Wednesday night, six first year art students of the university's Master of Fine Arts program proved that the Student Union, commonly a place to meet and eat, can also be a place to showcase creative innovation.
Until recently, the Student Union was not commonly thought of as a place that holds new, exciting and enlightening contemporary art exhibits. But last night in room 310 - now an art gallery for students, clubs, cultural centers and the like-fine arts graduate students held an opening reception for their exhibit, "ART." The exhibit, on display until Oct. 8, features art of various mediums from the six members of the entering class in the School of Fine Arts.
Jenn Dierdorf, a first-year graduate student majoring in sculpture, helped organize the exhibition's opening and is trying to promote the use of the space for further exhibits. Her works in the show include three graphite and colored pencil drawings titled, "Stream of Consciousness." She also has a sculpture on display suspended from the ceiling made from an old painting book and sewn together with invisible thread. "Developing form through repetition," Dierdorf said of the hanging sculpture, "I wanted to let the materials decide the shape," said Dierdorf.
She explained that most of her work is about "developing form through repetition."
Excited about the exhibit and the gallery, she hopes the space will help unite the art department with the main campus.
"There's such a connection between art and other subjects," she said. "Once you really get into it, you start to see that."
Matt Jensen, a first-year graduate student majoring in photography and sculpture, has a three-part photography project and a three-piece sculpture on display. Two components of the sculpture dominate the room by taking up a good portion of the floor and involve long, white, rectangular blocks topped with dust and needles of White Pine arranged in no particular fashion. After experimenting with pine needles in the studio at the Visual Arts Research Center (VARC) at the Depot campus, Jensen discovered his accidental sculpture.
"This was the mistake," he said. "It's what was left behind."
A stark contrast to Jensen's free moving, haphazardly arranged sculpture is an installation by Valerie Garlick,a first-year graduate majoring in photography and video. Her piece, titled "Haunt," consists of six digital prints of herself in different rooms of a Harlem apartment. The dark red colors, daunting shadows and the ghost-like figure that she created around the image of herself in the prints, make it clear why the creator gave the work its title.
"I was mostly inspired by old horror films like, `The Mask of the Red Death,'" Garlick said.
She said the photographs focus on saturation of color, transparency of identity and agoraphobia, or one's fear of public places.
Located in the art building the Contemporary Art Galleries (CAG) hosts a wide array of contemporary exhibits that non-art students rarely know about or see. According to Dierdorf, Barry Rosenberg, CAG's director, makes efforts to bring as many up and coming artists to the space as possible. Though she and the other graduate artists hope to draw students to this exhibit, they also hope it will open the welcoming doors of the CAG and the VARC to all members of the campus community.
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