Culture: Addams Gallery

I walked into the second floor gallery of the Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall Tuesday afternoon in search of a little inspiration. I hoped that the creative geniuses that brood behind the brick and mortar building could lift me out of my dreary, sheep-like, academic experience. As I bah my way through classes and textbooks, they make pretty things. What I found was "Expanding the Definition of Drawing," an exhibition of the two- and three-dimensional works of art by Penn undergraduate and graduate artists that runs through November 20.

The first thing that caught my eye were nails fastened against a column with multicolored rubber-bands stretched between them, forming different shapes.ÿPerhaps it was supposed to be an homage to Mondrian, but it instead made me nostalgic for first-grade geometry lessons.ÿI continued to walk down the hall, viewing the various collages and paintings in the first half of the exhibition. There were several impressive works, including a beautiful collage of a man observing a Buddha-like Hemingway in some Anglo-Saxon park. There was also a worthwhile screening of animation samples that were skillful and creative. I felt proud to know that I had seen the early workings of the future Disney animators who will some day put sexual subtext into my children's cartoons.

Other noteworthy pieces: a pile of pencil shavings behind a glass box, eight scraps of paper with tally marks, a beautiful painting entitled Oh Sweet Titty Milk, a series of sketches depicting sexual escapades at White Dog and a collage with used muffin wrappers. All in all, Penn seems to be right on target in paralleling the contemporary art scene. Though some of the pieces were striking, some were not, and perhaps this is because of my own inability to read deeper meaning into what seemed to be a middle school arts and crafts fair.

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