NEW ART CHAIR: SOUTHEAST'S RILEY MAKES HERSELF AT HOME

A 6-by-10-foot canvas dominates the living room in Sarah Riley's downtown Cape Girardeau house. The huge acrylic is titled "The Fourth of July and Blue Chair." Her 7-year-old daughter Elizabeth points to the swimmer in the painting and says, "That's me."

The new chairwoman of Southeast Missouri State University's department of art owns various pieces of furniture that have been custom-painted by live-in artists. The walls and tables are a gallery of family creativity.

Riley and her family recently moved from Columbia, where she was chairwoman of the department of art at exclusive Stephens College. Riley, who was also the program director at Stephens for four years and taught there a total of 11, left because "I needed to look around for a better position."

Which brought her to Southeast, where she took over for interim chairmen Hamner Hill and Sam Bishop, who guided the department after Bill Chamberlain stepped down in fall 1993.

Riley said the wide diversity of styles and media to be found in the faculty exhibit at the University Museum through this month demonstrates a university fulfilling its mission.

"We reflect what's going on in the larger art world. We have people from all over the country ... bringing people from Cape Girardeau and the area the artistic world."

Though Southeast has a reputation as a teaching school and offers a bachelor of science in art education, the largest percentage of its art students graduate with degrees in commercial art.

"Most are doing graphic design and illustration," Riley said. "Now this is a real bread-and-butter area."

Right now Southeast art students may earn a bachelor of arts in graphic design, two-dimensional design or three-dimensional design, or a 36-hour liberal-arts degree.

Within two years Riley expects the university to offer a bachelor of fine arts degree with national accreditation.

"The BFA is in the works, and we will have a consultant here in the spring to see about accreditation," she said.

"The faculty here is excellent. We need to get the students the top-notch degree."

Many art graduates don't limit themselves to traditional careers, Riley says. "Artists are very creative and problem-solving individuals."

One of her former students does "visual merchandising" for department stores. Another is a set designer for the Lyric Opera in Chicago.

You might be surprised at the jobs being filled by artists, she said.

"A lot of artists do simple jobs so their minds are free for creativity."

Riley grew up in Richmond, Va., and attended Virginia Commonwealth University. She also attended Temple University's Tyler School of Art, studying in Rome for a year.

She moved to Missouri with her then-husband, who still teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her master's degree and master of fine arts in painting and drawing are from Missouri.

Though her approach to art is decidedly contemporary, her work is grounded in classical influences.

"Myths tell the story of a culture," she says.

No matter what direction the creativity of Southeast art students might take them, they'll know how to draw, she said.

"Figurative drawing is as important as it ever was."

Riley's 11-year-old son William and Elizabeth attend Washington School. Her lone complaint about her new home so far is that William was unable to transfer directly into the school's gifted program from the same program in Columbia, which has one of the state's best school systems.

Riley's husband, Alan Nasland, teaches literature at Sanyo Gakuen University in Okayama City, Japan.

She likes what she has seen of the Cape Girardeau art community.

"For a community this size I have met some very active artists," she said.

She also is impressed with the city's architecture, particularly the beautiful old houses that still can be found. She lives in one.

"I have always wanted to live in a small, river town," she says. "When I saw I could live five blocks from the river and see the river from the third floor...."