The newest exhibit to come to Loyola’s Danna Center Gallery features three series that deal with the processes of both art and life. Showing at the gallery is a massive installation entitled “Layers” by graphic design senior Eliza Schulze and two series entitled “Under Construction” and “Over Construction” by visual arts senior Alexandra Gelpi.
As students walk into the gallery, their eyes immediately shift toward the huge installation covering half of the room. At first glance, “Layers” looks quite random; sewn rectangles of fabric are arranged for aesthetics by the artist, Eliza Schulze, based on color and cover the ground and three walls. In the center of the piece however, is a white sheet decorated with silk screening, painted and sewn figures, drawn and sewn designs, stenciling, wood block prints and an apparent interest in zebras.
Propelling the work even further is the addition of a digital projection over the sheet that changes colors and includes active undertone effects, images and text.
The piece is Schulze’s experiment in disregarding process from art. The installation is simply a free form work that she said “creates an entirely new experience in which all of my memories and subconscious desires blend together.”
The result shows the process of art unintentionally – Schulze said she wanted to see the results of art without borders or assignment.
The other installation in the room is an abstract arrangement of the basic, white frames in the “Under Construction” series, which also includes pictures on the back wall of these frames in various places, angles and forms, as well as a to-scale house frame found in New Orleans.
The idea behind the series came to Gelpi after she noticed the number of houses being built in New Orleans. As the daughter of a contractor, she wanted to show the construction of a house from its beginning.
This very first layer she said “is the rigid responsibility that citizens needs to take in rebuilding New Orleans.”
As a reaction to her first series, and to show the spirit and color of New Orleans as it will always be, the “Over Worked” series of eight paintings is meant to show the complete opposite end of the spectrum by over layering, she said.
Gelpi wanted to stick with material used in homes. On one canvas, seven pieces of birch, with eight shades and colors of latex interior paint, and a glaze, Gelpi uses the familiar process of throwing darts at balloons, but takes it to a unique level through experimentation with layers, paint, color and gravity.
The paintings are arranged in chronological order so viewers can see the changes starting with plain (though bright) color, rough texture and few layers. Throughout the creation process, Gelpi began adding more layers, becoming more inventive in using gravity (as the paint running seems to defy it) and blending the colors in novel ways like adding different oils and water. The color of the paint also changes throughout the series, which grows expressive and untamed, as the paints grew older and were affected by heat over time.
As if the artist ran out of paint, white paint grows more prominent in the paintings until the last, which seemingly is returning to both the beginning of the series with fewer layers and simple paint running, but also to the roots of the “Under Construction” series with the top layer of white paint.
These three series work together to show the importance of the opposite sides of artistic processes, and also a total disregard of it. The exhibit will run in the Loyola Danna Center Gallery through March 13.
Garrett Cleland can be reached at [email protected].
