The Welcome Back show at Mason Gross is a collection of works submitted by many different artists in the Rutgers Mason Gross community including faculty, graduate students, and alumni. It was difficult to grasp one central theme from the entire show. Rather, each individual art piece spoke its own language that exhibited a distinctive and unique theme. I was enticed by the works that have a deep historical meaning, whether that meaning lies in a person’s individual past or whether the meaning had a deep societal root. Having a large passion for photography I found myself deeply interested in most of the photographic works in the gallery that portrayed strong emotions even when there weren’t people in them, as well as a sculptural piece that radiated encouragement and inspiration.
Annie Hogan’s photograph, “Double Vision #2” is an extremely strong image in its deliverance to the viewer. The double exposure of the photograph created a layering effect that spoke to me as a novel. By combining the image of the rich, opulent house, and the slave cabin, this image displays the vast difference between poverty and luxury in a place that still exists today. Her work makes you self aware of both the present and the past.
Lyda Craig, a former alumni of Mason Gross, is an artist who I had not known of in the past but began to admire as I viewed her work in the gallery. Because Lyda was disabled she found other ways to create and express herself through small golf ball pieces, constructed with string and other various household materials. As a work of art I do not have an interest in the objectivity of the matter, but the story line behind it. This little series of work stood out to me at great lengths because it fully represents overcoming and healing through art (a concept I have grown to admire the most).
Kate Pollard’s photo “Reynolds Girls” is a direct form of emotion through photography. Although there is no text to guide the viewer to understand the message she is trying to convey, you can clearly see the mood in the image. Her subjects hold a sentimental value and draw you into their grief and healing processes.
“The Missing Portrait”, a handmade book with poems by John Yau and illustrated by Richard Tuttle is the most diverse and different piece in the Welcome Back show. As you flip through it’s pages, the book delivers your with text and pictures like a story book ahead of it’s time. I enjoyed this piece because I was allowed to interact with it and enjoy what was inside.
Shub Schirmer is a sculptor at Mason Gross in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her work is created through intense imagination and creativity using found objects and other forms of sculpture materials to form her work. Taking a look at the various pieces she has done in the past it is clear that her concepts and ideas have grown from 2D collage designs into a collection of amazing and extremely interesting 3D forms resembling the human form and other familiar matter. To highlight this comparison even more, if you take a look at her designs, they have an intense eclectic feel to them. Although there are strong and familiar starting points in all of her works, it is clear that she has developed and refined her artistic vision so powerfully over the past 3 years and will be successful in the spring show.
N: Shub, I have not directly seen your work since freshman year, what is your concentration and what mediums do you enjoy working with?
S: i am a sculpture major. i really like working with my hands but not just like with a paintbrush or pencil, although i do love to draw and paint and other stuff, but sculpture is so hands on that i love it. I like working late nights in the studios at LAB, as well as working there when everyone is in their studios all working on different things and seeing what everyone else is working on. Bouncing ideas off one another and getting vital input is as much a part of artwork as your own contribution.
N: Where/who do you get your inspiration from? Who drives you as an artist and inspires/supports your work?
S: I’ve loved doing art forever. My moms an artist and always encouraged me and my sisters to express our creativity, so when it came time to choose what I was gonna do after high school, i went with what I really wanted to do with all my heart and haven’t looked back since. I find inspiration in everything I see. I pick things up on the street as I walk through the day and put them in my backpack for some future project. I am influenced by artists I love and even those I don’t. I’m influenced by nature, friends, tv and movies and my dreams. I like to play around with ideas and I’m constantly working on something in my head. As i ride the buses around Rutgers my mind is working very hard on half-formed ideas and plans.
N: Do you ever fall into a problem with your work? Or do you embrace complications and new things?
S: When I do start working with a new material or making something new, im not afraid to play around with the medium and process. In fact this play has led to many discoveries and new great things. Sometimes they turn out badly but I don’t regret those either, everything is a learning experience.
N: What are your plans for thesis and the future concerning your art and the message you are trying to send to society?
For thesis, I have a lot of half formed ideas that I’ve been playing with and trying to form into something that can be achieved in real life but I’m afraid that everything I have right now isn’t ready to come into being yet, I still need to work it out. I could go in so many directions and since freshman year I’ve been wondering what I could possibly make for the grand finale of my college experience and truth be told, I’m still stumped. I know that I want it to be spectacular and make people say wow. I know from going to all the other senior thesis shows that there are always pieces that rock and pieces that flop, and even though we all would like ours to rock, the truth is, we all can’t. We can only try our hardest and leap, and hope to soar, not flop, or at least enjoy the free fall before we lose our glimpse of the lime-light.
The quaint, well-organized Zimmerli art museum presently houses the exhibition Water, an eclectic show that explores the many relationships we have with this natural resource. Functioning both as matter and theory, the show provides its viewers with multifunctional pieces of art from both the past and present using different methods such as video and interaction stations. This show is a successfully strong exhibition of a majestic resource that society tends to take for granted as they ignore its natural beauty and wonder. Water is certainly a show for the masses, and presents this reserve as it surrounds us with all kinds of polars from life and destruction to new and old.
Upon entering the exhibition, I was unaware of how the theme of “water” was going to be expressed and portrayed. As I began to experience the show with the curator and fellow students, it became apparent that this particular exhibition was not going to supply us with only one theme, but like the vast uses of water itself, it supplied us with numerous themes. Water is represented in multiple ways as an essential resource we need in order to continue life, as well as models in landscapes and mystical functions.
The layout of the show was executed very well as multiple mediums were placed together to create a multi-faceted viewing space. For example, the “Condensation Cube” by Hans Haacke was placed in a room filled with photographs, like Francisco Infante’s “Wanderings of a Square”, to successfully create depths of multimedia in the gallery space helping integrate the pieces together. The curator’s choice to place 18th and 19th century work next to contemporary and modern pieces kept me from losing interest as it showed an extreme sense of variety between the works, simultaneously showing an extreme sense of the multiplicity of the natural property of water.
Of all of the works displayed within the exhibition, I appreciate the installations the most. Maya Lin’s “Pin River” and “Dew Point” were by far the most unique and distinguishing because they allowed the curator to make decisions with lighting and placement. The complimentary placement within the first two spaces of Lin’s work bonded the rooms together and created a double exposure effect. The pieces also came with limited directions, so it enabled others to make the lighting and placement choices.
From beginning to end, anyone can come into this show and find something that they like, understand, and relate to, even individuals who do not necessarily understand art.
Selections:
I chose the "Condensation Cube" by Hans Haacke for my sculptural piece because it represents the cycle of water as a natural resource. In a simple but yet complex way,it represents water not only as a natural resource, but as a continuous birth and re-birth as it goes from one form of matter, to another, and back again.
The photograph by Phyllis Galembo, taken in Haiti is a symbol of relief and healing within such a muddled country. It stood out to me amongst the other photographs in the exhibition because it shows water as a alleviating source.
A painting done in 1856, “View of the New Brunswick Railroad Bridge” is a classic depiction of water in a landscape. Just as in Water, I too wanted to include a classic portrait of a landscape.
“Pin River” by Maya Lin is a multifunctional work of art as it can function both as a landscape drawing and a scultupure. It is an extremely intriguing piece, bringing fourth ideas of creation and destruction within it’s placement of lighting in the space.
