MFA students’ work displayed outside the gallery

Leah McClure
Wed, 26 Aug 2015 01:42:28 +0000
Campus, chocolate, featured, Knowlton hall, national championship ring, ohio state master of fine arts, osu national championship, Pomerene Hall

Melissa Precise. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Sean Merchant, 'Night Light'. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Tess Elliot, ‘Chocolate’. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Emma Kindall, ‘Treasure Collecting’. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Jessie Horning, ‘Untitled (A torch in the rainforest)’. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Allison Craver, Photo Courtesy of OSU

Andrew Wood, 'Broadcast III'. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Sarah Goetz, 'there there'. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Britny Wainwright'. Photo Courtesy of OSU

Cardiovascular exercise and fine art came together to spawn the three-hour walking tour of Everything is Here on Monday. The exhibit features art from 15 Master of Fine Arts students entering their second year and covers 12 unconventional locations – ranging from the Chadwick Arboretum to University Hall. The bus tour happened on Aug. 24, but the exhibition will continue through Nov. 7.

Participants were provided with a map of the 12 locations, and were able to stroll across campus while having the opportunity to discuss the different exhibits with the artists who made them.

The co-chairs of the event, Melissa Precise and Sean Merchant, both created pieces for the exhibit – at a racquetball court in the RPAC and the Chadwick Arboretum, respectively.

Precise described her sculpture, titled “Flam-Lamp (studio session),” as a “gangly, extemporaneous construction” made out of drums, two-by-fours and bungee cords. The sculpture was accompanied by a video of Precise putting it together.

“I think that making art and experiencing art are both processes of discovery,” Precise said. “I’ll share a few elements of my project and will allow viewers to join me in creating and discovering the rest.”

Sean Merchant’s “Night Light” consists of a wooden pavilion with an image of a bird’s-eye view of Ohio and its surrounding area at night. Merchant said he was fascinated by the similarity of this image to stars in the night sky.

“It’s as if we or the sky is some big mirror reflecting the other,” he said.

Another stop on the tour was at University Hall, where Sa’dia Rehman’s video clip, titled “Hello Sa, Where Are You?” played on a loop in Room 014. Rehman began recording voicemails from her mother in August 2014 and used this as the audio for the series of images making up her video.

“A lot of my work deals with memory and loss,” she said.

Across the Oval in the Hopkins Hall courtyard, Cameron Sharp’s “Someday” sat. “Someday” is an interactive piece with a seesaw-like contraption that participants took turns riding.

“I’m interested in the idea of familiar,” Sharp said, discussing the nostalgic feelings that come with seeing a seesaw.

Hillary Reed’s “Everything Is Record” in Stillman Hall was another stop in the Everything is Here tour.

“For me, it was about playing with the idea of records and including aspects of chance in my practice,” Reed said she created her piece by tossing tiny, handmade pinhole cameras out of a window. She neatly aligned the cameras, as well as the photos that resulted, next to the very window that they were thrown out of.

At one point, the group touring the exhibit found itself in an abandoned-looking room at Pomerene Hall, looking at Emma Kindall’s “Treasure Collecting.” Kindall created the piece using found materials, printmaking and memorabilia of her own.

“My piece is mourning what once was and an attempt to repair what could have been,” she said.

Shuttle buses carried groups to various locations, including Knowlton Hall, to view Yuanyuan Lu’s series of geometric sculptures, titled “Reflection in Flow,” and Sam van Strien’s “thresholds,” made from graphite rubbings.

Sarah Goetz’s “there there” played on various monitors throughout the Byrd Polar & Climate Research Center in Room 108 of Scott Hall. ?The video is made of footage of ice melting and ice cream melting but played in reverse.

“This video is about the frustration, despair and occasional discouraged apathy that rushes through me when I think about how much of human habits we have to change before we can see drastic improvement in our environment,” Goetz said.

The final stop of the tour was at the Sherman Studio Arts Center, located on West Campus, which held Tess Elliot Catalano’s “Chocolate.” Catalano made chocolate copies of Ohio State’s National Championship ring, alluding to the instant gratification that comes with eating chocolate or succeeding in a sport.

“I’m trying to say something in a fun way, without pointing fingers or being aggressive,” Catalano said. Guests were invited to eat Catalano’s chocolate rings.

Other pieces featured in the exhibit include Allison Craver’s untitled exhibit in Orton Hall, Britny Wainwright’s ceramic piece, “Extraction,” at Chadwick Arboretum, Jessie Horning’s untitled work in the Biological Sciences Greenhouse, Nick Fagan’s “All That I Could Bring From the North,” and Andrew Wood’s “Broadcast III,” with the latter two located at the Sherman Studio Arts Center.

Information about where the various pieces in the exhibit are located, as well as the dates for which they will be up, can be found at the event’s website, u.osu.edu/everywhereishere/