When you view a painting in a magazine or online, what you’re really looking at is a piece of paper or a computer screen, but when you go to a gallery and see a painting in person, the thing that you’re looking at is an object. It’s big, it’s small, it has a variety of textures, and it can even smell (hopefully like oil paint or turpenoid, but I’ve smelled much worse things that have been thrown on canvas). Paintings, which we often think of as ‘flat’, also have edges along their boarders; broad segments that pick up gestures and colors that seemingly have little or no meaning in the greater context of the painting itself.
But viewing the edges of a painting in fact tells us many things about how it was made, as does staring intently at the brush strokes (or lack thereof) evident on the surface of the canvas or panel. This evidence of a process is why I like viewing art in person, but is only a part of why the University of Illinois’s Fall 2009 Art and Design Faculty Exhibition is worth your attention.
In one respect, you can look at the art in this year’s show as a record of the time that each artist spent with a particular idea, because in a thousand different ways, the artists involved (29 in total by my count) are attempting to communicate with an audience: transferring a set of ideas from their heads to ours. This is always a messy process, and is never perfect, which is precisely what makes participating in the artist/viewer relationship so special. But the neat thing about the university’s annual faculty show is that unless you’re a student of the faculty involved, you’re not really the intended target. Don’t get me wrong — they’re happy to have you (showing art in the context of a faculty show is hugely important for a number of reasons outside of the teacher/student relationship) but in the context of the show, the works selected are meant to showcase for new and continuing students roughly where their instructor’s are at in their own lifelong trek through the art making experience. They’re literally raising a flag and yelling: “I’m over here!” to the hundreds of potential pupils that they’ll come in contact with over the next four years.
And that’s why this particular show is immensely important. Just by attending, the students who step into that gallery are learning from their instructors. What’s nice is that the rest of us can join in too. Visit it for yourself, and consider the precision involved in Laurie Hogin’s quivering depiction of sociopathic rabbits. Be overjoyed that you have 50 feet of blank floor to fully take in Patrick Earl Hammie’s colossal figurative paintings, and consider that the artist was never more then 10 feet from them while they were being created. Scratch your head over Alan Mette’s Series EV, and tell me, please, that you can see some evidence of how they were made (frankly I’m puzzled).
Think about how you’re viewing the art; be conscious of when you put your hands in your pockets to keep from reaching out and touching something. Take notice of when you only look at something politely, and think about why it doesn’t appeal to you. Form a guiltless opinion.
And consider one last thing; the art represented in the show was largely grown in our local communities, by instructors who usually work out of their homes. Most are incredibly down to earth, and do things like mow their lawns and buy ice-cream (or custard). They also make some damn fine art, and choose to spend much of their time dedicated to passing what they know onto others.
The faculty exhibit started August 28 and runs through September 27. Krannert Art Museum is located on 500 E. Peabody Dr. on campus in Champaign.