Emerge hosts event sponsored by Congressman Jones

The Congressional High School exhibit shown this week

Elise Phillips, Assistant Pulse Editor

Issue date: 5/21/08 Section: Features

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Media Credit: jessi Braxton

Emerge Gallery, located on Evans St. in downtown Greenville, will host its annual Congressional High School exhibit this week sponsored by NC Congressman Walter B. Jones. The exhibit opened on May 16 and will include work from high school students from Jones' district, which includes 17 counties along the NC coast, for show at the gallery in one of two yearly exhibitions sponsored each year by Congressman.

Congressman G.K. Butterfield sponsored an exhibition at ECU's School of Art and Design this year as well.

Emerge Gallery has been hosting the Jones' exhibit for five years, but Holly Garriott, executive director of the gallery says that this year's show is extraordinary.

"This exhibit is one of the best ones we've had," she said. "We've had high school exhibits before, but this one is really great."

On May 23, Congressman Jones will visit Emerge at 7 p.m. to pass out awards to all of the participants of the Congressional High School exhibit in a reception held at the gallery.

"The most amazing thing about this exhibition is that every student will receive a monetary award for participating, as well as the prize winners receiving a cash award," Garriott said.

The gallery offers classes to ECU students and the community, but Garriott especially encourages students from ECU to come check out what the gallery has to offer.

"Emerge Gallery is a non-profit art center that makes the arts accessible to the entire community," said Garriott. "Our daily staff [working at the front desk] is all ECU students who take an internship course through ECU."

Classes offered at Emerge include pottery, metal smith, photography, filmmaking, painting and culinary arts.

May 31 will mark the grand opening of the gallery's first pottery studio, where members of the community can paint handmade pottery in groups or individually.

Emerge also reaches out to community by ensuring that for every five paid programs offered at the gallery, one is free and open to underprivileged children in the area.

"We sponsor after-school classes at area schools, free community activities such as helping [to] coordinate festivals [like] PirateFest, scholarships to our classes and our Youth Public Arts Project where kids come once a week, eat dinner and work on public arts projects," Garriott said.

The Congressional High School exhibition will run until May 23. Emerge Gallery is open Tuesday-Friday from 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m.-4p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m.-4 p.m.

For more information about the exhibit or Emerge Gallery, visit emergegallery.com.

This writer can be contacted at editor@theeastcarolinian.com.

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