Flu season is quickly approaching.

But Emporia State’s Health Center is making a preemptive strike. This year’s vaccination includes three strains of influenza, including the H1N1. Mary McDaniel, assistant director of Student Wellness, said that each season the vaccination is made to include the predominant and predicted strains.

Flu shot or not, there are measures to take to avoid the flu. Tara Trent, junior nursing major, had some advice.

“Always wash your hands, avoid sharing drinks, avoid sick people and if sick yourself then stay home,” Trent said.

Students must pay $10 to receive their flu shot on campus. Staff and faculty flu shots are $25.The Health Center will accept cash, checks, or can bill student accounts. All students, staff and faculty are welcome.

Although the shots were free for students for many years, the increasing costs of shots and the decreased budget has led to the fee. McDaniel encouraged those at the most risk to get the vaccination.

“Those at most risk are those living in the Residence Halls, with chronic medical conditions and those caring for the young or old,” McDaniel said.

Jue Jiang, graduate earth science major, felt that she was not at risk and would not get the vaccination this season.

“Don’t feel I need it because I don’t get sick very often. I’ve maybe got sick once since I’ve been here,” Jiang said.

McDaniel said there are several flu symptoms students should watch out for.

“True influenza is a respiratory virus and it very fast hitting with high fever, body aches and a dry cough. In some cases there is sore throat, vomiting and diarrhea,” McDaniel said.

There are risks in getting the shot, but many are mild. Those who have received the shot could experience mild redness and soreness at the injection shot. Severe allergic reactions are rare, but those with severe egg allergies should not get the vaccination due to its generation in egg embryos.

Call Student Health Services at 620-341-5223 for more information.

Liz Coffey

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Alum Kayla Erickson, Mike Tuttle and Emporia resident Taumi Feil look at the detailed work on a sculpture by Grant Charpentier during the opening of his senior show, “Under My Skin,” Friday night in the Gilson Gallery in King Hall. The show will be on display until Jan. 27. Kellen Jenkins/ The Bulletin

The hairy, spiny forms that make up Grant Charpentier’s senior show “Under My Skin” are what he calls “scary, but original.” The Gilson Gallery in King Hall will be full of these animal-inspired figures until Jan. 27.

“This is something that I’ve never seen before, something I can call my own,” said Charpentier, senior glass forming major. “I was thinking about doing a sea theme but there are hundreds of artists out there who can do a sea theme and do it two times better than I could. This is something I’m willing to bet isn’t out there.”

Charpentier took inspiration from animal forms.

“I first came across this form looking at different skeletal forms in various reptiles,” he said. “I wanted to use glass in a minimalist way to embrace the form instead of dominating it.”

While some of the pieces are hard and uninviting, they didn’t start out that way.

“They started off pretty fluffy and nice,” Charpentier said. “Centipedeish – and then as time went on, the process got really monotonous and my emotions began to come out, even though they may have been negative. They started becoming more aggressive and agitated so my emotions started to transcribe through the work.”

Many people attended the opening of “Under My Skin” last Friday, including Charpentier’s girlfriend’s parents, who drove 7 hours to be there.

“Grant is like a sponge,” said Tracy Webber, Newman, Colo., resident and mother of Charpentier’s girlfriend. “He collects everything and sees everything from different sides.”

Charpentier wanted the viewers of his show to feel some of the angry emotions he put into each piece.

“I wanted to create a push/pull relationship with the viewer,” he said. “I wanted the viewer to be interested in them but at the same time be pushed away because they’re dangerous.”

And they really are dangerous. The spines sticking out of the pieces are chunks of pointed glass that Charpentier referred to as “teeth” and bent pieces of thick metal.

“What I like about the art is how alive they look and ferocious in manner,” said Collin Haire, junior art major. “They just pop out at you. They’re almost moving.”

Haire understood the message Charpentier was trying to get across.

“In his artist statement, he mentioned that he used the skeletal structure of snakes,” Haire said. “I definitely see that. They are like mutant centipedes.”

Charpentier did not want to just show glass pieces.

“I feel different about them all,” Charpentier said when trying to describe his favorite. “I’m a glass major but I wanted to do something different. I wanted to stray away from just showing glass and showing other types of medias.”

For Charpentier, the work of putting together one piece was painstaking and took several hours.

“I don’t consider myself and OCD artist,” he said. “But this is really repetitious with little variation.”

The use of metal in his pieces is what Charpentier thought was original about them.

“Obviously there is a lot of metal work in here,” Charpentier said. “What I like about metal work is that it goes hand in hand with glass. It’s hard work. It’s about problem solving. Things don’t always work out like you want to but you work through it and you come  out on top sometimes and sometimes you don’t.”

Even after spending a lot of time working on the pieces, Charpentier was not sure what to call his collection.

“I was telling my friend about how these were driving me nuts and she said why don’t you just name it under your skin,” Charpentier said.

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Christopher Anderson, junior communications major, writes down his thoughts about one of Ashton Ludden’s, senior fine arts major, prints at her opening art reception MEAT in Gilson Gallery on Friday. JONATHAN ELLIOT/THE BULLETIN

Ashton Ludden, senior fine arts major, held the opening reception for her show, MEAT, in Gilson Gallery on Friday. The show will continue to run until Sept 18.

The reception ended with a silent auction outside the gallery. One engraving piece, named “Food Stamps,” was completed by Ludden in 2008 and sold to the last bidder for $200.50.

Ludden’s art works displayed in her Senior Thesis Exhibition are mostly engraving and printmaking pieces.

The inspiration of making “MEAT” came from a conversation which Ludden had with a worker in a slaughterhouse the summer before, listening to his experience working on food processing.

“Before that morning, I never heard about how my food is processed and what goes behind it,” she said. “It really interested me that I knew so little about food, you know, such a vital thing for us to live.”

Since then, Ludden realized that the more she thought about food, the less she felt she knew about it. Thus, Ludden decided to start researching what goes into food processing in order to acknowledge the food processes, as well as gaining insights for her art.

Ludden studied food processesing through numerous readings and speaking with people in the meat industry.

“I have had a lot of interesting experience running into people in a town like Emporia, where there are a lot of local ranchers and farmers,” Ludden said.

For Ludden, MEAT was supposed to make people think about and acknowledge the food processing industry.

“The concept is really cool,” said Kiwamu Otsuka, physics major, after viewing the gallery.  “I didn’t think about meat, animals, creatures and stuff like that before. It makes me feel like I should know more about animals.”

Ludden initially came to Emporia State planning to study art therapy. She discovered that she was more interested in creating art and gradually found her gift in engraving and later her passion for printmaking.

After graduating from ESU in December, Ludden will accept an invitation from master engraver Martin Strolz in Höhere Technische Lehranstalten (HTL, also known as Higher Technical Institute) Metal Design School in Steyr, Austria.

She also plans to continue her studies in graduate school after studying abroad, pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking.

The proceeds of the auction will be split in two. One portion will go to The Humane Society, which is a national non-profit organization that celebrates animals and confronts animal cruelty. It protects all animals, through legislation, litigation, investigation, education, science, advocacy and fieldwork, according to their Web site.

The other portion will benefit The Kansas Rural Center, which supports the rural land and its people through research, education, and advocacy, according to KRC’s official Web site.

“MEAT” will still be available in Gilson Gallery located on the first floor of King Hall until next Friday.

Xinyi Chen/The Bulletin

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