Fine Arts students exhibit their work

The smell of fine cheese and wine filled the gallery at Meyerson Hall last Friday, welcoming students, faculty and the public to the Graduate School of Fine Arts' first-year student exhibition. The show -- running from February 3-13 -- was organized entirely by the first-year students whose showcased art ranged from traditional portrait paintings to finely detailed sculptures. The show was the second exhibit of first-year students' work this year. Many of the works, produced by 20 artists, were on sale for prices ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars. The crowd featured numerous art collectors unaffiliated with the University. First-year Fine Arts graduate student Mike Hill, a Kansas City native who helped organize the exhibition, had three paintings on display at the show. The paintings, featuring robots in abstract settings, were motivated by Hill's interests in "toys and cartoons." "When you first start making abstractions you draw on what you care about," he noted. The overall message Hill tries to express in his art is "the element of good-heartedness." Hill, who has been painting since high school, said he would ideally like to sell his work in a gallery and teach art for a living. Like Hill's paintings, Sujin Kim's work also featured a nontraditional style. One of Kim's modern paintings, entitled the "Olive Piece," was characterized by alternating zigzag brush strokes. This rigid form of painting highlighted Kim's obsession "about drawing straight lines." Kim was motivated to create the piece while working as a portrait artist at a carnival this past summer. The up and down hand movements necessary to paint people's portraits forced her to constantly draw straight lines. Kim's love of painting rests in her notion that a painter must "have an intimacy as [he or she is painting]." In addition to being a full-time Fine Arts graduate student, Kim also works as a graphics design teaching assistant in the school. She hopes to teach art and become a graphics designer after graduation. Alex Quarrel, also a first-year Fine Arts graduate student, spent his time surveying the works -- including his own -- on display at the gallery. "For first-year students it is a very good show, much better than last semester," he noted. GSFA Interim Chairperson Hitoshi Nakazato agreed, saying that he received many positive comments about the show. "The quality of the student work is getting better each year; it's amazing," he added. The Graduate School of Fine Arts will be holding another art exhibition within the next few months and will feature second-year graduate students in several art shows -- highlighting four or five students' works per exhibit -- throughout the semester.