also announced Jennaye Pointer as the winner of the Carmen Gillespie Award for Arts Citizenship, recognizing a record that reaches beyond one studio or stage. Pointer’s involvement stretches across theatre, dance, stage management, Arts First, the Weis Center for the Performing Arts and the Lewisburg Children’s Museum, making her one of the most visible student artists in Bucknell’s broader arts network.

The exhibition also underscores how much of a cultural hub Bucknell remains for Lewisburg and Union County. Samek says it aims to create meaningful encounters between artists, students, scholars, the public and works of art, and that mission extends beyond the Elaine Langone Center to the museum’s Downtown Gallery at 416 Market Street and other campus spaces. With the annual show now a recurring spring tradition, the opening offered a clear reminder that student work at Bucknell does not stay behind classroom doors.