“The annual Tiny Galleries project provides opportunities for UO students to reflect on and apply what they are learning and researching, engage more deeply with the broader campus community, and contribute to academic discourse,” said Director of Access and Delivery Services David Ketchum, who launched the project in 2022. Each student curator earns a $1,500 award. 

Resource Delivery Librarian Kristin Walker, who oversaw this year’s application and selection process, shared, “We had so many creative proposals submitted by talented UO students [that] the selection committee had a hard time choosing just four awardees! We hope to expand the exhibitions next year and plan to include other library locations at the UO.”

This year, we welcome our third cohort of student curators: 

• Yalda Eskandari (MFA, Art, Class of ’26) with “Destination”
• Abby Lewis (BS, Mathematics and Cinema Studies, Class of ’25) with “The Fabric of Mathematics”
• Kimberly Olivar (PhD candidate, English, Class of ’26) with “Manualism/Oralism: A Visual History”
• Maggie Trail (BS, Biology, Class of ’26) with “A Hidden World of Fluorescence”

Join us for the Opening on Friday, October 18, 4:30–6:00 p.m., in the west lobby of Knight Library. Hear the student curators talk about their galleries and enjoy light refreshments. All are welcome!

Can’t make the opening? Then come see the winning students' exhibits during the Knight Library's open hours. You'll find the phone booth exhibits in the east and west lobbies.

As part of the selection process, each curator had to prepare a proposal. Here are some excerpts from those about their gallery goals and concepts. To read the curators’ full statements, visit the Tiny Galleries research guide.

Yalda Eskandari: “Destination” 

We stand on the threshold between the self and the other—between a place and a non-place. Behind us, familiar and strange faces blur into the past as we face the sea. As we set sail, everything changes. Crossing this threshold means leaving parts of ourselves behind. 

This project aims to illuminate the lost aspects of the migration process, exploring what we leave behind and what we gain by crossing new seas or thresholds. The goal is to evoke a deep connection to the memory and experience of immigrants, using the booth's door as a metaphorical bridge. It offers the American audience an opportunity to engage with and reflect on the profound and often unsettling journey of migration. This project bridges my previous artworks with those I'm creating here at UO.

The installation utilizes the unique texture of the telephone booth’s walls to enhance its concept. Two transparent curtains with images of the sea hang from the ceiling, representing the hallucinations experienced by immigrants and refugees. Behind the curtains, a blue, fluorescent lamp symbolizes the destination, conveying its dual nature as both bright and cold. Posters depicting the sea adorn the walls and a small fan creates movement in the curtains while a speaker emits the sounds of the sea. 

Abby Lewis: “The Fabric of Mathematics”

This exhibition is intended to showcase the overlap between math and art, and to honor the women who have explored that intersection. There are mathematicians who call themselves artists, but I find that artists rarely call themselves mathematicians. I hope that the objects I have created for this exhibit show that many artistic techniques, especially in the fiber arts, are inherently mathematical. The women who have developed the fiber arts over generations deserve to be recognized for their artistic and intellectual expertise. My exhibit is dedicated to them, and to my mom, who is both an amazing fiber artist and an amazing mathematician, even if she wouldn’t immediately identify with that second label!

Kimberly Olivar: “Manualism/Oralism: A Visual History”

In the 17th century, an English physician named John Bulwer conceived of Deaf people who communicated through sign language as a distinct linguistic group. At the same time, he was interested in the way Deaf individuals could learn to read mouth shapes and communicate verbally with hearing people. These two observations are an example of a centuries-old debate in Deaf culture and education between manualism and oralism. 

Manualism conceives of the Deaf community and its use of sign language, such as American Sign Language (ASL), as a unique linguistic subculture, not a “disabled” population. Oralism marks the belief that individuals who are Deaf or hard of hearing should acquire skills, like lipreading, or prosthetics, such as cochlear implants, to assimilate into the speaking world. 

My exhibit, “Manualism/Oralism: A Visual History,” draws on artifacts from the personal collections of David de Lorenzo, the now retired director of UO Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives, to visually demonstrate the shapes that the debates between manualism and oralism have taken in the last century. 

This project builds on my research in disability studies with the ultimate purpose of raising awareness at the UO about the Disability Studies Minor.

Maggie Trail: “A Hidden World of Fluorescence”

I have always sought to correlate my interests in art and science by seeking the scientific within the artistic and the artistic within the scientific. 

Since becoming an undergraduate research assistant on Genevieve “Genny” Romanowicz’s project in the Guldberg Lab (part of the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact), I have reveled in how creativity and artistry translate into our research process, particularly in regard to fluorescent imaging. 

In the lab, we fabricate bone-like tissue fragments known as organoids and build experiments with the hope of optimizing their character to emulate native bone. Part of this characterization process involves immunofluorescent staining. The process uses antibodies to tag cellular structures with fluorescent markers similar to the methods used to identify Covid in a home test kit. 

When put under a fluorescent microscope, our samples glow with magnificent, intricate, three-dimensional fluorescent patterns. These images have inspired my idea for my tiny gallery exhibit: a black-light display of glowing, biological images and structures. 

My goal is to create a display that will reveal this hidden world to both entertain and educate people. I aimed to recreate the joy of capturing fluorescent images by displaying photographs of these images in a dark space lit with black light and replicating their complex designs with neon paint. 

Also, this project will inform my research and be useful as I write my Clark Honors College thesis.

—Kate Conley, communications specialist, UO Libraries