The artists featured in “The Fifth Wheel” exhibit at the Linfield Gallery offered interesting insight on their pieces on Saturday, March 12.

Sarah Nance couldn’t attend the event because her salt display was destroyed. The other artists were visibly excited to see their work in the campus gallery.

Julia Oldham, Alanna Risse, and Jane Schiffhauer were ready and willing to share their thought processes and inspirations with the crowd.

“The work I make is about the relationship between humans and animals.” said Oldham.

Oldham created an animation piece that captured the perspective of a whale that was dying at the hands of Captain Ahab’s first mate.

She later expanded why this scene piqued her creative interest. Telling the crowd that the piece was based on a specific chapter from Herman Melville’s famous novel “Moby Dick” called ‘The Sphinx,’ and she wanted to give a voice to the whale.

Risse is the creative mind behind the 20-foot whale that the Linfield students seem to enjoy studying in.

She decided to recreate the whale from “Moby Dick” as a kid-friendly sitting area because the story of Moby Dick was so exhausting and captivating.

Jane Schiffhauer also addressed how her piece, a net woven out of different materials, was a reference about the relationship between Moby Dick’s protagonist, Ishmael, and a shipmate, Queequeg.

Schiffhauer said, “Issues of intercommunication” were definitely on her mind as she was weaving the net.

In essence, the art has made a strong impact on the Linfield community as a whole.