The Tarble Arts Center’s latest exhibit focuses on artists familiar to the Eastern community, the faculty of the art department.

The exhibit, which opens Thursday, is composed of works by current faculty and emeritus faculty.

Michael Watts, director of the Tarble Arts Center, said the exhibit showcases the breadth and depth of creative activity of the studio, graphic design and art education faculty in the department and is something the Tarble does every year.

According to a press release by the Tarble, the works displayed vary in style and include both representational and abstract works.

There will also be a variety of two-dimensional media including paintings in oil, watercolor, and acrylic; drawings in marker and chalk; monoprints, photo etchings, intaglio printmaking, sculpture, crafts, graphic design and a video poem.

Some of the large steel sculptures located outside of the Tarble are also included in the exhibition.

Patricia Belleville, an art education professor who is featured in the show, has taught at Eastern for the past 16 years and participated in the show for many of those years. Belleville will be displaying four printmaking pieces.

“Because I teach art education, some years my creative work is more writing-based rather than studio-based,” she said.

Belleville said although she has traditionally worked in painting and drawing, she recently became interested in printmaking about two years ago when she saw the different techniques the printmaking professor at Eastern was using.

“I saw the techniques she was using and became so fascinated,” she said. “I decided I would learn when I went on sabbatical and have been making prints for about two years now.”

Belleville said she enjoys printmaking because of how much a process it is to produce one piece.

“It is very process-oriented,” she said. “It takes a lot of technical processes and craftsmanship as well as chemical, depending on what you are doing for ink.”

Of the four pieces Belleville will display, two of them are monotypes and the other two are suite prints.

Monotypes are when the artist paints directly on the inking plate and manipulates the medium there.

This process only produces one print at a time.

The other two prints are suite prints and were produced when one of Belleville’s colleagues asked her to participate with one of the print making classes. The theme for the set was “Animals who eat people.”

“I really enjoyed the creative brainstorming process,” Belleville said. “I think I have an interesting solution on the theme posed.”

The exhibit opens with a reception from 4:30- 6:30 p.m. on Thursday in the Tarble.

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-2812 or alwywialowski@eiu.edu.