Belton, TX – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor College of Visual and Performing Arts and the UMHB Art Department are proud to present the exhibition A Moby Dick Experience: Hershall Seals. The exhibit will be on display from Monday, August 21, though Friday, September 22, in the gallery of the Baugh Center for Visual Arts on the UMHB campus. A reception and artist’s talk will be free and open to the public at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, August 21, in the Hughes Recital Hall in Presser Hall.
The presentation consists of a multimedia display of sound, light, and painting on the subject of the last three chapters of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Seals, chair of the UMHB art department, created three large, mixed media acrylic paintings that visually portray the feeling of impending disaster and demise of the crew of whalers who hunted the white whale around the world.
Other features accompanying the exhibit include a voice narration, projected water patterns, and whale songs intended to immerse viewers in a full sensory experience.
The literary inspiration of Moby Dick has been a challenge for many artists since the Romantic period. Seals expresses his 20-year fascination with the story as a metaphor for seeking, as Melville writes, “the ungraspable phantom of life.”
“Leaving the port of safety and hunting an elusive goal under the surface is another way of saying how mysterious and surprising the search for a personal abstract visual language has been for me,” Seals said.
The gallery of the Baugh Center for the Visual Arts is open weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information, please visit the art department website or call the College of Visual and Performing Arts at 254- 295-4678.
