Student artists show off their creativity, ambition and experimentation in the art exhibit showcased at the Euphrat Museum of Art.
From large scale canvases to smaller works with a punch, artists stretch their limits, using materials from traditional oil on canvas and ceramics to unique surfaces such as coffee holders, cardboard, rope, fabric, copper pipes and a pillow.
One of the most ambitious and challenging installations is Eileen Estes’ “Whole.” The award winning sculpture is made of hun- dreds of fishing weights on strings suspended from a steel frame. Estes said her sculpture represents “the ultimate order and if jostled by human hands, the perfection will quickly turn to chaos.”
She said the sculpture was extremely difficult to move from the studio to the museum. Despite clipping strings together, Estes ended up spending over five hours untangling the strings by hand before the sculpture could be properly displayed.
Artist Tae Young Jun presents two companion pieces. “Guilt” is a sculpture of welded chain in the shape of a human silhouette with a ball of vicious nails suspended where the heart should be. “Walking Out Of” is a painting featuring cool blues, teals and greens that symbolizes the act of walking away from the pain and guilt of the past.
Several large pieces grace the walls of the Euphrat. “Human Export,” an award-winning painting by Jake Vu, is close to five feet tall.
“The painting represents the suffering of Vietnamese workers who are sold into slavery by their government,” said Vu.
Symbolism is used throughout his paintings and in the materials he uses. Choosing cardboard as a painting surface and framing the painting in rough crate-like wood symbolizes how the workers are treated like cargo.
Another award-winner is a self-discovery piece that reenacts wiping a bathroom mirror after a hot shower. “Mirrors #3” is a brave and an elegantly detailed oil painting on canvas by Bing Zhang. In the painting, a woman looks at herself in a fog smeared mirror. “Wiping off the ‘fog’ in your life and discovering yourself is important for everyone,” wrote Zhang in her artist statement. Another kind of ambition lies in the works that try to fit the most impact into a small space, such as Monica King’s winning photograph, “Painting Portrait-Billie.”
A man holds a painting in front of his face of a woman, the bright red of the painting a vibrant contrast to the muted background.
“Coffee?” is the winner of a painting award by Alejandra Hermandinger and also has small space impact. The surface is made of coffee cup sleeves painted red and yellow like a raging fire, while a dark image of stars and stripes floats above.
The Euphrat museum is currently housed in a temporary space that used to be a classroom. The walls couldn’t be touched, so the museum suspended walls from the ceiling on which they could display the art.
It has taken the Euphrat one year to get the space ready, said Jan Rindfleisch, executive director of the museum.
Throughout the Euphrat are works of art that make you want to stop and ponder. Powerful, literal, symbolic or surreal, every piece is worth taking a walk over to the museum.
The Euphrat is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.
Tuesday, June 12 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Awards will be presented to winning artists at a reception.
The student art exhibit will run through June 14.