Within Bakersfield College’s Grace Van Dyke Bird Library’s Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery, an eviscerated pig’s stomach sprouting porcupine needles lies on top of an open book.
Within another corner of the gallery, it appears to be raining mature-faced, addlepated infants.
These are two examples of the artwork of several BC professors being showcased at the gallery. The Art Faculty Exhibit 2008 will run until April 17.
BC art professor Ruth Santee, in her first year as a drawing and sculpture instructor, said that her ink and paper drawing called “Doors and Ash,” which features anguished infants with cartoonishly ugly faces, is about the loss of individuality within the crowd.
“Individuality gets lost in a crowd,” Santee said. “Authorities emphasize what’s right for the greater population’s good, and individuality suffers.”
Speaking of Santee’s blue, black and lavender torrent of lost infants, March 27 reception attendee Alex Perez, 20, human services major, said he found Santee’s work very provocative.
BC art professor Cameron Brian’s fiberglass sculpture “Intelligent Design” got the critical nod from another reception attendee, Shady Shafik, 14, Liberty High School student.
“I don’t know what it is, but I like it,” Shafik said of the fiberglass book sculpture that featured a surgically removed pink stomach resting atop what looks like a medieval medical text containing pictures of late 18th century electrical equipment and severed frog legs meant to remind the observer of that period’s scientific endeavor to revive dead tissue with electricity.
Also drawing attention was Brian’s other fiberglass book sculpture titled “Panorama of Lubrication,” which featured shapely, red-shoed female legs topped with a red police light and set in the middle of an open book.
Brian stated that to create his fiberglass open-book sculptures, he used a silicone- composed mold in fiberglass with the help of polyester resin and a chopper gun. Brian’s “Horse Hair Men” exhibit made of horsehair and wire got an ambiguous response from BC student Alice Fugitt, who takes art classes.
“Mmmm. They look sort of freaky,” Fugitt said of the army of slack-jawed, wraith-like horsehair men.
BC ceramics instructor Marlene Tatsuno’s blown-glass artwork received a much warmer response from Janet Pierucci, BC graduate and local private practice psychologist.
“I’m really enjoying her metaphor of a garden,” Pierucci said of the blown glass shaped and colored like flowers.
BC art major Mel Mazone, 21, admitted that she was impressed with the way that BC art professor Adel Shafik manipulated color in his digital media artwork, which is called “concrete poetry.” One of his works bore the words, “Washington needs cleaning” and featured a curvaceous young girl in a fire of red, blue, grey and lavender with a depiction of the White House above her head.
In another framed version of Shafik’s digital media was an untitled work featuring luminous black eyes within splatters of orange, magenta, red and black with several lines of poetry, which included this: “Let peace taint every thought.”
“We need to know what’s happening in Washington,” said Shafik, who has taught digital arts at BC for 5 years. “I’m a strong believer in peace, and I’m against violence,” he said of himself and what he wants to convey through his work.
BC art professor Dave Koeth’s graphic designer’s myriad collection of quips and everyday objects and scenes captured a much lighter response from Bakersfield High School teacher and reception attendee Yvonne Cavana.
“Some parts of it made me laugh out loud,” Cavana said.
Koeth stated that he used Adobe Illustrated, Photoshop and InDesign to help compile his several ordered squares of photos featuring store fronts, ceramics bowls, toys, games, etc., with sayings.
One square bore these words: “75% of all Americans are idiots.It might be higher than that.” These words stood in the foreground of a photo dense with sunlight, smog and people at a type of sporting event.
Also showcased was BC art professor Kristopher Stallworth’s car headlight-illuminated “Periphery” series as well as professor Brandon Sanderson’s “Excursion” series, which illustrated the concept of “Memento Mori” or “Remember that you will die.”
The Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery is open Monday-Thursday from 1-2 p.m.