There are whispering voices in the distance, but not voices in your head. They are the sounds one hears when entering the art-filled Ford gallery, now featuring the Graduate Student Show.
If the gallery visitor follows the voices to a corner, he or she will be able to watch a video entitled “Vinegar and Honey,” created by Christine Bruxvoort.
This is not the only interactive piece within the gallery. Carol Hanna has also added sound to her piece “Call of the Common Loon,” an acrylic airbrushed painting displayed with a button to press. When a person presses that button, the sound of the Common Loon comes out for the visitor to hear as he or she examines the painting, which does not feature the figures of any birds.
However, the relationship with this show does not end by adding sound to the art world. Traci Shipley has mixed the concept of two-dimensional and three-dimensional in her piece “Monster Specimen,” made with a chalkboard, chalk and fabric. It has a drawing on an old-fashioned chalkboard, and next to the chalkboard, hanging from a noose, are two figures made from fabric. The media she uses have a lot to do with the theme of her work.
“I have always been fascinated with mysteries and the unexplained,” Shipley said. “Introducing the chalkboard to explore these concepts came from investigating what is fact of fiction. The chalkboard is a didactic tool that has an aura of authority. I enjoy the role-playing aspect of the narrative and idea of conveying information that may or may not be true.”
Many of the visual references within her work came from her childhood, where Shipley grew up with eight children. Her mom would make them dolls, and her father would bring them used playground equipment. She reuses these concepts within the narratives of her work.
“Recently, I have been using dolls I had from childhood and reinvented them as monster hunters,” Shipley said. “They each have their own role in their agency. In order to promote their services, they need to show evidence that monsters do exist. The 3-D pieces are that evidence. The 2-D work is the documentation of their searches and the actions as they prepare their specimens for viewing.”
A piece by Connaught Cullen entitled “There is No Global Good Global Warming in this Painting,” a painting, whose title reaches out to viewers, is also in the show.
“My hope for the painting is that viewers would see that there are systematic patterns in the breakdown of nature, and by understanding those patterns recognize that they could be reversed,” Cullen said. “I realize there are diverse opinions on global warming and I do not propose to have all the answers, but we ignore science at our peril.”
All of the pieces in the show have been created by students in the Masters of Arts, a 30 credit-hour program, and the Masters of Fine Arts program, a more intense 60 credit-hour program in which the students work one-on-one with a faculty member. There are about 25 graduate students and about 35 works in the show.
“The annual Graduate Student Show exposes some of EMU’s most recent and emerging talent,” said Gregory Tom, the gallery director at Eastern Michigan University. “As grad students, they are the leaders in their respective areas. It also shows you on a very broad level what is being pushed at the grad student level. If you are interested in attending EMU for grad school, this is an excellent opportunity to see a broad collection of work.”
The Graduate Student Show is on display now until Thursday. The Ford Gallery is located in EMU’s Ford Hall. The hours are from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday and Thursday; 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; and 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
