With nothing to do on a snowy afternoon besides go home and sleep, students can head over to the Jack Olson Gallery in NIU’s Art Building to check out student artwork from this semester’s graduating class.

Ann O’Brien, acting gallery coordinator, worked for the gallery for a year and put the show together.

The Best Show of Fine Arts has been going on since the school’s art program began and has become a standard program for most, if not all, art schools.

The show consists of artwork from seniors who will graduate with their Bachelor of Fine Arts at the end of this semester. The seniors take a class in which they work on their senior projects.

About 150 people were at the opening reception on Nov. 18, O’Brien said.

Some of the work displayed at the show includes a series of photographs, cartoon paintings, jewelry and computer graphics. The art also expresses some of the artists’ political views, personality, opinions and beliefs.

“I like the way the show looks all together; it’s usually what I aim for, and when we put something together, we want the whole show to look good,” O’Brien said.

The seniors who are in the show are Karlin Kosinski, Dan Kwarcinski, Sarah Maughan, Stanley F. Schultz III, Zach Hines, Elizabeth Kinsey, Amy McGivern, Annie Rath, James Kidonakis, Katie Magee, Emily Berg, Robert Shilov and Hillary Saxton.

Saxton used a mixture of gel pens and Photoshop for her piece “Prelude.” Kosinski’s five-piece photo series, “Visiting Hours,” is a murder mystery in a hotel room. The photos do not reveal much and will leave much to the viewer’s imagination.

“Some of the most important things [to remember] when starting off as an art major are to study hard, make some artwork every day and don’t forget to have fun with it,” O’Brien said.

The show runs until Dec. 12 in the Jack Olson Gallery, Room 200. The graduation ceremony for the seniors is Dec. 12.

Next semester, the gallery will be holding another B.F.A. show for the next group of seniors from April 25 to May 14.

Some upcoming events at the gallery are the Ars Nova Show and a visit from Tommy Simpson, an NIU alumnus.

“A lot of the faculty are looking forward to seeing Simpson’s show,” O’Brien said. “It will be a very exciting show.”

Simpson will be talking about surviving as an artist and will show 26 pieces of his work. He is a skilled woodworker, sculptor, furniture maker, painter and poet.

He will be at NIU Jan. 18 to Feb. 4 and will also spend some time in the School of Art as a visiting artist.