Arts & Entertainment

Core art exhibit is random insanity

By Uruj Perwaiz
The Daily Cougar

Each year, the Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art awards nine-month residencies to eight promising young artists. Their art is currently being displayed at Glassellis exhibit in the teaching wing of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

As you walk in the back entrance, youill notice a strikingly colorful painting to the right. Itis an image of a landfill, and trash is piled up all over the canvas. By incorporating bright splashes of color, the artist tries to trick the viewer into thinking itis a positive image. 

Straight is a painting of a waterfall with whales resting on a rock. This piece has a childlike quality with its bold squares (the waterfall) and its circles (the whales and rocks). If this doesnit interest you, head toward the stairs.

At the foot of the stair is what looks like garbage left behind by construction workers: buckets, a garden hose and several pipes. Itis actually art; a mixed media by Allison Wiese called Still.

On the second level of the exhibit, the first painting is immensely depressing. A girl sits alone in the city and stares through the gray night at a full red moon. This one is appropriately called Loneliness in Big Cities. All the paintings along this wall are by Wm. Kelly Bailey. 

The next two paintings are comical. Hammerin' Egg is a painting of an egg and a twig tied together and being used as a hammer to pound a nail into a piece of wood. The egg, naturally, is severely cracked where it meets the nail. Floor Lamp Wrought Wrong is an image of a lamp with its post twisted painfully in opposing directions.

The wall ends with a soothing portrait of a woman sitting among bright pueblos. This one, Contemplation, makes your climb up the stairs to the second level of the gallery worth it.

The other side of the second floor is filled with headache-inducing randomness -- splashes of paint on torn-up pieces of denim nailed to the wall.

The exhibit also features two paintings of sandstorms -- except they look nothing like sandstorms and everything like black squares on canvas. In the corner, artist Stephanie Martz used a marker to draw a wooden fence on the wall. She calls it Corner. I call it scribbling on the wall.

The only way out of the exhibit is to walk through an intimidating maze. Karyn Olivieris Fort consists mostly of large photographs of the artistis reconstruction of her living room.

Make sure not to leave the exhibit until youive visited the tiny, dark inset by the exit. It has three transparencies by Danny Yahav-Brown. They are supposed to be a mouse pad, the keypad of a cell phone and the drinking hole of a plastic coffee lid. However, it looks like pencil scribbles rubbed on transparency sheets.

If youire up to a challenging visit to an insane art exhibit, then donit miss the 2003 Core Artists in Residence Exhibition. The exhibition runs through April 16. Admission is free.

2003 Core Artists in Residence Exhibition

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The verdict: The exhibit is interesting but confusing.

 Send comments to dcshobiz@mail.uh.edu