“Self Portrait,” oil on canvas, by Shaun Larson, 2014.
Just weeks after he made the first oil painting of his artistic career as a school assignment, Shaun Larson’s peek-a-boo portrait was hanging on the walls of an art gallery.
“Awesome, cool, validating” is the way the 20-year-old Gateway Community College student described his oil-on-canvas “Self Portrait,” which is now displayed on the second floor of the John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street.
It’s one of 77 works in the Exhibition of Undergraduate College Artwork in Connecticut, chosen from about three times that number submitted, said curator and art teacher Paul Clabby. The show, which runs through Dec. 21, is the fifth biennial of area college students’ work.
Clabby said the show aims to give students a chance for interaction with the art world outside the classroom. It certainly worked for Larson (pictured).
Larson is enrolled in Vincent Baldassano’s painting class at Gateway. Baldassano is one of the teachers Clabby contacts to encourage students to submit to the show.
Baldassano had given Larson and his other students an assignment to do a self portrait. He had suggested that the students start with a collage. Larson chose images from magazines. “I looked for images that caught my eye, dualities between cityscape and nature,” he said.
When Clabby visited Gateway, Baldassano had Larson’s work and those of other students from several classes arrayed and waiting. Sometimes the students are there and Clabby interacts with them and the statements they have written about their work. Larson wasn’t around, but Clabby picked his work anyway.
“It’s very cool to see it in a studio gallery setting as opposed to a classroom. It validates it. Rather than being an assignment for a grade, it shows it can stand on its own,” Larson said.
Clabby (pictured looking at UConn student Zijie Mo’s digital print “Swan Lake”) said that he takes particular pains not to let teachers put forward work that they think should be chosen. Taking a very democratic approach, he selects work that grabs him, making no distinctions between “amateurs and professionals,” he said. Students also submit work directly to Clabby through emailed images.
The show ranges from oil paintings to photography to sculpture, also including works focused on design and illustration, such as Elizabeth Mastrocola’s “Heavy Things” (pictured). It’s always the work that has to speak to him, and not the ideas around the work. “What the professors want and what the world wants to see [in art] aren’t necessarily the same thing,” Clabby said.
“Glide,” oil on canvas, by Kelly Conley, 2014.
When Clabby visited Fairfield University he was taken with Kelly Conley’s “Glide,” an aerial view of a swimmer in a golden bathing suit that seems inseparable from her body. She moves effortlessly through blue water. “The statement wasn’t that impressive, but the work was interesting,” Clabby said.
“Swan Lake,” digital print, by Zijie Mo, 2014.
When Clabby visited UConn, Zijie Moe showed three digital photographs. While the detail on all the digital prints was impressive, Clabby said he went with “Swan Lake” because it was the most quiet. “Your eye doesn’t draw to a particular spot. It’s contemplative.”
“This guy is a Photo One student,” Clabby said, meaning a first level photography class. “It’s unbelievable.”
You might expect student-centric angst or school subjects to abound, but that’s not frequently the case. Clabby said if patterns emerge from the 77-student selection, it’s that, contrary to the news that young people are narcotically obsessed with digital devices, there’s very little in the show of an electronic nature, although in past student shows there have been.
Clabby also noted that in this year’s exhibition, old-fashioned representation seems to be trumping abstraction. “It’s all subjective in the end, what catches my eye. For a lot I’m looking at subject more than a perfect rendering,” Clabby said.
In Larson’s case, Clabby said what drew him to the young artist’s work was the multiple points of view that surround the central, red-clouded face.
“The Brownie,” cardboard, by Norwalk Community College student Remy Sosa, 2014.
Larson listened to Clabby, whom he met on the way out of the gallery, talk about not only his own work, but the genre of self-portraiture. “It’s a valuable thing, a record of where you were,” Clabby said. “You can return to it.”
There will be a reception for the artists on Sunday, Dec. 7, between 2 and 5 p.m.
