By Marielle Evangelista, News Correspondent and Anna Marden, News Staff

Northeastern University isn’t exactly known for its involvement in the art world. Yet, it was Northeastern student Matt Rhodes, a sophomore music industry major, who came up with the idea for Sand Reckoner’s Sensory Exhibition, an event that combined art, music and film. The exhibition took place Saturday, March 19 at Fenway Center on St. Stephen St.

Rhodes, a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist for the psychedelic-blues band Sand Reckoner, had the idea to combine a live album recording for his band with an art show and invite people to watch. Rhodes worked with Brittan Williams, a senior music industry major and president of Green Line Records, and Kaitlin Brewer, a painting major at Massachusetts College of Art and Design; they organized the multi-media event that incorporated music, live painting, a giant kaleidoscope, video images from the Northeastern class “Composing with Image and Sound,” and face painting.

“I thought it went pretty well. We had a little over 200 people come,” Rhodes said. “People stayed much longer than I thought they were going to. We were expecting people to come in and out as the day went on, because we were playing music for so long and recording most of the day, but a lot of people stayed there the entire time.”

Rhodes had a lot in mind for the event. He said the purpose of the mixed media was to create a “blending overlap of senses” for the audience.

“Just having music by itself is really, really great, but I feel like you can make it so much more if you include a lot of different aspects with it, and that’s where the visuals and creating artwork on site really helped out,” Rhodes said.

The majority of art on display was psychedelic-themed. The paintings were alive with swirls of color, and the images projected on the wall included scenes from old movies and artistic videos that reflected the strangeness of the human subconscious – like projections of cartoon words coming out of people’s mouths.

“Northeastern should have more of this stuff,” said Sophie Greenspan, a sophomore graphic design major who attended the event. “There’s not much of an art scene here. It’s nice to see this happening.”

There was a giant 2-by-5 foot kaleidoscope in one corner of the church, which was built by Brewer and her sister, and a table set up with free mini kaleidoscopes for the attendees.

“When we were talking about the concept of this show we worked in kaleidoscopes – it’s a multisensory way of looking at things,” Brewer said.

Attendees were invited to get involved with the interactive art pieces that were going on: People could contribute to a group art piece using water guns filled with crayola paint, watch as artists did live painting or have their skin painted by an artist.

“The body artist was working pretty much nonstop the whole time,” Brewer said. “She was doing her own original art on everyone it was a really neat thing to have.”

Rhodes said he thinks the Fenway Center is a Northeastern resource that “isn’t being utilized enough.” The advantage of the exhibit being held in a church, he said, was the type of sound the space allowed, such as reverb. Rhodes is happy with the way the recording came out, and said both Sand Reckoner’s loud songs and acoustic songs sounded great.

“[The church] was perfect,” Rhodes said. “I’ve always wanted to record in a really, really big open space like a barn or a church.”

Rhodes said the band is now working on mixing the recording, which he hopes to release in the next month. He said one raw track is already available online to download for free at Sand Reckoner’s bandcamp page.

In addition to the audio recording, the organizers of the Sensory Exhibit arranged for a number of videographers and photographers to document the show starting in its planning stages through to the cleanup and breakdown of the event.

Rhodes said they’re going to line up the audio and video recordings and release it as a video series of the event.

The live recording and multimedia event went well enough that the organizers said they are hoping to host similar shows with more bands and more artists.

“We hope that we’ve started something,” Brewer said.

David Johnson, a friend of Rhodes and sophomore at The University of Delaware came all the way to Boston just for the event; he said he really enjoyed the fusion of all the different mediums.

“Certainly, this year, the exhibition has laid the groundwork for them to do something bigger in the future,” Johnson said.

– News Staff Annie Henderson contributed to this report.