WLCM BCK Show Review

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to view the WLCMKCB show at Mason Gross galleries. This show included work from Mason Gross undergraduate and graduate students along with faculty and staff. Also exhibited was work by Lyda Craig, a Mason Gross alumnus who recently passed away. Also shown was a room devoted Jim Toia's work that is part of the Water exhibit at the Zimmerli.
The first work I am going to discuss is the painting by Stephen Westfall, a painting professor at Mason Gross. I had the pleasure of having Professor Westfall as a teacher, and being familiar with his work, I can say that this piece has the classic characteristics of a Westfall painting. Westfall employs many structural techniques to his paintings, and is famous for making work in which all the elements follow a set of rules. In this particular one he has utilized the grid. The diagonal lines all converge at right angles forming a simple grid of four quadrants to the viewer. Furthermore, the viewer's eye hits the yellow diamond located in the center of the work and is then immediately forced to follow one of the lines from the grid away from the center. The eye then proceeds to trace the line of the grid in all four directions. Westfall has again proved to be a master of controlling the viewer's eye by employing simple structural techniques. The work is titled "Cosmadin" and is rendered in oil on canvas. Also the size of the work, at 36" by 30," allows a lot of accessibility for the viewer. You are able to rest your eyes at the height of the yellow diamond in the center and really get the full effect of the optical trick. The painting's carefully selected palette of tinted primary colors and tinted green also matches a figure's boxer underwear in a much bigger painting to the right of the work. This painting is titled "On the Grass," and also makes the eye do a lot of work in a different way. Here we see a haphazard group of young adults positioned at different directions laying on each other. The whole group is placed on the grass. The painting is also a vertical composition. The painter has essentially provided an image that feels like it was a photograph taken from ground level of figures laying on the ground and pushed our point of reference, the ground, up into the sky. Also by using atmospheric perspective to make the grass recede at the top of the work the viewer eye's are also forced to the top of the image. Again, this painter has succeeded in controlling the viewer's eye.
Next, is a work by Raphael Ortiz, another professor at Mason Gross. This is a very large work placed higher on the wall than all the other midpoints of the other work. The first thing you notice in this bold work is the digital image of the Statue Liberty wielding two tea bags. Then you immediately notice that this piece is comprised of many 8 and 1/2 inch pieces of paper fastened to a piece of pink styrofoam with black pins to create a much larger image. The top of the piece is a poem conveying a message about the oppression and recent crackdown on illegal immigrants in the south of the United States. This is obviously a personal issue to Professor Ortiz, being a latin-american. The work depicts a dramatic scene under the poem of figures in harsh water trying to reach an embellished Ellis Island. Being a former student of Professor Ortiz, I remember a phrase he repeated often. Good art at some level always has "Narrative, content, and meaning." I think this work exemplifies that idea. The viewer can see many very specific decisions by Ortiz to convey his message. From the pixelated, almost sloppy photoshop work to the styrofoam "canvas," all the elements in the work were strategic choices by Ortiz. One can make allusions to the size of the foam to a makeshift raft.
Furthermore, is a work by Lyda Craig that was located on the right wall of the gallery room devoted to a collection of her work titled "Intimate Observations." This work is a medium sized painting of a very unique scene. Pictured is a man who appears to be watching another series of figures, all the same as him, who are shown in many positions of an impossible leap that ends on the ground. The image references stop-motion photography as the figures appear to be in sequential stages of a superhuman plunge onto a sunny coastal scene. The movement in this piece is also great and forms a loop for our eye to follow. We start at the top of the leap and arrive the bottom. Then our eye rests on the figure that is standing firmly on the ground, until they are again picked back up to the leaping top figure.