ASUCLA awards winners in student art program
By Daily Bruin Staff
March 11, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 CATHY JUN "Because an eclipse is no reason to be late for
class" is the title of graduate student Jonathan
Katz’s sundial, installed in Kerckhoff Hall.
By Luiza Gevorbyan
Daily Bruin Contributor
You don’t have to be an art major to make art.
On March 7, ASUCLA unveiled five new additions to its Student
Commissioned Art Program. The five proud artists, none of whom are
art majors, received $500 each for their winning entries and their
works will be displayed around campus.
The selection process started last spring as a committee sifted
through proposals and conducted interviews, culminating in the
unveiling of the chosen entries last week. The works will reside in
Kerckhoff Hall and various buildings throughout campus.
Jonathan Katz’s entry, a sundial, now stands in front of
the Daily Bruin office in Kerckhoff Hall.
Katz, a biochemistry graduate student, pieced together old
scraps of aluminum to build a device that revolves a flashlight
around the sundial, mimicking the action of the sun. Katz mentioned
that one of the parts came from the Star Wars sound set.
“It’s really absurd,” Katz said of his
inspiration. “Just the fact that it’s something
that’s so easy to do. You put something in the ground and it
tells the right time. By taking it indoors, you can just see how
much work needs to be done to do it.”
Katz gave an impromptu demonstration of the sundial’s
time-telling abilities at the unveiling.
“Pretty close,” he said, noting that the time was
slightly off. “It’ll be adjusted at some
point.”
Fourth-year English student David Stromberg, another winner,
mounted a series of captioned cartoon transparencies on kitchen
utensils and named his piece “The Saddies.”
“”˜The Saddies’ is like the funnies,”
Stromberg said. “You read the funnies, you read the saddies.
They try to bring light to how sad is funny. When put together,
they work well.”
But why did he mount them on pots and spatulas?
“Basically, what I want to do is take you out of your
world,” Stromberg said. “You see this and you’re
already in a new place. You come to it with a different
perspective.”
Fourth-year design student Kelly Painter was recognized for
submitting a retrospective piece designed on the computer and
printed out on a silk screen. The piece depicts three vintage
typewriters sandwiched by images of a stylish 1940s woman.
“I wanted to do something graphically modern with vintage
images, so I did that, using modern colors and modern pattern
schemes,” Painter said. “It represents the era of the
late ’40s because the typewriters are the focal point and
women kind of surround them.”
Third-year world arts and cultures student Mary Chang presented
her impressive four-paneled Chinese brushstroke painting, depicting
the four seasons. Each season is marked by a different flower.
Chang has been studying this technique for 10 years and can now
truly appreciate the fruits of her labor.
“It’s very personal to me,” Chang said.
“The paintings took hours and hours of practicing. For every
piece I’ve completed, I started 15 to 20 other ones that are
similar. It’s on very thin paper, so one mistake is going to
ruin the whole thing.”
The art is so personal, in fact, that she was almost moved to
tears at the podium when she stood to address the audience. Her
sincerity showed in her difficulty containing her enthusiasm and
pride. Chang pinpointed some of the emotion and put it in
words.
“Can I just say, it’s just a great honor to be part
of the program and be part of UCLA, hopefully for a long
time,” Chang said upon acceptance.
The final winning entry was third-year computer science student
Mark Yen’s computer-generated triptych titled
“Balance.” In the large vinyl printout, differently
colored caterpillars crawl out from within a cocoon labeled
“UCLA,” each striving to reach one of the four corners
of the painting. Each corner is labeled as a different ideal
““ unity, work, ethics and wisdom.
Originality was part of what the committee was looking for, said
Randy Hall, a committee member. The committee looked more on the
idea than the art.
“The main thing that I focused on was the originality of
the idea,” Hall said. “All five of these are very
innovative and are things that I never would have thought of
myself.”
In fact, the ideas were commissioned before the works were ever
made.
“I was blown away with the quality of the work,”
Hall said.
These works now join over 50 already in the collection in
Kerckhoff Hall and other ASUCLA-owned buildings. The competition
starts again this year and is open to students of any major, year
or professional school.
But what’s the prize? $500 and possible immortality in the
hallowed halls of UCLA.
ART: The Student Commissioned Art Program is
accepting proposals until Friday, April 20. For more information
call Lisa Raigosa at (310) 206-0700, or pick up an application at
338 Kerckhoff Hall.
