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Visual arts center opens Jim Craven photo Dancers in white sheets create a living sculpture Friday as Southern Oregon University faculty, students and friends celebrated the new Center for the Visual Arts with a grand opening. By Sara Murphy ASHLAND � Art was in the air Friday evening at Southern Oregon University, along with a few sprinkles of rain. A standing-room-only crowd of hundreds found refuge from the drizzly weather inside the university�s new art lecture hall � and spilled into a packed lobby � to celebrate the grand opening of the Center for the Visual Arts. The ceremony marked the culmination of the university�s double-decade dream to build a "signature" complex for the arts. SOU officials say the four-building complex will unify the art department, once scattered across campus, and serve as a "gateway" to the community. The complex includes two new structures: the Art Building and the Marion Ady Building, named for the first art teacher at Southern Oregon Normal School, the forerunner of today�s university. The new buildings join the DeBoer Sculpture Building (previously Art East) and the Schneider Museum of Art to form the CVA complex. "It will, in fact, be the �beacon on the hill� that Florence and Bill (Schneider) dreamed of," said Joe Cox, chancellor of the Oregon University System. Other speakers also reflected on people such as the Schneiders, university benefactors, who dreamed of the project and helped weave it into reality. "Dream-weavers," said SOU President Sara Hopkins-Powell, describing those who helped raise money for the project, design and build the complex and "everyone else at Southern who gave up their parking places today." Former SOU President Stephen Reno, visiting from New Hampshire where he is chancellor of the state university system, also reminded the crowd that the complex is made of more than bricks, steel and concrete. "How many glasses of wine has it taken?" he asked. "How many friends calling friends who called friends?" Reno said the construction of the CVA set a "new stamp" on SOU�s relationship with the Rogue Valley and thanked the community for its support of the project. Keynote speaker John Frohnmayer, a Medford native and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts, spoke on the value of art as expression and as a starting point for discussion. "What�s going on in art is a whole lot more civilized than our thoughts going unchecked," Frohnmayer said. "Art causes us some discomfort, as it should," he said. "It causes us to wonder, as it should. It causes us to recognize our humanity, as it should." The CVA celebration continues today. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., art department faculty will offer tours of the new buildings, art demonstrations and hands-on activities. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.