Gabriel Welsch jokes about how the atmosphere resembled a junior high school dance. However, these were not seventh graders congregating near the walls of their school gym.

They were graduate students meeting together to discuss an unprecedented collaboration between visual arts MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) candidates and their English counterparts.

At this initial meeting, there was a tendency to congregate with people in the same field and to shy away from mixing. Hence the comparison to a junior high school dance by Welsch, lecturer and assistant director for communications for the English department.

Then the ideas began to roll.

English and visual arts graduate students have combined their paintings and poetry, short stories and sculptures to create an exhibit that intertwines both fields. Intersections will open today at the Adam & Art Gallery, 126 S. Allegheny St., Bellefonte. An open house will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. tomorrow.

"This creates a wonderful bridge between two colleges," said Thom McGovern, assistant director of the School of Visual arts and associate professor of art. "Seldom do you get two graduate programs working together on this scale. It is quite a unique venture."

Each student found a partner in the other discipline whose work corresponded with his or her own. Marla Jaksch (graduate-art education) and Michael Paulson (graduate-English) decided to work together after discussing their interests and sharing their work.

"He gave me a poem, and I responded with a painting. We continued on this way until we started weaving them together," Jaksch said. She and Paulson both feel that it important to find their voices in their work.

Sheila Squillante (graduate-English) has incorporated her poetry into a hands-on display of a mock wedding-night bedroom. One poem will be printed on the bed-sheets.

"Poems I am using for the collaboration come from personal experience. They are definitely image-based," she said. "We are working with the ambiguities with marriage themes."

Squillante found her participation in Intersections to be both "exciting" and "nerve-wracking."

"My poems are being dismantled," she said. "It is one thing to have them in a journal in a private little space, but this is much more public."

There will also be performances and readings during the course of the exhibit, which will run through April 7.

In an attempt to create ties with the community, canned food donations will be collected. "An important intersection is between the artists and the community," Welsch said. The donations will be given to the local food bank.

Intersections will mark the beginning of inter-school artistic collaborations. "Both programs wanted the graduate students to do this," Welsch said. "It marks a year of collaboration for these two programs that we hope will continue."