Student Fall Exhibit

The Fall Visual Arts Student Show at the Lucas Gallery in 185 Nassau reveals a range and depth of skill not usually expected from young artists.

The students seem to have practically mastered basic human anatomy and architectural perspective. From charcoal to photograph to oil, the students revealed immense promise and talent. Without pretension, they captured honest self-portraits, accurate hand studies and children's emotions.

The largest and possibly most spectacular piece was one by Julia Strauss '05. Two athletic girls gaze out of the canvas as they lounge on a sofa with their feet on a coffee table. Soda cans are strewn on the table and one girl casually cocks her head to the side as she stares straight ahead. Although the streaks of pastel highlights on their hair and faces detract from the photorealism of the painting, the perspective and proportions are flawless. Even the gargantuan foot sole at the base of the page is appropriately blurred, as though the viewer is looking at the two girls through the lens of a camera.

Another successful realism project consisted of four charcoal hand study pieces on the opposite wall of the gallery. Each study displayed four different hands posed in four different positions. Although the artists, Nest Pirkul '05, Katherine Carson '05, Jesse Palerm '07 and Parker Sutton '07, all showed a unique style in their line weight and shading technique, they all managed to aptly convey the minute and accurate details of veins, scars and pores with striking clarity. Sutton, in particular, is so adept that one can clearly make out patches of dry skin and light freckles on the top of the hand.

Indeed, Sutton's work stood out in a gallery filled with talented artists. The profile portrait of his preppy, pearl-clad girlfriend reveals a charming and feminine subject executed with careful and delicate brushstrokes. Even the highlights in her hair are subtly rendered.

Paintings and drawings shared the walls with black and white photographs, which were simply mounted and evenly spaced across the exhibition. Although several, including an awkward mirror reflection of a girl with her head bent and her leg up, seemed to be trying to hard to be profound, at least two stood out as highly introspective.

In one, the photo focuses on an aerial view of white hats (presumably of soldiers) and the shadows that the people wearing them create. Because the bodies are not visible from the birds'-eye view it appears in the picture that uniform round shapes are projecting shadows of varying length and angles. While the scene without light would be geometric and simple, with light it becomes a unique pattern of unpredictable shapes.

Another strong portrait from the photo collection features a mother and child. A crying baby boy looks over at the photographer with his mouth agape, while the body of his mother remains blurred. By suspending the child's emotions and drawing attention to his face, the photographer creates a very vivid and personal moment.

Oddly, this picture may have best captured my own reaction to the show: fussy at first about having to review a collection that I expected to be as disappointing as the last fall junior exhibition, but I ended up catching myself staring open-mouthed at many pieces. I do, however, still have one major criticism; there are so many excellent pieces that it is nearly impossible to stay focused on one.