Art in the Senate exhibit with work from Design | Media Arts students, faculty to be held in Murphy
By Flavia Casas
Feb. 10, 2010 9:05 p.m.
In an effort to showcase the artistic talents of both students and faculty within the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture, the Academic Senate will be holding its inaugural Art in the Senate event today.
Academic Senate Chair Robin L. Garrell said the reception will take place on the third floor of Murphy Hall, where invitation-only guests will be free to see the artwork of Design | Media Arts students and faculty that now hang on the once-empty walls. Those not on the guest list can view the displays at a later time.
Garrell said the project was an idea she had been fostering since she was vice chair in 2008, yet she was not able to have serious conversations about it until spring of 2009. With the assistance of Associate Dean Barbara Drucker, among others, it was decided that the event will focus on one specific department per year, this year being Design | Media Arts.
“Our students are just fabulous; their work is really tremendous, and I thought it’d be great to showcase it. It’s kind of a personal project of mine,” Garrell said.
The reception will announce the top two works, and a reward of $500 will be allotted to the grand-prize winner. Willem H. Lucas, chair of the Design | Media Arts department and contributor to the pre-selection and judging of the artwork, said students in the department were asked to submit their pieces, which were later judged by a panel of the Academic Senate. Lucas said both the grand-prize winner and staff favorite were almost unanimously chosen.
“It’s kind of like our own version of Spring Sing,” Garrell said.
Everett Pelayo and Tiffany Huang, both fourth-year Design | Media Arts students, are two of the 14 artists who submitted works which they had previously completed for either a class or another project to the competition.
Pelayo said his work, “Dreamers,” consists of a set of photographs that aims to draw a smile on people’s faces.
“Dreamers” is based on the idea that there exists a younger child within each person that is usually disregarded, Pelayo said. Yet he said his personal interpretation of his work is not necessarily the same interpretation he wants to provoke in viewers.
“Artists love to be ambiguous. It’s good when people look at piece of art and feel something, but they don’t always have to share what I thought,” he said.
Huang’s piece, “You Are What You See,” is a photographic series of the galleries in Paris, influenced by the similarities between the galleries’ visitors and the artworks they were observing. Huang’s photographs strive to vividly portray a correlation between simple, everyday observations and our way of viewing the world.
Pelayo and Huang, who are looking to launch their post-grad careers side-by-side, encourage the UCLA community to view the artwork in Murphy Hall. The pair wish to provide the community with a better understanding of what graphic design entails, because generally, people assume it only involves Photoshop, Huang said.
Also on display are a few photographs of buildings designed by some of the School of Arts and Architecture’s “internationally renowned faculty architects,” such as Thom Mayne, Greg Lynn and Hitoshi Abe, Garrell said. She is thankful to them for their contributions and said their pieces can be seen in the senate conference room.
The guest list includes faculty from the Design | Media Arts Department, school administrators, chairs of all senate committees, members of the executive board and senate, other occupants of Murphy Hall and the students whose work will be on display. The public, however, is free to observe the art around the halls and corridors of the third floor at any time besides that of the reception.
“I really think this school should be filled with artwork that our students have made because … it’s good for students,” Lucas said.
“It would be a constant turnaround of the work that’s been made, so people that constantly visit the building can sense activity,” he added.
The Academic Senate hopes to make Art in the Senate an annual tradition, Garrell and Lucas said.
