Two Professors Pay Tribute to Late Fathers through Art Exhibit
An art exhibit on display at the International Arts Center on Troy University’s campus brings two worlds together. Diane Orlofsky, a music teacher, and Jerry Johnson,a graphic design professor, used their talents to create “A Joyous Exchange: The Art of Collaboration.” The exhibit combines digital images and texts to make works of art, some of which are inspired by their late fathers.
“I actually started writing this at the bedside of my dying father,” Orlofsky said. “I would work here in the mornings and late afternoons, and then go spare off my mother who was caregiving. I began writing down thoughts about grief, and loss, and memory and the idea of how we express it through art.”
Orlofsky says she wanted to bring her texts to life, but needed someone to help do that. Thats when she came to Johnson with her idea.
“He did one piece and actually it was a fairly large piece and it was laid out on a table. I remember that day, specifically,” Orlofsky said.
Orlofsky brought Johnson a three-ringed binder full of her written works to see if he could create images based on those texts. Some were based on memories from her past.
Using digital art, Johnson used pictures to create art from Orlofsky’s texts. He says everything within each piece has a purpose.
“Its full of symbology, a lot of metaphors,” Johnson said. “Its full of eggs and feathers and tools. Everything in there has a meaning.”
Five years later, an art exhibit as born.
“We are here 24 times later, 24 essays later, 24 beautiful works of art later that we’ve been able to share with the Troy community,” Orlofsky said.
Johnson said he and Orlofsky share a lot of the same experiences, which made it easier to create each work of art.
“We share a similar faith journey. Both of our fathers, we had a deep relationship with who had just recently passed,” Johnson said. ” We were basically there when they each took their last breaths.”
The art exhibit will be on display at the IAC through Monday, July 29th. It is free and open to the public.
