Alison Pack, director of Slocumb Galleries in Ball Hall, has a vision to share through art, art education and her own personal work.
Pack said that she hopes to make people more open-minded by displaying a variety of art. She said gallery work is educational.
“It’s a huge responsibility to be a gallery director because students see what is there and it affects their daily lives,” Pack said.
The North Wilkesboro, N.C., native graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art education in 1998 from Appalachian State University. She came to ETSU in August 1998 to pursue a master of fine arts degree in metal smithing and jewelry design.
Pack began the job of gallery director in August 2000 after being a student worker there for two years. She doesn’t plan to stop at just gallery director. She has higher ambitions.
“I want to be an art star,” she said. “I want to make the big time. I want to be nationally known as a metalsmith in five years.”
Her metals work focuses mainly on small-scale vessels that Pack describes as “whimsical, very girly pieces” shaped like outfits, ball gowns, pants and skirts.
“They all look like a body is present in the clothing, but no body is present,” she said.
Pack is well on her way to fame in the metals world.
She won best of show this past summer in Clarksville, Tenn., at the Custom House Museum and Cultural Center’s show “Small Things Through Which the Past Shines.”
For this, she was recognized in Art Papers, which is an Atlanta-based fine-arts magazine with international reviews. Usually, metals work is considered a craft and not a fine art.
“I was excited that an image of my metals work was published in a fine-arts magazine,” she said.
“As a woman with the forms I am using, my art is concerned with feminist issues after the feminist movement,” Pack said. “They imply strong, beautiful, sexy women who are really feminine but independent of relying on a man.”
Pack finished her art education degree and headed to a metals program. She knew this work was her calling after her first class in it at ASU.
“I want to get involved in the metalsmith community so I can teach metals at the university level,” she said. “My work will take me to helping others in the metals field and to help them create their dreams.”
For now, Pack said that she likes Johnson City and is happy to be here. The people are warm and friendly, and the students are willing and eager to learn, she said.
“Good things have happened to me in Johnson City,” she said. “I have had lots of good opportunities and made lots of good friends.

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