While Dixie Lyn Boswell doesn’t teach students in her role as Mississippi State University’s exhibit coordinator, you can hear the pride in her voice as she talks about the up-and-coming artists.
The Visual Arts Center gallery, located along University Drive, is currently hosting Glitch, a juried exhibit featuring design work from students from 18 universities.
Part of the exhibit, a selection of pieces by MSU junior Trisha Harjono, features a folded-paper book about Kewpie baby dolls. As Boswell turns the pages, she points out how Harjono fell in love with the small plastic dolls when she came to the United States from Indonesia. Boswell also points out Harjono’s attention to detail, how parts of the book are joined together with tape that says “cupid” — what Kewpie is supposed to be short for — along the seams.
At the end, a little pop-up featuring the doll’s silhouette holding a letter “q” in one hand and a “p” in the other appears.
Boswell smiles and giggles at the surprising addition, while looking at the creation with pride.
“I just love art,” she says, admiring the piece. “I want to share it with the world.”
Boswell is a 2006 graduate of MSU. After graduating, she wanted to leave Mississippi far behind, but in January 2021, she came back to her alma mater.
When the pandemic started, she was living in Los Angeles working as an art dealer. She said she felt a pull to be closer to her family in Mississippi and to work more with up-and-coming artists.
“It was actually during lockdown in 2020, or right after, sometime during that blur of COVID shutdown, L.A. was locked down for months,” Boswell said. “I was texting with a friend who was back here. … He said, well, there’s this job opening up in the art department and that you’d be perfect for. … I found the job posting and I was like, that’s exactly what I want to do is exhibition logistics, like making shows happen.”
Lifelong calling
Boswell, who grew up in Vicksburg, said she can never remember not wanting to be an artist.
“I remember being little, like really little, and drawing on everything. When I was in second grade, my parents — they probably half kicked themselves when they did — they got me private art lessons with an amazing woman in Vicksburg,” she said.
When Boswell initially came to MSU, she planned on becoming a graphic designer.
“Then I took one computing art class and I hated it, hated it,” she said. “I just couldn’t stand sitting at a computer for hours on end. I got into my first real painting class. And I just fell in love.
“I thought I knew how to paint, but then this was … you know, in the Matrix at the end when Neo finally gets it and everything turns into binary code? It was like that. It was like lights going off everywhere and it was like, I get it. … It just clicked.”
Exhibits as art pieces
Boswell went from painting and drawing to working on experiential light installations that allowed her to play with ideas of light and space. The work she did on those projects helps her with her current job. A committee selects which artists will be displayed. Boswell and some MSU student assistants set up the exhibits.
“I’d like to think of exhibitions as art pieces in and of themselves,” she said.
For example, during August and September, Boswell had to create an exhibit featuring Brent Funderburk’s work. He brought more than 60 pieces to be displayed.
“We started thinking about the sizes, the shapes, the difference, you know, some were warmer than others, some were cooler than others, and the compositions in those pieces themselves,” she said. “We found, after playing with (the pieces) for a few days, we found this rhythm that would guide you all around the gallery and through all the different media that was in there.”
In exhibits, one of the main things people do is trying to “activate” the space and create dialogue.
“So there might be pieces that you might initially not think are related necessarily, but you could put them across us from each other or next to each other,” Boswell said. “It brings up all of these ideas or images that alone may not be there. But when you see them together, you realize, ‘Oh, this is talking about this and this is talking about this.’ And they actually do really fit together.”
Making art accessible
Boswell noted that her goal as an exhibit coordinator is to make art accessible to all people.
“A lot of our visitors aren’t art people at all,” she said. “We try to turn off that art part of our brain and think about how we are going to make this not just digestible, but accessible to others.”
Art is for everyone, she says, noting artists not only make the things found in museums and concert halls. They create logos on shirts, the patterns in the clothes we wear, and the packaging of the products we buy.
“We want you to come in and have fun,” she said of the MSU art galleries. “You don’t have to whisper when you come in. Maybe don’t touch the art, you know, that’s a given, but we really wanna welcome the whole community and not just students and faculty at the university.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 43 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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