By University Art Museum celebrated the grand opening of a new plaza entrance and three new installments to the collection in the New East Gallery at California State University, Long Beach on Saturday.
“We really want students to understand that they have a museum on campus that’s available to them as a cultural resource,” Shefali Mistry, the Public Relations and Marketing Coordinator at the UAM, said. “But we’re really working across disciplines to make sure that students in every major are interested in what we’re doing here.”
Mistry said that the artists are chosen for their artistic practice.
To make way for the permanent collection gallery, a 3,000-square-foot expansion into the east wing of the Steve and Nini Horn Center was added to the UAM.
Through the main entrance and to the left, Los Angeles-based artist Jessica Rath, is featured with her exhibition, “Jessica Rath: A Better Nectar.” The piece utilizes polyester resin fiberglass sculptures, light and sound to create a human-scaled experience from an underground nest.
“[I found a nest] on the ground, and there were thousands of bees tumbling over each other and making a very strange yet beautiful noise,” Rath said. “I wanted to make a score about that work.”
Students of the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music Chamber Choir, led by Jonathan Talberg, performed “bee scores,” which were created in collaboration with composer Robert Hoehn. The compositions are made up of human voices interpreting bee communication and were recorded by the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music.
“I’m a big fan of sculptures and things that come to life,” Hyla Rachwal, a sophomore majoring in political science at CSULB said. She likes the “Staminal Evolution” piece because “it has this sound and you look inside of the round pieces and listen to what it sounds like inside of the sculpture,” she said
Erick Zepeda, a freshman majoring in film at CSULB, scrutinized the art pieces and said he thinks the perspective of the bees is both interesting and different
“I just find all this time for research on the piece really interesting,” he said. “I do enjoy looking at art. It’s a nice experience.”
To the right after entrance, a huge ball of items wrapped in string rests on a naked mannequin in the print appropriately titled “Consumed” by Mary Mattingly. Museum and Curatorial Studies graduate students Brittany Binder, Sinead Finnerty-Pyne and Amy Kaeser curated this piece.
Binder said that she chose this piece because of its message. “Consumed” represents how the small things, including everything people consume, purchased and the resources they rely on, add up.
Binder said the piece looks into the past, present and future implications of mass consumption and re-contextualizes every day consumer objects into new forms.
Consumerism is one of the major causes of an environmental crisis and Mattingly’s work critiques and recognizes the relationship between consumerism and society, according to a press release.
All of these exhibitions will be displayed until April 12.
