By snoadmin
This week’s student art galleries are a perfect window into answering the question, “What is art?” Through these exhibits, the viewer is able to see art for its diversity in purpose and meaning.
For artist Yassaman Farmani, art can be political. Her installation features two rows of broaches and black ribbons along the three gallery walls. The broaches are copper pieces with enameling and decal print overlays. They depict people killed in student protests after the last presidential elections in Iran. The ribbons are for students whose pictures were not available.
“It was really emotional because I grew up in Iran,” Farmani said. “When I saw that I just had to do something about it. That started this whole thought process of how am I going to use my metals major to show what has happened.”
Farmani said her art is inherently political. By raising her voice through her art, she hopes to commemorate the people who lost their lives and draw attention to the personal toll of the tragedy on the students and their families.
Farmani’s installation is also a way to document an event and help write a history. That is an aspect of art carried forward by featured artist Lydia Hall.
Hall is a metals major whose exhibit embodies the idea of art as a documentary. Her art is inspired by her own experiences as an artist and documents what she went through in doing her work.
Hall’s wiry structures often look like respirators and allude to the mask she wore while working with paint and metals. The exhibit is remarkable for its ability to use metal to create light and airy structures by weaving wires.
“I weave metal in and out instead of using fibers, and then I cross over between the solid of the metal and into the fluid and openness of the fiber,” she said.
The grandiose purpose of her art is to examine breathing and time. Hall said that as she breathed through her respirator, she became aware of time in a new way. Hall’s exhibit is meditative and hopes to inspire its audience to stop, breathe, and notice the world around them.
The exhibit by Susan Leighliter, an artist majoring in fiber, best combs spirituality and art. Leighliter’s exhibit is a medley of eastern artistic traditions. She uses fibers to weave incredibly complex tapestries, kimonos and more.
“It’s about my process of meditation. When I work, it’s like a meditation,” she said. “All my pieces are really labor-intensive. The process of making these, just to get the materials ready, is a meditation for me.”
Lastly, artist Rebecca Homapour’s art exhibits a palpable love for wood. Homapour defines art as, “The feeling that you get from something, whether it’s a memory, it’s a poem you read or if it’s something you look at. It could be any of those things.”
Her exhibit is a collection of wood pieces that emphasizes the texture and grain of the wood and seems to glorify its roughness. Most of the pieces retain much of the naturalness of the wood and are about “valuing its natural beauty,” according to Homapour.
Homapour said that she is drawn to wood because, “You don’t know what you’re going to get from it.” That unpredictable, hard-to-control nature makes the material feel “free” to Homapour.
“With painting and drawing … you know what’s there and you can plan for it and you know how it’s going to turn out. With wood, you don’t,” she said.
The weekly student art galleries are located between the FA2 and FA3 buildings from noon and 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
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