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Marsh soup, parallel existence with birds, cancer and space invaders returning home are the subject matter in the exhibit.
The Victoria H. Myhren Gallery opened the 2010 Juried Alumni Exhibition at the end of September, bringing together pieces by over 20 alumni of the DU’s School of Art and Art History.
Nora Burnett Abrams, the associate curator at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, and Linny Frickman, director of the University Art Museum of Colorado State University, selected the artists presented in a jury selection manner.
Immediately entering the exhibit, blue LEDs reminiscent of a Lite-Brite board blink accompanied by an electronic chant to greet visitors.
This mixed media piece entitled “Space Invader Returns Home” is alumnus Andrew Ames’ depiction of the classic video game antagonist returning home from war and his plight once he returns.
The electronic LED light box sets atop a plastic milk carton container between a small bottle of Jim Beam bourbon and a paper coffee cup containing a few coins, symbolizing the plight of veterans as they take on panhandling to survive upon their return from war.
Patricia Aaron, who received her master of fine arts degree in 1998, provided a series of pieces surrounding her travels to The Great Marsh north of Boston. The most prominent piece consists of 60-yards of black velvet, cotton cording dangling from the ceiling in the exhibit in a tangled mess, titled “Marsh Soup.”
Nearby, the installation is mirrored on the wall through an encaustic on rives piece, “Saturation Series Marsh Soup Print.”
The remainder of the “Saturation Series” includes two large papers with prominent unaccompanied black streaks that roll down the pages carelessly.
“It was my intent to capture the vastness and beauty of the marshland, the tangle of marsh vines, the line and starkness of the quiet black mark,” describes Aaron.
Through her mixed media collage, “Album of the Memory of Birds 4,” Janis Edwards, who received her bachelor of arts degree in 1971, illustrates the analogous lifestyle humans and birds share.
As she describes, birds become symbolic materials in our lives because of our inability to understand the lives they maintain themselves.
Naomi Scheck, who received her bachelor of fine arts degree in 2006, illustrates the loss of her mother to cancer through her detailed pen depictions of breast cancer cells.
Scheck describes her original intentions as being reinvented to discover a beauty in death taking on cosmic and other-worldly appearances.
“The impact such an invisible world can have is amazing,” says Scheck.
The 2010 Juried Alumni Exhibition is open daily from 12-4 p.m.until Nov. 14, 2010, and is located in the Myhren Gallery in the Shwader Art Building.
