Usually when students submit works of art to the Iowa College Salon exhibition, they do so in hopes that their works will be seen.

But this year, seven students have contributed a work they hope no one will notice – the interior lighting.

An interior design class designed and installed the lights for the annual exhibit at the Brunnier Art Museum.

This will be the first time art and design students have done the lighting at Brunnier, said Lynette Pohlman, director of University Museums. Usually the lighting is done by Pohlman or by Rachel Hampton, information and collections manager for University Museums.

The goal is to “design the lighting so that it is transparent,” Pohlman said. “We want it to look like `oh, they just put them on the wall’ and you don’t think about it.”

But someone has to think about it.

Lighting is “extremely crucial” to an art exhibition, Hampton said.

“Lighting can make or break a work of art,” she said. “It can bring life to a work of art or it can hinder a work of art and not show its true beauty.”

The class that has taken on this challenge is the special-issues interior design class, said Dorothy Fowles, the instructor of the course. “The whole premise of the course is that it’s experiential … learning through active learning.”

This semester the class is focusing on interior lighting, she said.

For the project, the class has been broken into two groups, Fowles said. Each will be responsible for one L-shaped portion of the exhibition.

Working in groups is a definite benefit, said Jennifer McKay, junior in interior design.

“None of us have a definite idea to go about doing this, so it’s kind of nice to play with ideas.”

Playing with ideas is exactly what they should be doing, Hampton said.

“The best way to learn lighting is to do it,” she said.

When designing an exhibit, Fowles explained, the designers must consider the equipment, the objects and the volume that they have to work with.

Then the designer does drawings, abstract sketches of light and dark, she said.

Finally the designer must “figure out which lamps are going to help them achieve” those designs, Fowles said.

Pohlman invited the class to design the lights for a show at the museum after Pohlman heard her talk about her class at a luncheon at the Brunnier last December, Fowles said.

The College Salon seemed to be an “especially appropriate” project for the students because it is a collegiate show, Pohlman said.

It is an important show because it is the only collegiate-juried competition that includes all of the four-year art students in Iowa, she said.

This year’s Salon will feature 62 works by 50 artists, 16 of whom are from Iowa State, Hampton said. The show opened Sunday.

The most difficult part of the project for her group, McKay said, is a chair that is covered with mirrors and glass beads.

“You don’t want it to reflect light in people’s eyes,” she said, but she and her group do “want to make it all sparkly and stand out.”

After all, lighting an artwork can be an art unto itself, Pohlman said.

Lighting the exhibition is “an educational opportunity, but it’s also artistic expression,” she said. The students “are creating a larger artwork that is composed of the 70-some works of art.”