As a flexible, experimental space, 49 Oak presents student work and hosts activities tied to classroom projects, from popup shops to exhibitions. Administered by Artists at Work with faculty support, students learn how to curate, install, promote, document, sell, and staff exhibitions. During summer months, programming focuses on work created by the College’s alumni network.

Familiar Faces

Jo Ophardt '25 & Wills Phillips '25

September 6–28, 2024

Opening reception: September 6, 5–8pm

Gallery Hours: Fridays 5-8pm & Saturdays 11am–2pm

Wills Phillips '25 and Jo Ophardt '25 are early career artists that have spent the past three years learning and developing work alongside one another. By living, eating, working, dancing, laughing and griping together, ideas have naturally grown between the two artists. Often drawing from similar sources of music, experience, hopes, and embodiment, their work expresses the complexities of life in modern America through distinct expressions in paint and mixed media. The execution of their works does not land in the same aesthetic grouping or tradition. Jo Ophardt paints from pop culture to reflect the dissonance between everyday life and transcendent experiences while Wills Phillips uses a broad array of natural and artificial materials, often scavenged, to create awkward and precarious objects and bodies that invite the viewer in. Familiar Faces looks at what holds these two artists together. Each sets out on their own path, but maybe they are singing the same song, or laughing at the same joke.