Cranbrook Academy of Art Grad Student Exhibition
Wayne State University Community Arts Gallery

Detroit, MI 48202
313-577-2423

www.art.wayne.edu
Tues-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat 11am-5pm.

Dec 7-Jan 19.


Wayne State University Grad Student Exhibition
Cranbrook Academy of Art Forum Gallery

39221 Woodward Ave
248-645-3300

www.cranbrookart.edu
Tues-Sun 11am-5pm.

Dec 10-Jan 19.


Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Forum Gallery and Wayne State University’s Community Arts Gallery present an opportunity for both of Michigan’s premiere graduate institutions to show off their house of ideas. Each institution hosts the other’s students in their respective galleries.


Both shows consist of the works of current art graduate students. This may be where the similarities end. While that statement is certainly an exaggeration it is important to note the philosophical differences about art making that separate the two schools.


Cranbrook students have the great opportunity to focus undivided attention on the making of their art. At their time in school they live with their work and their ideas all the time. This is a wonderful thing and it shows in the level of thought and care that goes into their pieces. An overly generalized description of the work might be this: art work about art work. Students become so tightly engaged in the process of art making that they fold it in upon itself and have turned their creativity on the ways of making art itself. Art becomes the expression of innovation through experimentation and process.


The Wayne students lack this singularly focused environment, as they juggle their art making time along with other classes, teaching and outside work. As such their works come less out of the place of investigating process and inventing techniques and more from internal expression. This is an art made from wax, wood, metal, and of all things, paint. The interaction with life feeds the work more than an interaction with art. Art becomes an experience of expression made possible by innovative techniques and process.


This is not to say that Wayne students do not invent new ways of creating art – they do. Nor to say that Cranbrook students aren’t expressing deep meaning – they do as well. These distinctions only refer to what seems to be the driving force behind the making of the artworks.


Upon entering the Cranbrook students’ exhibition, a viewer will be struck by the brightness of everything. There exists a glow of new color and new materials that infuses the entire show. The current design sensibilities that make things like IKEA a hit ring throughout. The vividness and multiplicity within the pieces demand to be looked at.





Allie Rex


It’s a vast body of work ranging from video to cake frosting. Some representative artists include: Allie Rex who created perhaps the simplest piece in either show. The two pieces on display here consist of colored sheets of paper with holes punched out from the center in a Rorschach-like pattern. The negative space, converged with the paper’s shadow, create a shimmering, inexplicably out of focus effect. Jana Stockwell’s small sculptures, capture moments in time and space with three-dimensional slices of nature. They appear as though one could freeze a rectangular box of space filled with a rushing wave or falling avalanche. Darren McManus creates a mandala of sorts juxtaposing an incredibly diverse source material to carry his meaning. Somewhere between drawing and sculpture, Ja-hyuk Yin’s “One Shiny Day” is an image of perhaps an elephant or fallopian tubes made from hundreds of M&M like colored beads. Nolan Baumgartner’s “Self-Help Group” is a sculptural piece consisting of two chairs, and three pairs of legs in a sitting position rendered from the knee down all arranged in a circular grouping. Viewers are invited to sit in one of the chairs and be a part of this therapy group.


The Wayne exhibition is quite reserved in contrast. The colors are subdued and the pieces are quiet asking for a closer look. Modified natural objects share space with paintings and sculptural pieces. Time spent contemplating these pieces reveals layers of depth and meaning that rise to the surface.





Mona Shahid “JS 5″


To mention but a few Wayne artists: sculptor Alice Smith in “Confessions of Nature” takes a striking y-shaped tree trunk and creates a statement about race by painting one half black and the other half white, and stenciling the word “only” on each branch. Brian Lehto modifies a piece of a hornet’s nest, and turns it into a clever, kinetic demonstration of the symmetry in nature and the nature of light. Shiva Ahmadi’s beautiful series of drawings/paintings of women’s faces gives a voice to the voiceless – the women in Mid-Eastern society. Mona Shahid combines oil and encaustic techniques to takes a haunting look at portraiture. Painter Luzhen Qui finds beauty in the composition of garbage. Refuse spills over her canvas, dividing up the space in a highly abstract way despite the very real subject matter. Annette Berenholz’s metal sculpture synthesizes the organic and the machine. Her sculpture possesses a body that resembles the earpiece to a telephone connected to a complex root structure.


Is one body of work better than the other? Is one school of thought better than the other? This is a subjective question and reliant upon one’s existing preferences. What seems important with the idea of this exchange show is that each party sees what goes on in another realm and can use the opportunity to learn from the other and grow from that encounter.