Seniors, MFA students display works at VCU galleries

The VCU School of the Arts Senior Show and the Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, which both opened with receptions last Friday, feature a wide range of works from the craft, painting and printmaking, kinetic imaging and sculpture departments.

The Senior Show’s pieces ranged from Brad Walker’s “Wallets”, which consists of a group of wallets set next to each other, to Ella Watson’s “Upgrade Renegade”, a video piece in which she replaces student’s belongings with glass sculptures. Watson recently won the dean’s award at the Anderson Gallery’s Juried Student Exhibitions.

Other pieces such as Maxwell O. Perry’s “Triple Suicide Flasher” made oblique political statements, while some such as “Stainless Steel Knuckles With Washington Monument Attachments”, by Mike Ohgren, were more direct in their message.

James Long featured work he has created for the Richmond Lucha Libre, a popular local wrestling league in which he wrestles as Kamikaze Kid.

“A lot of people think its really cool,” Long said. “A lot of people have responded well to the live-event aspect of it. There’s a lot of content in there; it’s not just squiggles and stuff.

“People think it’s cool that it’s art about something you can actually go see. You can actually run into the people making it on the street.”

The Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition being held in the Anderson Gallery displayed an even broader mixture of mediums. Allison P. Andrews’ giant “Zen Garden” (featuring the giant metal outline of a Hummer) sat next to Christopher Wideman’s photograph “Slip # 1.”

“It’s interesting to see many departments putting their work in one gallery,” one viewer said. “I wonder, is this design or art? I question what I’m looking at a lot. Some (of the) work has this experiential viewing thing going on and that is (interesting) also. I enjoy the mixture of different mediums.”

Colleen Ostrander’s “Mary Shelley,” a piece made of paper resembling a vertically aligned mountain range, was inspired by Ostrander’s reading of “Frankenstein.”

“I was interested in thinking about my mind as a sort of landscape,” she said. “I feel very influenced by Mary Shelley and reading about her life. In ‘Frankenstein’ she does a lot of psychological profiling as well. I was looking at the Alps and that’s what I was working off of.”

The Master of Fine Arts exhibit will continue through April 30, when it will be replaced by a second group of works that will be on display May 5 until May 15.