Colorful. If one word could be used to describe the latest exhibit at Hopkins Hall, it would be … colorful.
Last night was the unveiling of the Edith Fergus-Gilmore Scholarship Competition, which displays the best work some of Ohio State’s art students have to offer.
The 16 students whose works are featured in the exhibit were chosen out of 96 students who entered the competition. The pieces on display are those of undergraduate seniors and graduate students in art.
The works are so diverse and unique that it is hard for observers to keep their eyes on one piece without getting distracted by the sights and sounds of all of the other pieces of artwork on display.
“In a time where there is so much confusion in the world, it’s so good to see students do such wonderful work,” said David Covey, a professor in art.
The work is definitely worth checking out. The students have outdone themselves by taking their ideas to a new level.
Jonathan Tepperman, first-year graduate student in glass blowing, is a prime example of an artist featured in the exhibit who — by using a variety of media and creative thinking — portrays ideas in an unusual manner.
In his piece cleverly titled “Tickle Me Road Kill,” Tepperman uses his glass-blowing skills to create almost sexual pieces, placing them in clay in the back of a toy Tonka truck to show how everything in life is roadkill. Tepperman said he has always liked to focus on the absurd and obscene, which he feels are heavy issues. By mixing glass with other media, Tepperman tests the limits of glass as a medium.
“Because of the way you can manipulate glass, I am able to really test its limits. I can show grotesque roadkill with such a shiny, beautiful medium,” Tepperman said. “I like to pull people in with the glass and then hit them with the other material.”
Some of the other artists’ work maintained the use of just one medium. For example, Christin Hutchinson, a senior in art, has three eye-catching paintings of three different women whose images she chose from magazines. The expressions of each woman are rather grotesque, but they are just oozing with character.
Using acrylic on panel boards, Hutchinson makes great use of color to draw in an observer. Once closer it is easy for the observer to see the emphasis on expression and sexuality in the pieces.
“I was really trying to focus on character and expression in these pieces,” Hutchinson said. “I tried to put less emphasis on background and really focus on the facial expressions and characters in the paintings.”
One student turned to his youthful love of baseball card as his subject matter for his piece. Michael Tanzillo, senior in photography, made his own baseball card. The card has an image of Tanzillo just as a normal baseball card would, but his statistics consist of his grades at Ohio State. He even went as far as to add that he “Writes: Right,” meaning instead of batting right-handed, he writes right-handed. This kind of creativity is consistent throughout the entire exhibit.
One student turned to his family as his subject matter. Michael Stickrod, a senior in sculpture, took video of his family in two short video clips: “Vacation Money” and “The Stature Of A Man In 5 Parts.”
Stickrod said working with motion picture is still working with three-dimensional space, therefore maintaining the idea of sculpture.
“You take the time to record all of the footage, but then you get to edit and fine tune the work, which is just like sculpting,” Stickrod said.
Through his videos Stickrod was able to portray how his mother used painting as an escape mechanism when coping with her father’s death — the escape being a vacation. It is the profound ideas such as this that make the exhibit, as a whole, successful.
The exhibit will be on display through March 14.
