Issue date: 12/10/07 Section: Style

Media Credit: Chris Pappas Angela Ferrari Performs/poses (creates a speech bubble) next to her painting "Stimulated", acrylic on canvas. Behind her is a self portrait done by Sarah Bertulli.

Media Credit: Chris Pappas Peter Hedstrom, a senior at UMaine, exhibited sculptures made primarily from wood. He also exhibited paintings at the show.

Media Credit: Chris Pappas

"Test Everything" was the title and theme of the senior art exhibition. The title summons not only an academic conception of art, but also an idea of boundaries, material and the unconscious, which swelled and combined themselves in Lord Hall. The newly renovated gallery space was exactly what it should be: clean, white and high-ceilinged. The exhibition had a myriad of offerings, from large-scale acrylic paintings to installations to multi-media oils.

Upon entering the exhibition space, one is immediately greeted with a large tag in red, white and blue, exclaiming, "Test Everything." While the seemingly banal choice of coloring defrayed a heavy interest in the tag, it was nevertheless a fruitful example of skill. The letters were curved and embellished to perfection, and there was undeniable talent showcased on the wall, a skill that looked strikingly familiar to anyone who has ventured into abandoned factories and watched trains ride their tracks in the greater Orono area.

The major issue in the student - led exhibitions was continuity; while there were numerous works that were enjoyable, they ranged so heavily in approach and execution that one was forced to start, stop and sometimes disregard. There were various motifs in the gallery, which signified the latest trends in student art at the University of Maine.

One trend that was interesting to see was the use of photography. Photography as a medium has been growing in its usage and technique and has been used in conjunction with various other mediums. No doubt we are seeing the fruits - some rotting, some ripe - of a generation raised on the sensibilities of Cindy Sherman and Annie Leibowitz. The most interesting example of photography as a viable and innovative material was Elizabeth B. Pelletier's series of photos of industrial materials and landscapes. Looked at as individual images, the photos conveyed a direct and used subject matter; looked at as a series of photos from the first image of water pipes to the last of a figure with a blurred face, the photos were almost speaking to one another. The industrial objects conveyed a sense of objects that were once necessary to production and are now necessary as image, as a historical remainder and a part of American culture. The photos conveyed a sense of necessity as a whole, necessity of the evolving image, necessity of the object.

There were numerous other pieces of interest including Angela Ferrari's bizarre pop-paisley production and Sara Bertulli's coffee-ringed Kandinsky-like watercolors, but what was most spectacular was the installation and sculpture pieces in the gallery. Peter Wiliford Hedstrom exhibited numerous wooden sculptures ranging from a large-scale white boat to smaller and more abstract pieces. The most interesting of the smaller pieces were the ash and oak "Instances of Movement" and the steam bent oak "Whaleback." These pieces displayed not only flawless technical construction, but also intricate relationships with space. The wooden materials seemed almost as if they were moving in their curves and ambits. "Instances of Movement" was a wooden arc paginated with small slats of wood. It conjured images of aquatic skeletons and the outer husks of sleek boats. "Whaleback" looked like a distorted lobster trap that had been freed from its utilitarian purpose and was allowed a Dionysian construction. "Whaleback" and "Instances of Motion" sat next to each other and offered a distorted sideline to the feat of the suspended canoe-like structure that was central to Hedstrom's works.

The most interesting piece in the exhibition was Marchelle Simms "The Way Your Went." Simms constructed a series of rubber pallets in various colors, which were suspended from the ceiling and placed directly in front of a series of worn railroad ties with red rubber squares in their ends. Upon first encountering the piece, the viewer was filled with distraction. Questions instantly came to mind, "What is in the space between the ties and the hanging rubber?" "Can one enter that space?" Once the viewer had thoroughly surveyed the space between the ties and the rubber and entered that space to find the artist's label on the wall, the viewer is left with an interesting perspective of space and its necessity. The viewers were taken back to their original thoughts on the space between the two areas. Why did the viewer abstain from entering that space? Why did the viewer eventually enter that space? Which way did the viewer initially look at the objects, as separate or as cumulative? Simms instilled within the viewer the context of self. Which way do you go? While the suspended rubber could very easily have looked synthetic and overly muscular, the rubber conjured a unique, almost organic look. The rubber pallets were congruent in their shapes but had flaws; the materials had imperfect borders and visible seams. The imperfections of the pallets made them humane to the viewer's eye, while the rubber in the railroad ties put exactitude into the decaying wooden structures. The way that the viewer went was in, into context, into material, into the installation.

The sheer variety in Lord Hall was daunting in its tension and volume but held numerous rewards for the close-looking viewer. In any exhibition, the viewer is lucky if they find one piece that fascinates them; in Lord Hall, there is sure to be at least one piece of interest for most. The gallery leaves the impression that innovation is necessary and, more importantly, that art is necessary.

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