Innovation in the spot light

The Juried Design and Juried Kinetic
Imaging exhibitions kicked off Friday
at the Anderson Gallery, featuring
works by more than 40 artists from
the departments of kinetic imaging,
communication arts, fashion design and
interior design.

The theme of the design portion
of the exhibition was inspired by the
37th annual Southern Graphics Council
Conference, hosted by vcuarts, which is
taking place March 26 through March
29. The Southern Graphics Council’s
concepts of replication, reproduction,
multiplication and distribution were
all evident in the display of works by
VCU students.

The first room of the Anderson
Gallery’s first floor featured seven enormous
prints by Bouthayna Al Maftah,
a student from the VCU School of the
Arts in Qatar. Al Maftah’s works, titled
“command print,” had “Stop Polluting”
scribbled on them in Arabic and,
essentially, were photomontages that
featured macro-sized images of a person.
The project originally was displayed at
construction sites in Doha, Qatar, and
will be presented as part of SGC’s 2008
conference.

The Department of Communication
Arts featured 27 works by 19 different
students in the adjacent room-each
work had an air of sophistication to it.
Dane Cozens’ still-life “Dishes and Eggs,”
while subjectively simple, showed raw
ability with the brush in capturing light
and shadow in the tiniest detail.

It was interesting to see less of a
focus on the digital aspect of the department-
works by graphic-design majors
weren’t exhibited with the exception of
Melissa Showalter’s foyer design.

Human forms were exceptionally well
done with even proportions and playful
angles, especially in Geary Day’s “Nude,”
Briana Hertzog’s “Gun Show” and Gian
Galang’s three-part “Past vs. Future.”

Stefanie Lutz and Lauren Conroy
both stood out with their use of stark
imagery. Lutz’s digital piece – one of
the few exceptions – “Shallow Water”
showed the feet and fins of a diver in a
morgue, tagged and ready to be bagged.
Conroy’s heart attack depicted a woman
being strangled by her own veins and arteries, appendages
of the heart emerging from a slice in her chest. These
students’ moody choice of colors and subjects contained
elements that were as spooky as they were sublime.

The Kinetic Imaging exhibition, which took up two
rooms on the second floor, incorporated visual and
sonic displays. The first room had a looped series of 14
videos and animations, showing a spectrum of attitudes
held by the department’s students.

Emily Wormley’s “Mindmachine” animation involved
a figure’s journey through the body of another. Space
didn’t really matter as sizes and measurements seemed
irrelevant. Arms and legs separated from torsos and
heads, and mouths expanded and contracted while a
catchy blend of hip-hop and garage music filled the
screening room.

Jason Abete’s “Waiting” video was a triple split-screen
concept; each section featured a different person doing
what the title says-waiting. They sat, their frustrations
projecting onto the audience, while the camera changed
angles a few times. The subjects held their heads in their
hands or ran their fingers through their hair. It was most
vexing by the end of the 10 minute-long clip to realize
Abete had played a tasteless joke on the audience by
having it “wait” for no conclusion.

I felt the same after leaving the audio section of the
exhibition. The tiny room featured surround-sound speakers
with a glowing violet orb in the center-perhaps there
as sort of a meditative tool for focusing on the sounds.

Chris Fitzgerald’s “Shadows” consisted merely of
electronic beats and sounds that were reminiscent of
Philip Glass reading a ghost story to DJ Shadow. Megan
Stewart’s “Eyes Wide Shut” was a narrative of a girl
(Stewart, perhaps?) who had a slightly terrifying experience
getting locked in a bathroom for four hours while
on vacation in Israel. Stewart won “Best in Sound.”

Filling out the rest of the second floor were the
Fashion Design and Interior Design exhibitions, which
featured a clothesline of innovative denim-wear titled
“Denim-ology.” Also in this portion of the exhibition
were several fleshed-out works by Kevin Blow. His
wide palate of fabrics made for some very innovative
– though mostly impractical – wears.

Interior-design students took existing concepts and
structures and made them their own. One student was
charged with rearranging Edo’s Squid and Stuffy’s Sub
Shop to make the building more visually appealing on
the inside while keeping its outer structure intact.

Another student took the idea of the modern cubicle
workstation and broke from the monotony of its inherent
shape by using walls and space to create unique
possibilities that breathed better.

Though less attractive at first glance when compared
to the other departments’ exhibitions, the interior-design
segment was the most captivating because of its content,
thoroughness and relationship to everyday life.