The College Art Exhibition
The Art Exhibition
Today, the results of years of learning art were displayed in the Art Room. At first, the artwork may seem like just a pretty painting, but all had deeper meaning, thoughts and emotional roots. Each of the students did five-part preliminary studies that helped them to arrive at their finished piece.
Iasha Horne did a piece called “Nightlife” and was inspired by her own personality. The non-artists visiting the exhibition were puzzled as to why, though the piece was called night life, it had so many colours and hues. Iasha did not hesitate to point out that while the night sky may appear black at first, it really does consist of various shades of colour. The various elements of the night scene depicted had meaning. As no two clouds are exactly the same, Iasha stated that so too she did not expect people to be the same. She explained that stars, when observed in the night sky are a little twinkle, swamped by the vast darkness around. This to her, represented that little light in her, that shines out though the outside forces and attitudes of society tries to swamp her. The moon was a representation of her stages in her life of art. As the moon changes phases, from a dull new moon, to an outstanding Full Moon, Iasha expressed that her art life improved over time and went from ordinary to extra-ordinary.
“The way I live my life through dreams when I’m full at peace”
“Emotions From Within Me provides the opportunity for me to express my self.
Nerisa King did a piece based on the theme of Transition, and applied this to her own sub-theme of Transition of Nature. Her piece was inspired by her love of nature and her own observation of how man today is destroying nature, meshed with inspirational lectures from during her Art Sections. Nerisa experimented with pencil charcoal and collages. In the finished piece, she innovatively used plastic, cardboard, dried leaves and even bark and skin from the mamsee pork tree. She incorporated human hands in her painting to represent a reconnection of humans with nature. On closer examination, one would see that there was a lot of transition in her artwork. The smooth to rough nature of the sea, the transition of the tree texture as you travelled up the tree were a few of the noted transitions.
Cenica Patterson adopted a different style in her art work. She called her two-dimensional piece ‘Vortex”. Her artwork represented how her emotions began spinning out of control and into her artwork as people tried to influence her and as they saw her artwork. She stressed that in Art, it is important not to think so hard. Just let it flow, and let your creativity take you, as what happened with this particular piece.
Lisa chose to bring out the beauty and meaning behind a river. She saw the rocks in a river as obstacles in the high spirited water’s way, and therefore gave them little vibrancy in her Artwork. She also observed that where the rocks were, the water’s path was constricted and not able to flow as freely. She likened these observations to the Creative Person. They can allow themselves to be suppressed by obstacles, rules and regulations, or maintain that creativity and personality by finding a way to flow over.
Most of us might take time to notice the transition colour change as fruits change, except when we are waiting for that green mango to become ripe. Tiara Francis however, observed and recorded the transition in colour right from the stage of fresh to rotting in fruits and represented this in her piece. During her experimental and preliminary pieces she utilized photos, charcoal as well as interesting materials such as dried tomatoes to come up with the basis for her final piece. In her final piece, she widely utilized charcoal and eggplant to represent the bag which the fruits were contained in. Even the bag played a part as it represented an external encasing or structure, much like a circumstance in our lives, which infects and causes change.
Stacked Up On Every Available Surface. This phrase sums up what Raquel Nanton used as the base principle of her artwork. She set up still life arrangements in the sink and in the kitchen counter in efforts to discover what she wanted to capture in her submission. She began to consider also size and contrast, after studying the work of Cezanne, a French Impressionist, and also discovered other ways to express the meaning of her piece.
She saw the stacks as the informal hierarchal system that exists today. She stated that at the bottom of the stack, are the people who think they are nothing and their lives are insignificant, or those people who think they are too small or insignificant to accomplish things on their own. They lack drive to push themselves ahead, or feel they need in from those higher up the stack. 
It is evident that no one could have left the Art Exhibition without their being minds freshly exposed to new ideas and principles, that one might have been exposed to everyday, but just never took the time to observe.
