Commons Student Gallery

Right now the student gallery at the commons is hosting the VCU Green Unity show. I periodically check the student gallery and usually leave disappointed, as was the case with the exhibit prior to green unity. About half of the pieces in the green unity show were pieces that I cared for whereas the other half was the ever to farmiliar shotty craftsmanship and overall poor conceptualization.

There was one that particularly dropped my jaw and I don't mean that positively. This "artist" took paper coffee cups and pasted a few of them together, in no specific way, to make a larger coffee cup. They also made a cigar sized cigarette and a lighter that wasn't really scaled to be proportional to the cigarette or the coffee cup. The cigarette and lighter were made of random paper and cardboard. They were reminicent of a careless attempt at copying the works of Claus Oldenburg. I am assuming that there just must have been a lack of entries if this kind of work was included but it certainly didnt speak to me about anything that might even be remotely related to the whole VCU Green Unity thing. Even worse, this was a colaborative effort between three people.

At the other end of the spectrum, there were some rather remarkable woodworking pieces. The one that I thought was most profound was the piece titled Sacrifice by Roberto Celis made of slavaged hardwoods and a found walnut stump. Now this was a piece that spoke to me about the idea of being green. The material was as organic as it gets. The wood was unstained and there were two small plants set in soil within the sculpture at the top and bottom. I saw a cycle from the natural existance of these woods to their existance after man's imposition apon them and then from being discarded to being recreated as a new form that is somehow raw again!
There was also an untitled piece by Devin Trom that I don't believe was made of found materials but still had very high conceptual and aesthetic value. The craftsman ship was beautiful! Definately up to par with that of Roberto's Sacrifice. This work was a bed of grass within this woden cage. It functioned very effectively as it was but it also brought my mind elsewhere. I started thinking about time and things like, "what if, instead of grass, there was another type of plant in the cage that could grow in a way that it would overtake the cage and eventually the plant would posess the cage rather than the cage containing the plant, yet.. the core of the plant is still within the cage inevitably!

Thanks to these two pieces I still have some respect for the art of Green Unity. I would urge whoever is in charge of these types of things to consider more closely what they are alowing their name to be associated with. I don't think that a lot of those pieces represent what they expected them to. As an art show in general, most of the other works were far from what I would expect to see from college level art students. This gallery is seen by perspective students when they tour the campus. If this is what I saw on my tour, I may have leaned away from VCU if it had not been for these few peices.