The Tarble Arts Center will be featuring Shona Macdonald’s “Ground Covering” Exhibition as part of its New and Emerging Artist series.

Michael Schuetz, the assistant director of Tarble, said both Eastern’s art department and Tarble work together to decide which artist to feature during the semester.

“Historically, Tarble works with the EIU art department and they have a number of programs that are cosponsored between the art department and Tarble,” Schuetz said. “One of the cosponsored programs is called New and Emerging Artist series.”

The New and Emerging Artist series is a program funded by the art department, and Tarble is tasked with helping coordinating the actual exhibition.

“Tarble gets in contact with the artists, we arrange for the works that will be part of the exhibit, we arrange for the packing, the shipping, the transport,” Schuetz said. “Shona Macdonald is the 2015 New and Emerging artist for the fall series, and that’s usually one of the first kickoff exhibitions for the fall.”

David Griffin, the chair of the art department, said the art department has a committee called the Advisory committee, which is made of up representative from all of the different areas in the art department. The members of the committee review the nomination for possible artist to bring to Eastern.

“You have studio faculty, you have art history faculty, you have graphic design faculty, so there’s one member from all of the various areas within the department, representation their vested interest on the advisory committee,” Griffin said. “One of the functions of the committee is to review the application proposals that the faculty will bring forward.”

Griffin also said Eastern has tried to bring Macdonald in the past, but because of scheduling conflicts from both sides, it took some years before she was finally brought to Eastern.

“She’s been on our radar and on our books for a while,” Griffin said. “It’s this combination of puzzle pieces that has to sort of all finally fit together.”

The actual exhibition will feature some of paintings and drawings by Macdonald. Many of Macdonald works in the Tarble exhibition feature a blend of landscape and the sky, almost as if it was a mirror pointing up.

“Some of these works are a spin off from an early series she did called ‘Sky on Ground’,” Schuetz said. “The idea was that it was sort of setting up this dichotomy of landscape versus skyscape.”

The exhibition opened on Saturday and will continue until Oct. 4.

Luis Martinez can be reached at [email protected] or 581-2812