Milligan’s annual Two Cats and a Herd of Buffalo art show premiered Friday evening at Dos Gatos Coffee Bar in downtown Johnson City. The showcase included work from the Fine Arts, Graphic Design, and Interactive Media programs.
“I like seeing students having fun and showing off their work. That makes me happy.”
Art Brown, associate professor of communications and orchestrator of the show
The Two Cats and a Herd of Buffaloes show is a highly anticipated yearly tradition at Milligan that gives students a chance to feature t heir work. Any student in art, design or photography classes are allowed to submit work from the previous calendar year to be in the show. This year’s show featured over 60 works and over 30 artists and will be on display until the end of the month.
“It gets crowded, but it’s a really fun time,” said Art Brown, associate professor of communications and orchestrator of the show. “I like seeing students having fun and showing off their work. That makes me happy.”
Brown, Professor Kelsey Ellis, and Professor Karahann Kiser organize the show and start work at the beginning of the school year. To market the show, @milliganmediaarts on instagram posts a countdown each day, beginning 10 days before the show. Layney Loyd was the project coordinator and one of the artists behind the countdown.
“I wanted to include a variety of styles and grade levels,” Loyd said, about her selection of artists. The final day of the countdown shows the main event poster. This year’s design was a collaboration between Abbey Cartagena and Judah Cooper. Each artist filled in a stencil of a cat in their individual styles and then it was divided by diagonals to show both cats in one.
This is the fifth year in a row that Milligan has had their art show at Dos Gatos. Milligan used to have an art show that took place at Nelson framing company, but that ended when it went under construction. Students had been wanting one to show off their work in a place where many people will see it and to have an art show to help their resume. Dos Gatos is under the same ownership as Nelson Framing Company, so the art show was moved there in 2019.
Stella Tomeo is a multimedia journalism and art major from Colorado.