By snoadmin
Audra Graziano, Dane Klingaman and Cody Norris come together for “Three New Paths,” a collection of deep, thought-enticing paintings in the Werby student art gallery.
Graziano is a first-year in the drawing and painting contemporary practice program and is interested in creating abstracted space by repeating handmade marks and creating density.
She takes nothing but color and charges it onto a canvas to create a texture and density in her pieces.
The method of painting, which includes the globbing of paint, creates the texture and forces the colors to be as intense and live as when you first squeeze them out of the tube. She then blends the colors by performing repeated hand motions that create the boxes, lines and shapes her art consists of.
Graziano’s “Sprawl” consists of smaller brush strokes that seem to be crosshatched on the canvas. There is no white space on the panel, every inch of it is covered in thick globs of paint.
She also paid attention to the colors she used in her paintings. A lot of them are complimentary, like the blue and orange of “Sprawl” or contrasting from light to dark.
Klingaman explores time and motion through documented methods of art-making. He draws inspiration from the stages of the multi-discipline art-making, such as photography and sculpture.
The six pieces consist of photographs, collages and acrylic paint put together to entice the audience’s thought process and recognize the manipulation of a photograph.
He takes an existing piece and adds paint or strips of paper to it and manipulates it slightly to make it different.
Norris focuses on the childhood beliefs that are fed to us by our parents and how those beliefs confront the reality that is adulthood.
“As kids, our parents feed all this stuff to kids, and it’s bulls–t,” Norris said. “[The paintings] show the allusion of what we are told and what life really is.”
His paintings consist of a variety of mixed media to express a childhood memory like hot wheels or a childlike drawing of a house.
Norris’ “Art Merely” is a large mixed media panel with an array of rustic colors and the words “product of product” painted all over it. A chain on the left side of the painting is the only item on the panel to make it look realistic.
According to Helgard Niewisch, a docent at the University Art Museum, is modern and it sends the audience a message when you first lay eyes on it.
“[The painting] is kind of you guess it and get it in a positive way,” Niewisch said. “It speaks to you and it doesn’t have an old fashioned way of talking, it tells you what it wants to say.”
Art merely draws a lot of attention from the public because of its size and the definition of the media incorporated into the painting. “Art Merely” has layers of different media that create a lot of the texture. The direction in which Norris positions his words guide the eye of the audience through the painting.
Norris’ collection consists of a lot of rejuvenated paintings that he has worked on for months. His large pieces hold the audiences attention because you can try to analyze it but its simply enticing due to the method of paint.
For each piece there is a long and extensive purpose behind it. “Three New Paths” is a rare case because you can try to go in circles trying to analyze what the artist is trying to say and still come up with nothing. It’s very pleasing to the eye and will definitely have you in thought.
“Three New Paths” will be on display until Feb. 11 in the Werby student art gallery. The student art galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; and noon to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays.
