{"id":78027,"date":"2026-05-26T07:24:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=78027"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T21:37:18","slug":"jacks-in-a-flash-neal-galloway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/jacks-in-a-flash-neal-galloway\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacks in a Flash: Neal Galloway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tin<\/a><\/span><\/b><\/h4>\n

How do you show the importance of interpersonal communication with art? Inspired by the geographical distance between loved ones, as well as the challenges people experienced during the COVID pandemic, Neal Galloway, associate teaching professor in the School of Art and Design, created a series of art pieces he hopes will do just that. In collaboration with associate teaching professor Barbara Ryan Gartin, he recently exhibited his work, \u201cTin Can Conversations: Wish You Were Here,\u201d at ArtX, a three-day multimedia festival in Flagstaff.<\/p>\n

Tell me about your work, \u201cTin Can Conversations.\u201d<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

\u201cTin Can Conversations\u201d\u00a0is a series of artworks\u00a0that\u00a0uses the motif of a tin-can telephone to explore the fragility,\u00a0complexity\u00a0and profound value of interpersonal communication.\u00a0These sculptures, video and kinetic artworks explore physical and psychological distance, miscommunication, disagreement, sensitivity, power dynamics,\u00a0love\u00a0and connection.<\/span>\u200b<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Tin<\/a>This\u00a0exhibition was\u202fa collaboration with artist,\u00a0friend\u00a0and printmaker Barbara Ryan Gartin. We collaborated on one of the main sculptures in the exhibition at the\u00a0Nackard\u00a0Warehouse Gallery called \u201cWish You Were Here.\u201d It features layered relief prints of scissors and needles on transparent paper wrapped around large tin cans. These cans face away from one another, mounted to the wall by bone-like wooden sconces. A red string connects the two cans,\u00a0interrupted\u00a0in the middle by a suspended wooden wishbone.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rest of that space was filled with my sculptures and a video artwork. Another new artwork I created for this show,\u00a0\u201cFault Lines,\u201d\u202ffeatures two 7-foot-tall wooden panels\u00a0that\u00a0stand opposite one another. One panel has a tin can embedded into it at heart height, and the other one at head height. Strings connect each of these cans to arrows embedded into the opposite panel,\u00a0which look as though they have been shot from across the room. This creates a web of strings connecting the two panels, but conspicuously,\u00a0no arrows seem to have hit their intended target.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Tin<\/a>What inspired you?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

This series of artwork\u00a0was inspired primarily by a difficult cross-country displacement and by the challenge of\u00a0maintaining\u00a0healthy relationships during the COVID-19\u00a0pandemic. Through\u00a0the collaboration with Barbara,\u00a0the inspiration has expanded to include wishbone,\u00a0scissor\u00a0and needle\u00a0imagery,\u00a0which\u00a0evoke\u00a0time with loved ones\u00a0and the severing and repairing of\u00a0relationships\u00a0through communication.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is next for you?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

I plan\u00a0on seeking\u00a0new venues throughout the\u00a0Southwest that would be interested in\u00a0exhibiting\u00a0these\u00a0artworks. It has been wonderful exhibiting this locally, but expanding the audience for this series is something I would like to do. I also treasure the collaboration with Barbara, and we created more ideas than we had time to build, so we may work on realizing some more of our collaborative artworks in the future,\u00a0even\u00a0outside of the tin can series.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/a>Mariana Laas | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-5050 | mariana.laas@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you show the importance of interpersonal communication with art? Inspired by the geographical distance between loved ones, as well as the challenges people experienced during the COVID pandemic, Neal Galloway, associate teaching professor in the School of Art and Design, created a series of art pieces he hopes will do just that. In…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":78030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1830],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jacks-in-a-flash"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}