Student art brightens Library stairwell

The stairway that leads patrons and visitors from the Cofrin Library plaza to the third floor has to be one of the most familiar places on campus. Presumably (we hope) nearly every one of UW-Green Bay’s 30,000 or so graduates has made the trek, multiple times.

Now, thanks to Prof. Christine Style of Arts and Visual Design and students in her ART 198 fall-semester freshman seminar, there’s art brightening the rough concrete walls.

The five pieces of student art are now hanging on the wall above the stairway landing between Floors 2 and 3.The seminar topic was “From One Many: Repetition in Art and Design.” The panels may be viewed separately or, hanging together, as one work. Each panel is composed of as many as 750 different items or elements, as selected by small student teams responsible for each design.

It is believed it is the first time the stairwell has been used for an art display. Although the Cofrin Library has a red-brick exterior said to mimic the local clay of the Red Banks area not far from campus, interior elements of the 1972 structure include unfinished concrete in the so-called “Brutalist” style of architecture used on this campus and others during the era.