SUNY Student Art Exhibition: A Review

For Today’s avdenture Thom and I walked down to the NYS Museum to behold the wonders of the 2008 Best of SUNY Student Art Exhibition. I urge you to check it out, even if for only 15 minutes, it will be time well spent. This well-deserved showcase of talent includes a number of medias, including medias that I had not seen much of, such as gouache, collograph, and sculptures constructed from anything from aluminum to limetone. I was impressed with the sheer variety of pieces that hung and stood about the spacious exhibition hall.

I was particularly drawn to a number of large paintings that employed color to great effect. Tanya Gadbaw’s Disappearing Generation (oil) and Patricia Gaeta’s Monday (oil on canvas) made use of bold, interesting colors. I was also really attracted to Lacey McKinney’s Jesse, (mixed media and oil on canvas) a huge close-up portrait that was vibrant and expressive. I found the use of mixed media to create interesting textures on this piece. I also want to mention a digital collage by Ruby Merritt called Space, a great juxtaposition of images, and Paul Howe’s Blowin’ Wax, a steel and vinyl structure that was simple but made a statement about technology in our ever-changing world.

Basically, there’s too much to write about here. You must go see it for yourselves.

On Fridays, The New York State Museum, Man Study, and Squid Vicious.

It’s Friday and Marissa and I headed down to the New York State Museum in lieu of further pursuing the Keep Talking, Genius showcase grant project.  We’ve temporarily suspended work on the grant because right now the Federation of Ideas is in physical flux and we’re only planning to exist in hyperspace for a little while. 

Marissa and I have been talking about the Brain Drain of the Capital District, and of US cities in general, and she’s been digging up some great info on the topic.  For instance, it is mostly cities in the US sunbelt that are experiencing growth.  With the exception of NYC, most of the cities that have experienced population growth are located in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Southern California.  Fifty years ago, the biggest American cities were within 500 miles of the Canadian border.  Old industrial, cold weather towns are out.  Upstate New York cities like Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany all have experienced population drops by fractions of percentage points.  Buffalo, however, has shrunk the fastest, having lost almost 6% of its population since 2000. 

So that’s why we were interested in pursuing this grant project; it is called “Keep Talking, Genius,” and it would be ten artist residencies to showcase the substantial talents of Capital District geniuses in the areas of film, music, and visual arts.  However, the project has temporarily been shelved as we’ve lost some wind in our sails in the last weeks.  Hmpf.

ANYWAY, back to the music.  OK.

The library computer is telling me that I am seriously running out of time.  I took a moment to read a Moldy Peaches interview from 2001 in a copy of SQUID VICIOUS that someone left on the POINT 5 door.  I like that people leave lots of weird and cool stuff at POINT 5 and I think that will be one of the biggest things I’ll miss about it.  Like the time someone left two giant SKY POSTERS on the step and we staple-gunned them to the ceiling of POINT 5. 

So we were starting to collect a lot of zines in the space because recently for some reason more were being dropped off.  Matto dropped off some old Miss Mary’s Art Space SCREED papers that were pretty rad.  We need more Miss Mary’s now.

Next time I want to write about the talks I had with Travis at our Privilege discussion group. 

Long live Friday and long live lunch.