UIW Officially Opens State-of-the-Art
San Antonio – On Wednesday, Oct., 14 over 200 guests joined members of the UIW community for a ribbon cutting celebrating the official opening of the university’s state-of-the-art Fine Arts Complex and Kelso Art Center. University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) students and faculty proudly showed off the new facility and guests enjoyed visiting the art galleries, classrooms, practice rooms, recording studio, music facilities as well as the 500 seat concert hall where Dr. William Gokelman, chair of the UIW Music Department and visiting faculty member Dr. Orit Eylon performed.
The 55,000 square foot UIW Fine Arts Complex is composed of a music building, concert hall and Kelso Art Center. The complex will give students access to the facilities and resources necessary for a state-of-the-art fine arts education.
The three-story music building features a 100-seat recital hall; choir and band rehearsal halls; a state-of-the-art recording studio; a music therapy suite with a services center offering clinical sessions to the community; piano lab; iMac lab; 18 Wenger modular practice rooms; percussion studio; seven teaching studios for private lessons; two general classrooms; instrument storage facility; and a listening library.
The 500-seat concert hall has variable acoustics ranging from zero to 10 seconds of reverb via an electronic system installed throughout the hall designed to replicate natural, room sound. The mezzanine of the former Fine Arts Auditorium, now the concert hall, has been converted to a lecture hall for fine arts classes.
The newly renovated art building, being dedicated as the Kelso Art Center, has separate spaces and designated studios for drawing, painting, printmaking, photography and art history as well as three galleries, the Kelso Art Gallery, Semmes Gallery and a student gallery. The new art building offers students updated technologies and resources including a computer lab for digital photography; two darkroom labs for photo classes; and a designated lighting studio for photography students as well as an exposure unit for photographic screen printing processes.
In addition, the center also features, a mural, funded by the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts, commissioned by the university and designed by local artist Cakky Brawley. The mural, “The Source of Life,” is a 40 x 20 foot aluminum sculpture designed to articulate with the wind. In daytime, it reflects the natural sunlight. In the evening, the mural will be LED lit depicting sunrise and ending with sunset.
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CONTACT: Margaret Garcia, associate director communications and marketing, (210) 829-6001, mlgarci2@uiwtx.edu