By Michael Beeli
Copy Editor
Mira Costa’s student art show, “Night” featured a variety of pieces, incorporating three-dimensional, two-dimensional and digital art.
“Night” displayed a wide variety of pieces that fit well into the dark, spectral ambiance of the gallery. The ominous atmosphere created by the dim lighting effectively drew viewers to this unique and distorted exhibit.
Mira Costa students from Katherine Martin’s Art classes and John Reichardt’s Advanced Ceramics and Sculpture class prepared for the exhibit for a month. They divided the limited space into separate sections, including a desert scene and an extraterrestrial scene, to display the different distinct interpretations of nightfall.
Students set up three projectors in the middle of the gallery and an additional one by the left wall, each projecting a different image or stop-motion video, effectively incorporating technology. The artists placed their three-dimensional works sporadically on the floor, and other two-dimensional pieces hung on the remaining walls.
The gallery’s south wall depicted a desert scene with a rugged atmosphere. Below a projected image of a desert, artists laid out ornamental pieces including tumbleweeds, succulents and desert snakes on a dirt landscape on the floor. The bland and jagged nature of the pieces was complemented by a pot of white daisy flowers that contrasted with the dirtiness of the desert.
In another section of the gallery, Advanced Sculpture students created four dolls that hung ominously on strings in front of a projected ocean landscape on the wall. They also created a larger mannequin-like doll that lay sprawled face-down on the floor. The display created a mystifying image that fit well with the somber theme of the gallery.
The east side of the gallery displayed a distorted suburbia, with an erratic pattern of hand-crafted ceramic houses with slanted roofs. An image of four men in formal attire was projected onto the wall above the houses, creating a unique juxtaposition of order and disorder.
The western portion contained a student-designed retro-style rocket ship hanging beside a backdrop of ping-pong balls that were strung from the ceiling by a fishing line. This portion of the exhibit created an intriguing cosmic background in front of a widely-strewn projection of silhouettes of various shapes and sizes.
Placed back in the corner was a neon sign of a cartoon boy labeled “so ethereal” that glowed brightly into the background. This unique phrase complemented the “Night” theme by adding to the celestial atmosphere and effectively contributing to the retro-punk feeling of the gallery.
The images and stop-motion videos were inherently very ambiguous in their display and composition. The sharp color contrast of the somber projections set the stage effectively for the feature of the three-dimensional pieces themselves.
The diversity of work in the “Night” art show created a well-developed theme that successfully captured the atmosphere of darkness. The fusion of the combined works highlighted the unique design and characteristics of each piece and contributed individually to a thoroughly-diversified art gallery.
“Night” took place in room 60 at lunch from May 23 -27.
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