Professor Emmanuel Kojo Sakyi, Rector of the Ho Polytechnic Monday urged the Industrial Art Department to explore and exploit its capabilities for gain.

He said the department held enormous glitter, just as gold, and its many dimensions must be unearthed and marketed.

Professor Sakyi was speaking on Monday in Ho, at the opening of the maiden Art Exhibition of the Department mounted at the G.M. Afeti Auditorium basement on the Polytechnic campus.

He said management of the Polytechnic would support the department to go commercial and promised tackling its infrastructural and logistics problems.

The exhibition was under the theme, “Beauty In Trash”.

Many of the exhibits were crafted from different kinds of trash, paper, sachet water packs, mobile phone unit refill cards and metal scraps.

Atsukofi Akaba, an intern at the Department, used metal scraps picked at a rubbish dump at Mawuli School in Ho to make decorative pieces, cutlery and bottle holders.

He also used spent scratch cards to make various logos and art formations.

Mrs Rejoice Iroko, a Senior Technician at the Department picked water sachet packs and with colour, created formations she said depicting moods, such as aggression, innocence and excitement.

A sculpture by Mokpokpo Adja-Koadade, Lecturer in Sculpturing, depicting the lust for money among Ghanaians, was a major attraction.

Dr Noble Dzegblor, a Lecturer and Exhibition Committee Chairman said the Department which was only three semesters old, held a lot of promise for the Polytechnic.

He listed ceramics, sculpturing, textiles, graphic design as some of the areas of study at the department.

Dr Dzegblor said the exhibits were for sale and hinted that there would be periodic exhibitions from time to time.

He said all art works had philosophies behind them stressing that an “art must communicate something or it is not an art work”.