Faculty Show 2021

Judy and I drove to Valencia today to see a faculty show. I have four paintings in the exhibition but hadn’t gotten a chance to see them on site.

Mine hung together on two walls near a corner. When I saw them, I had the usual reaction: pieces I considered somewhat weak looked stronger than previously favored paintings; I wished that I could take them down and rework passages that now looked awkward. Judy reassured me that they looked fine and said that the largest oil appealed to her now that it hung in a larger space.

The show featured a wide range of media including prints, sculpture, conceptual photography, painting, and ceramics. Artists working in the same medium exercised their talents in opposing styles. I saw abstract, semi-abstract, and realistic paintings and drawings.

Some works had a conceptual bent. They featured imagery that repeated with variations in grid compositions.

The ceramicists made bowls and plates decorated by shell forms and nature imagery (a bird, leaves on stems).

Two sculptors exhibited shallow relief wall pieces featuring layered forms. A third showed ceramics that looked like mineralized fossils or the fragmented remnants of geological events.

The arrangement of the show felt harmonious despite the varied styles and media. The curator took time to find formal connections between separate bodies of work. And low-level lighting created a subdued mood throughout the exhibition.

As we walked back to our car, I felt an urge to see more work by individual artists in the show. I’d only gotten quick tastes of each exhibitor’s work. However, one-person shows of a faculty member’s work have rarely graced the gallery. Internal conflicts would ensue if some professors received the opportunity while others did not.

The curator wisely bestows solo shows only to outside artists. If I want to see more, I’ll have to go elsewhere.

Better Than Expected

I taught my Drawing II class how to use realistic imagery to create abstractions. I told them to layer images transparently, to erase lines to create hybrid shapes, to pick out dark accents, and to develop tones, patterns, and textures related to the subject matter.

I laid out a still life of toys on the stage in case they couldn’t come up with their own imagery. It featured a sad clown statue, a monster ball, a piggy bank, a wooden cat, a pull dog toy, a bank in the shape of a dog in police uniform, a skull, a plastic toy horse, a ceramic pumpkin, and a porcelain apple…You know, the usual stuff…I drew from that set up and showed students the composition in progress.

2139 (class demo), graphite, 9×6″

Today was the first time I taught this lesson to a college class, so I wasn’t sure how it would go. They did better than I expected. I had mixed traditional skills with abstraction over the last few weeks, so today’s class wasn’t too much of a leap for them. And I think that not having to reproduce visual reality came as a relief to most students.

Only six out of nine showed up today (one on time), so I had time to finish a colored pencil abstraction I’ve been working on for the last two weeks.

2138, colored and graphite pencil, 5×3″

I also tried to sneak a peak at the faculty show, but the gallery doors were locked, and the lights were turned off. (I missed the opening this Thursday as I had a doctor’s appointment.) I’ve got a few paintings in the exhibition and wanted to see how they held up in a group show.

The coming week may be less stressful. I’d like to take Judy to campus for a viewing of the show. We haven’t been getting out much lately (Covid concerns, dealing with “life event” issues), so it might be fun break the isolation routine.

I had one lonely Drawing I student working away at portraiture today. At one point, she asked me if she should set up in front of a mirror to draw a self-portrait. I told her to draw from a selfie instead. To do her face justice, she would have had to remove her mask. The numbers in Florida have improved lately, but one student missed today because his mother had been exposed to an infected co-worker. And the Drawing I student in question had stayed home earlier in the semester because her sister had tested positive. I didn’t want to push our collective luck…

I recently finished a self-portrait in which I wear a mask (another in-class demo). I’ve considered doing a portrait series of masked men and women but find the prospect unsettling. A thought popped into my head: why not paint a series of people showing just eyes, foreheads and hairdos? Cropped portraits might be a metaphor for the constraints of living through a pandemic. Thick, gray frames might contribute to a view-from-the-bunker effect.