SMU student’s art displayed in Smithsonian, Kennedy Center

SMU senior Holly Schuh’s artwork is on display in Washington, D.C.“Two Voices” is on display the Kennedy Center Hall of States through October.







“Pause,” is on display at the Smithsonian’s Ripley Center through Dec. 31









WINONA, Minn. — Holly Schuh, a Saint Mary’s University senior from Altura, Minn., received the Award of Excellence and $2,000 for her artwork, currently on display at the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center.

The 2007 juried exhibition “Driven” highlights the work of 15 emerging, young visual artists with disabilities. The exhibition, sponsored by VSA arts and Volkswagen of America, Inc., is on display at the S. Dillon Ripley Center, Smithsonian Institution, through Dec. 31. The work of 15 “Driven” awardees is also on display at the Kennedy Center Hall of States through October in celebration of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The 15 finalists displaying work were chosen from 204 applicants, ranging in age from 16 to 25, from throughout the United States.

This year’s assignment challenged artists to illustrate the motivational force behind their personal vision … what moves them to create art.

Schuh aims to portray the emotions of human struggles through the representation of the human figure. Inspired by a mission trip to India and an intense awareness of humanitarian issues, Schuh links art, humanity and human figures in works that emote without words. Schuh want her figures to “cause discussion about struggles and the changes that are needed in the character of humanity’s actions.”

Schuh said she changed as an artist after she began exhibiting symptoms of hereditary neuropathy with pressure-point palsies, a rare, slowly progressive hereditary neuromuscular disorder that makes an individual very susceptible to nerve injury from pressure, stretch or repetitive use.

“I am determined to see my hands create and to see my disease as a positive inheritance,” she said. “I want my abstract figures to cause discussion about struggles and the changes that are needed in the character of humanity’s actions.”