COW President Andrea Ruggirello giving welcomes and introductions at WVU’s Art Museum for the COW Spring Formal Reading.

The annual Council of Writers (COW) Spring Formal Reading event took place on Wednesday, January 27, in the upstairs gallery of WVU’s new art museum. Writers and the audience gathered in the room’s smaller, featured space, which is now showcasing the paintings of Blanche Lazzell. The WVU alumna, who graduated in 1905, studied avant-garde movements in France, lived and worked at the Provincetown, Massachusetts, artist’s colony, and in the 1930s, created pieces for the Federal Arts Project. Lazzell is credited with introducing abstract styles such as cubism to the WVU School of Art and Design during her brief tenure on faculty.

The MFA program brought its own brand of art to the gallery space. Megan Fahey shared her satirical synesthesia-induced take on sugar. Whit Arnold recalled his sister’s staged robbery of their mother. Bryce Berkowitz channeled both his inner poet and former graffiti artist self. Andrea Ruggirello took the room to Paris’s Pont des Arts bridge and a lover’s lock.

Several others, including Kat Saunders, Jake Maynard, Nat Updike, and Maggie Behringer, read from completed and in-progress work.

Heather Harris, Educational Programs Manager, reached out to COW as part of the museum’s continued effort to connect with students. The museum, which opened in the fall 2015 semester, is located on the Evansdale campus and currently hosts a running series of lunch-time lectures with faculty from the School of Art and Design. For more information about the museum, visit their website: http://artmuseum.wvu.edu/.

Contributed by Maggie Behringer