It looks as though engineers really can do it all.
Norris Hall is currently hosting an art gallery in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department where all of the artists in the gallery are either part of or affiliated with the department.
Office manager for the ESM department, Anne-Marie Bracken, came up with the idea and organized the event herself.
"I wanted to show the creative side to our department," said Bracken, who is an artist herself and has a photograph she took in Arizona displayed in the gallery. "This shows our vitality. We're not focusing on past events ... It's hard to create art when you're not celebrating life."
A variety of artists are represented in the gallery, from the ESM department head Ishwar Puri to a middle school student.
"This is a wonderful initiative and shows the softer side of engineering," Puri said.
He contributed a piece to the art show titled "El Collar del Hierro: The Ferro Necklace." It's a large computer-generated image that represents how science can be art. The piece is a half-moon shape and has a yellowish hue.
The youngest artist featured in the gallery is eighth-grader Eric Granata. Eric is the son of Kevin Granata, an ESM professor who was killed on April 16.
Eric created the drawing displayed in Norris when he was in seventh grade for an art class. His assignment was to draw several still life objects arranged in a group. Eric created several drawings and chose the best one to for the gallery.
His work is titled "Jars of Clay," and is a black and white drawing that was intended to show the contours of all the objects, such as the most prominent items in his drawing, a teapot and a glass bottle. He used black stripes to emphasize the shape of each individual entity. Eric chose to draw only parts of the objects instead of the whole thing as a way to draw the viewer into the painting and make them wonder what it was.
"I feel it's an accomplishment," Eric said when asked how he felt about being the youngest contributor, as he looked around the gallery.
Eric also creates architectural drawings of houses and plans to study architecture in college.
Assistant Professor Jake Socha's lent his photograph "Contemplation" to the exhibit. "Contemplation" is a color photograph that Socha took while vacationing near Corolla, N.C., in the Outer Banks.
The picture was taken on the sound side of the beach and features a single tree in shallow water. The reflection of the tree in the water is clear and is gently illuminated by sunlight.
"No one was around. There was no sound, but it was on the sound. At the time my wife and I only had one child and they had just left," Socha said, on why he wanted to capture that moment.
Photography is a hobby for Socha, who has just started his career here at Tech, and he likes to be able to take individual moments and "see the unusual in the every day."
Miguel Ortega Lopez, a second-year master's student in ESM, created a cylinder-shaped collage composed of 100 3-D photographs of various scenes of Tech's campus, such as the ESM department and Norris Hall. Ortega Lopez said he usually brings his camera with him wherever he goes and took the first photograph in August 2007. His piece is hung from the ceiling in Norris and even comes with 3-D glasses for viewing.
"You forget that everything around you is beautiful," said Ortega Lopez on why he photographed every day scenes from campus.
Arnab Gupta, a second year doctoral student, contributed two black-and-white photographs to the gallery. His picture "Witnesses" features Burruss Hall with a large tree in the foreground -- Gupta angled the photo so the tree appears to be larger than Burruss. He originally took the photo because both Burruss and the tree have "seen" so much of Tech's history unfold.
His other picture, "Frosty Solitude," is a picture of the Duck Pond that was taken after a snowstorm last year. Gupta said this image appealed to him because, despite the freezing weather, people always like going to the Duck Pond.
Gupta took up photography when he was an undergraduate student in India and feels that commemorating the ESM department's anniversary with an art gallery is a good idea.
"Education is not just research, research, research," Gupta said.
Art has always been a part of fifth-year senior ESM major Gina Om's life. Om liked how she was able to take a break from studying while she created her painting, "Fall." Om created a forest scene and used not only the traditional browns and greens to create her painting, but also a light blue color in the background and some oranges and pinks to paint the leaves.
Om used non-traditional colors for some of the leaves to emphasize how bright the leaves become as fall comes to Blacksburg.
"Fall is the season that defines Virginia Tech. I always appreciate how beautiful it is here in the fall," Om said.
While some students may be reluctant to see the gallery in Norris Hall since the shootings, Om goes there every day.
"This is an exhibit to showcase people within our department. Our department is really small. You might not know everyone, but you at least know who they are. It's nice to learn more about other people," Om said. "It's also nice because after 4/16 we became really close. Norris Hall is our home base. I spend every day in the computer lab and in the lounge,"
She also said the faculty worked hard to ensure that they were able to move back into Norris following the shootings.
Senior ESM major Dani Urdaneta placed four pictures she had taken of structures together to create one overall composition called "Engineering as Art." The black-and-white pictures are of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre museum, The Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the Guinness Factory Museum in Ireland. From an initial glance, it's not immediately apparent what is picture in each photo. Urdaneta wanted to focus on the structural uniqueness of each place.
"Architecture is a great way to combine art and engineering," Urdaneta said, who is also an art history minor. She used the Eiffel Tower in her creation because it is both an industrial symbol and a symbol of Paris.
Urdaneta said, "It's good to celebrate ESM for what it is."