Students, faculty and staff from all over UTM filled the Fine Arts Gallery on April 9 in a viewing and awards ceremony from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
The event opened the “Kit and Caboodle Juried Student Art Exhibition” that will be running from April 9 through April 26.
The exhibition, which featured art pieces in several different mediums, gave all UTM students (and not just art majors) the opportunity to submit their artwork to be judged by a panel of critics to determine the best submissions of each category and the best in show.
“We have a lot of non-majors,” said Chloe-Shawn Sumrok, a freshman Fine and Performing Arts major who submitted the abstract work “Neon Abstractia” for review. “Anybody is allowed to enter their work. They had to be made during the last two years, but most of the submissions were turned in on Friday [April 5].”
While there were well over 40 pieces of art at the exhibition, I chose to focus on a few that caught my attention. The most interesting piece of the evening was probably “His Story,” a series of sculptures by Chelsea Willis, a senior Fine and Performing Arts major from Greenfield.
The exhibit depicted the life of Jesus Christ with four small paper sculptures encapsulated within fish tanks that were themselves encapsulated within old copies of the Bible. The scenes depicted include the Nativity, the calling of the disciple Peter, the garden of Gethsemane and the death of Jesus.
Willis said that her inspiration for the sculptures, “began with the idea of creating a terrarium out of a large stack of books, but as I developed the idea I knew I wanted the terrarium to include a story. The best story I could think of was the life of Jesus Christ.”
“A book is supposed to communicate with its reader, and I believe art should communicate also.”
She added, “By using a book and clear containers, I could create an even more impactful experience for the viewer, bringing the story to life.” The series of sculptures represented a combined 20 hours of classwork and late night sessions.
The piece, I thought, was an excellent example of how the medium can harken back to and enhance the message. The sculptures, especially with the prominent use of the fish bowls, kept bringing to mind the famous line from the Gospel of Matthew, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!”
Among the more interesting of the mediums represented were tapestries, of which there were two fantastic works, both landscapes.
“Soft Landscape” by Bethany Walsh, a sophomore Fine and Performing Arts major, had a good range of oranges and browns to illustrate a desert landscape.
The polar opposite scene, an ocean landscape by Cat Sanchez, a junior Fine and Performing Arts major from Henderson, called “Breakers” also caught my eye.
“It’s not typically what you would call a traditional tapestry, just because of some elements that come off of the fiber background,” Sanchez recalled, “but it does classify as a tapestry.”
She told me that the piece was a combined three weeks of classwork, and that labor showed through in the handiwork.
Another unusual piece in the installation was a digital art piece that combined a poem with video footage of the artist training to perform particularly complicated cheer maneuvers.
The artist is Alyssa Kampf, a junior Graphic Design major, who told me, “that kind of medium [digital art] is more my major than these other art pieces. I thought it would be a great idea to enter a medium that’s like that. Another reason I wanted to do that is that cheer is not as acknowledged as other sports so I thought it would be another great way to explain that cheer is a sport.”
Kampf wanted to combine her art with her love of cheer, which she said she had been doing since she was a freshman in high school.
A few other pieces I felt were really interesting were James Lamb’s “Geometric Sun Set” and “Geometric Canyon,” which combined high-quality desert photography with geometric arabesques.
“Anura” by Delilah Presson, a junior Fine and Performing Arts major, was interesting as a traditional drawing for its sureal subject matter and interesting use of lighting.
“Pineapple Love” by Heather Wilson, a junior Fine and Performing Arts major, brought the vibrancy and delicate detail of watercolor to the exhibition in a portrait of two parrots.
Also of note, sophomore Fine and Performing Arts major Daphne LaGrone’s abstract piece “Duality” made excellent use of symmetry to render an abstract piece that was, rather than being insulting to the eyes as some artwork in the style can be, working within a form that contributed to quite pleasing visuals.
As the evening drew to a close, I discovered that I’m not quite as good an art critic as I had thought, as I didn’t predict very many winners.
First place in sculpture went to Willis and “His Story.”
Best in show went to Brittney Rose, junior Fine and Performing Arts major, for “Extravagant Evisceration,” which you can see alongside every other piece that was mentioned here up until April 26 in the Fine Arts Gallery. The gallery is open 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. You can visit the gallery all seven days of the week.
“Extravagant Evisceration” by Brittney Rose |Pacer Photo / Emily Wilson
