To a printmaking student, something as mundane as a newspaper is an opportunity for a revelation. That metaphysical musing was one of the themes in this week’s art galleries.
Leading the attractions is “Quotidian Encounters!” an entry by a group of printmaking students called the Black Dolphin Workshop Art Collective.
The theme is based on encounters with mundane objects that change our perceptions. Prints in the show depict everyday objects in unusual, or fanciful, contexts that challenge perceptions and heighten awareness of those objects.
“A quotidian encounter is that moment when you re-realize that everyday object again,” said Christian Salcedo Ward, the show’s organizer. “When you start to pay attention to those things you overlook after a while.”
In “Do All Couches Go To Heaven?” a silkscreen print by Alex Ennis Fridrich, the object in question is the ordinary living room couch. Fridrich recontextualizes it by showing old-fashioned couches abandoned or discarded as trash, leaving the viewer to reflect on the all too tragically brief life of a couch.
Ward’s piece, “Quotidian Persona 2,” depicts silkscreen prints made of photocopies of everyday objects such as a cassette tape, ski mask, oven mitt, camping knives, deflated soccer ball and more.
Ward said he likes photocopying his subject matter because it yields a “neutral eye” free of the constructions inherently imposed by a human eye.
He said, “A Xerox machine isn’t human, it’s not composing or thinking. You close the door, you can’t see it, and you press the button. It’s kind of an objective read.”
In the Merlino Gallery, senior ceramics student Michael Maguadog displays his exhibit “Into the Fire,” a series of “platter paintings” hung on the walls. This exhibit is unique in that the ceramic dinner plates are thought of as canvases and mounted on the walls like paintings.
Maguadog said his work is about capturing the movements and effects created by fire in the kiln. As Maguadog fires his pieces, he allows the glaze to flow in random directions to create colorful and non-linear patterns on the ceramic.
The ceramic itself is burned in some cases, through a process of refiring, to further capture the presence of fire.
Maguadog said his work represents “form over function” and are not necessarily utilitarian objects, although they could be used that way.
In the Gatov East Gallery, Karen Tepaz shows her exhibit “Stages,” which is about the transitions people go through in their lives.
Tepaz represents this through symbolic figures shaped like the letter “l.” As these shapes figuratively mature, they go through different frames, literally picture frames, which represent different transitional periods in a person’s life.
Tepaz organizes the frames into three stages: youth, young adulthood and experienced adulthood.
In the first stage, the frame acts as a support for the little shapes. In the next stage, a slightly larger shape steps onto a stool to go through another frame. In the last stage, a mature shape pushes other shapes through the last frame.
“I usually have this thing about beginning, middle and end. In the beginning you go through all these frames of life and you have all these ideas of what you want to do and go through and they’re kind of like blank pages,” Tepaz said. “At last you realize that in order to get your goals in life, you have to work for it.”
This week’s student art galleries take place daily until Thursday from noon to 5 p.m.
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