An art gallery in Grinnell will be featuring the creativity of visitors alongside the artwork in its new “Open to Interpretation” exhibit. Leslie Wright, the director of the Faulconer Gallery on the Grinnell College campus, describes it as sort of an open invitation to visitors.

“To add their own comments, interpretations, notes, poetry, drawings — whatever they would like to add in their response to a work or more than one work on view,” Wright says.

Wright and the gallery’s curator of community outreach will put the material visitors leave behind in binders and make weekly selections from the binders which will be displayed alongside the artwork this summer.

“This is very cutting edge,” Wright says. “it’s welcoming the public into the process.”

Wright and her colleague have selected paintings, prints, sculptures and some “intriguing objects” from the gallery’s vault to display through the summer for this interactive exhibit. The Faulconer Gallery is located in a Grinnell College building designed by two of the world’s most famous architects. The gallery is open to the public seven days a week, from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Vernon Faulconer, a 1961 graduate of Grinnell College, is a Texas oil and gas entrepreneur who donated the money for the gallery nearly two decades ago. He and his wife, Amy, are considered among of the world’s top 20 art collectors.

(Reporting by Chris Johnson, KGRN, Grinnell; additional reporting by Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)