When consenting to an interview about her new exhibition at the Patterson Gallery, Ashlee Butanis noted one guideline: It would have to take place after 8:15 p.m.

That's because full-time student Butanis (senior-art) is also a full-time mom who puts her daughter to bed at 8 every night.

Butanis, 22, said her experiences with her 22-month-old daughter and motherhood in general inspired her art that will be exhibited at the Patterson Gallery starting Sunday, Nov. 16.

Pregnancy, childbirth -- in particular c-sections -- breastfeeding and babies are the basis of most of the pieces in the exhibition.

As Butanis tackles motherhood, she is also working toward a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking, so most of the featured art in this exhibition is based in that medium.

Some unique metal pieces can also be seen in the exhibition, in which Butanis applied white paint to pieces of metal, then added watercolors on top of it.

Butanis said that the technique was really just a "fluke" as she searched for a nontoxic way to put color on metal.

James Thurman, assistant professor of art, said he has taught Butanis in a couple of his metals courses over the years.

"She's a mom, and I get a sense of her really working through a lot of those issues of balancing, like, what is a mother's relationship with her daughter?" Thurman said. "I think there are stereotypes that everything's warm and fuzzy, but the day-to-day life is really very challenging."

Butanis decided on the title "Airing Out My Dirty Laundry" for the exhibition in the Patterson Gallery.

"I wanted a title that described me talking about something personal," she said. "Maybe this isn't something that people would want to hear or feel comfortable asking about."

With that in mind, she took some steps to make the 20 to 30 pieces in the exhibition more approachable for the audience, she said.

"Even if people don't like the imagery that I'm dealing with, I use a lot of colors to engage the viewer, like adding paint or textures that you can touch or feel," she said. "It's not just something that you look at. Or, you can hopefully just like it for the color if you don't like the image."

Butanis' content is one of the strengths in her work, Thurman said. He added many other artists might depict images of babies and mothers in their art, but they seldom exhibit truthful depictions.

"I think she gives insight into that range of emotions that is much more realistic and much more honest," he said. "Maybe it's a brutal honesty."

Robin Gibson, associate professor of art, taught Butanis in several of her printmaking classes.

"As a person, Ashlee is very quiet and reserved," Gibson said. "But in her artwork, she provides a window through which we, the viewer, can see and understand some of her most private fears about childbirth and childbearing."

Thurman said Butanis is following the "historical overlap" of printmaking and metalworking in her art. This overlapping technique is seen when Butanis applies white paint to pieces of metal, then adding watercolors on top of it, he said.

Thurman complimented Butanis' ability to converge different methods of art to create interesting pieces.

"She's treating metal like paper, but then using the properties of metal to do things that paper couldn't do as far as its structure and strength," Thurman said. "I think that adds interest and draws you into the subject matter."