Robert Else Gallery Student Works

 

The Robert Else Gallery in Kadema Hall currently houses the winning artwork for the Annual Student Awards Show. Inside the gallery contains some beautiful works and display a variety of mediums used, from sculpting to painting. The following pieces listed in this blog post were ones that resonated the most with me.

Amari C. Moore, Alive Again, 2023, oil paint on paper and canvas.

This gorgeous painting was done by Amari C. Moore. The subject in the painting is lovingly painted with vibrant colors in bold strokes, the paint confidently layered. The paint has been layered on in a mixture of blended and rough strokes, giving the artwork a painterly feeling with movement as the strokes follows the contour's of the subject's face. Orange and yellow brighten the subject's face. These colors err too saturated to be passed off as anything other than a stylistic choice, but they unify the complexion with the bright orange shirt the subject wears. Their face is pleasantly upbeat with a soft smile upturning the corners of their mouth. Their braided hair frames their face, but the headwrap or head band they wear has not been defined; instead negative space is left to view the background. The suggestion of the accessory is clear, and the white of the background contrast breaks up the bright colors. I later learned this was a family member of the artist, which would explain the loving attention given to this piece. You can feel with warmth in the colors, the expressions, and the love that painted this painting.

Layla Schultz, Sacred and Divine, 2023, woodblock print.

Woodblock prints are a favorite medium of mine, so this one grabbed my attention right away. Once I read the information tag I was delighted to confirm that it was, in fact, a woodblock print. Woodblock printing originated in China in Antiquity, and was used across East Asia and then the rest of the world throughout history. The very famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai was a woodblock print and is an excellent example of how woodblock printing evolved from its utilitarian roots to be used as an artistic medium. 

This brightly colored print by Layla Schultz is eye-catching. The vibrant orange-red and stark white demands one's attention. The abstract pattern is seemingly mirrored, the left side is the same as the right but flipped. However, there are subtle differences in the patterns on each side. On the left side, look at the lower left of the print. This area of the pattern has subtle lines reaching out that aren't found on the right. Similarly, in the top right hand corner, there are similar dainty line details that deviate from the pattern established on the left.

There may be more subtle, purposeful deviations, but these are the ones that stood out to me. I like the fact that you can draw a diagonal between the two, because they are still mostly flipped, just vertically and horizontally. As for the rest of the pattern, it's hard for me to decern the meaning of the patterns, so I am not going to ascribe a concrete meaning to this print based off its slightly cryptic title. I will describe what I think I see, which is a person on a throne, which does make a little sense if it has to do with the divine. However, it may just be a beautiful abstract pattern that may or may not suggest the intention of a figure. It is beautiful either way, I just love the bold reddish orange. 

For A Moment I was Glorious, Cyrus Hunter, 2023, ceramic.

My favorite piece, however, was this ceramic sculpture titled For A Moment I was Glorious, by Cryus Hunter. I was shocked to see that this wasn't a product of woodworking and was ceramic. It's amazing, really, the amount of detail given to the texture and painting in this piece. The precision and technical skills displayed are stunning! The sculpture appears to be of a burnt out match, and its apt name implies the brief moment of brilliance when a match is lit, before it burns itself out and leaves behind fragile charcoal. I cannot overstate how much the technical details impressed me. I spent a great deal of time gawking as I circled the sculpture. It truly looked like wood to me, and I could not find a "tell" that hinted at its ceramic nature. In fact, the very first time I walked past it before I took the time to really look at it, I thought how unusual it was to see woodworking in a student gallery. Imagine the shock when I read it was ceramic.

The sculpture is interesting to me because when a match burns out, it is because it has run out of wood. A match will burn down into a stub. The sculpture shows a blackened match head and body still intact, implying this match was blown out, rather than naturally burning away. This is an important detail. We have all heard the term "burn out" and know what it entails: peak performance at one point, and downhill before you know it, struggling to simply get by. I can see that represented in a burnt down match. Peak performance can sometimes feel great and give one a sense of being on top of the world, so to speak. But instead, it comes across that the flame was extinguished by the external forces instead of a natural progression into nothing. 

Could this mean that the artist is referencing a time where they felt on top of the world, but their fire was put out due to someone else, leaving only a half burnt match behind, forever changed by that fire? A person could easily blow out a match. Similarly, the environment can blow out a match if it is windy enough, attributing this downfall to forces that were out of the artist's hands in a much different way than the behavior of another person would have been; you can demand answers from a person, or attempt to reason with them. You can't do that with life. Because of that I feel the latter interpretation is slightly sadder.

Regardless of the meaning the fact remains that the match has been irrevocably altered and damaged. It is a blackened shadow of what it once was. The damage will forever indicate the highest point of its life, as well as the aftermath of such brilliance.