BROOKINGS – South Dakota State University’s Department of Economics is celebrating its move to Harding Hall with an open house starting at 4:30 p.m. Monday.

The department offers majors in business economics, agricultural business, economics, entrepreneurial studies, and agricultural and resource economics. The majors and 10 allied minors prepare graduates for many business-centered careers as well as for graduate and professional degrees.

In addition to housing the faculty, Harding Hall has two classrooms on the ground floor including the First Dakota National Bank e-Trading Lab, an experiential learning environment for classes in business finance, investments, agricultural finance, agricultural marketing, business and economics analytics courses as well as supporting the Student Managed Investment Fund and POET Commodity Trading Pool experiential activities.

South Dakota State University School of Design faculty member Molly Wicks will talk about her commissioned artwork, “connect. interveave, evolve.” at 5:30 p.m. The piece hangs in Harding Hall’s entry. It is the first of many pieces planned by the Campus Public Artwork Committee for new and renovated buildings.

Her artwork was influenced by the South Dakota economic flow. Geographic information system mapping of paths of movement provided an organic grid for this multidimensional piece. Wicks explores their austere dimensionality through subtractive form and color where the painted negative spaces react to both metallic and painted coatings with light and shadow further engaging the viewer.

A significant focus of the work is color and the vibrations, tensions and harmonies that occur within color relationships. These relationships are studied in hopes of generating visual compositions that evoke sound.

Wicks, a native of Brookings, earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Minnesota and Master of Fine Arts at Washington State University.