KIM WILCOX | senior staff writer




'Endpapers' challenges students to create their own magic.

Senior art major Meagan Moore’s “Endpapers: the art of story,” opened on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the Wilden art gallery. Her show is based on the idea that after a story ends there is the story before, but only we can write the story after.

Imagine walking into a room and there in front of you is a page with the words, “and they lived happily ever after…even Jasper,” with a picture of an old man in a chair, asleep, and a bug in the corner. What would you think? Would you create a story?

Moore hoped her audience would create stories for themselves. She hoped people would look at her pieces and wonder about the characters.

“It’s just a lot of fun getting to decide what hints to give [viewers],” Moore said. “I have several stories that go along with each [picture].”

Moore said she was emotionally attached to each of the pictures. She has stories for each character fitting with each line of text and those are only the stories she has come up with. There are also all those stories that onlookers created.

“Sometimes I will see a picture or think of something to draw and I will start there,” Moore said. “Other times a phrase will strike my imagination.”

Moore used nib pens and an ink well to draw each picture by hand. She said that at first, drawing with the pens was hard and she had to learn to use the pens without dripping ink or having stray lines.

Now after having drawn 45 works of art, she is comfortable using the pens without too many mistakes.

Her paper was torn from the backs of old books that she purchased from thrift stores and the Marshburn library book sale. The text was typed with a typewriter she fondly named Tabitha the Tabulator.

There were 30 pieces of art on display in the Darling Gallery.

I love the pen and ink. [Moore’s] proportions are so good,” mother of a fellow art student Melinda Geiger said. “And you just want to dive in.”

Geiger is the mother of junior graphic design major Ashley Geiger. She and her daughter attended the opening and made several comments about how amazing it was to stand near each picture and think up a story to go with it.

“I’ve gotten to see Meagan from when she started these. Her style has developed so much during this time,” Ashley Geiger said. “And there is so much humor and beauty in each.”

Moore talked with the Geigers and as she listened to their compliments her smile broadened and she kept replying how happy she was that her images and words had impacted them so deeply.

Senior theater arts major Alicia Watson walked up and down the hall admiring the pictures. She said looking at them brought back memories of her childhood. She wanted to go back to the days when she could be any of the characters in the pictures.

“They brought me back to story books and when I had time to do these wonderful things,” Watson said. “It was really just relaxing to see her work.”

Watson’s favorite contained a small spider hanging from a fine thread. The words in the caption recognized the spider is an artist. Watson agreed that spiders do weave their webs.

Moore said she couldn’t pick a favorite from the pieces.

She did mention the one containing a small mouse who balances on a shelf as he leans down holding the final letter to the phrase “the end.”

“The little mouse kind of represents the whole experience for me,” Moore said.

Although the adorable mouse sums up what her show is about for Moore, she said there is one piece that is a very good depiction of her own life.

The piece shows a young girl in a bathing suit with a thick braid down her back. On her head is a snorkel and mask and on her feet a set of flippers. In her hands she carries an umbrella and totes a string tied around the neck of a toy giraffe.

“She’s going on an adventure,” Moore said. “And this whole experience has been an adventure.”

She may not be as well equipped as possible, but she is as equipped as she knows how to be.

“Life is an adventure and sometimes I don’t feel equipped but I am equipped the best I know how,” Moore said.

Moore would like to do children’s books in the future and in her show she certainly inspired others to find their inner child and discover the art of story their story.