Shelf paper, liquid clay and broken toys highlight show

Thirty-seven artists/designers from a distinguished creative community—the School of Art & Design (A&D) faculty—present 60 works in the annual A&D Faculty Exhibition.

Professor of Art Jim Cogswell's two-story shelf-paper mural is among 60 faculty works on display in the Jean Paul Slusser Gallery on North Campus. (Photo by Sophie Rasul)

The show features new materials, including Jim Cogswell's two-story shelf paper mural; Sadashi Inuzuka's dried milky clay and water solution known as clay slip, used as a backdrop for color projections; and Dan Price's ground-up red, yellow and blue plastic toys—displayed in the pattern Price set as he made a "snow angel" on the gallery floor amidst the chipper-shredded toys. Price describes the work as "an effort to reframe what we deem to be creative action."

Also highlighted is the evocative power of traditional painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, including Lou Marinaro's pencil drawings, Janie Paul's vibrant color abstractions, Georgette Zirbes' ceramics and Jon Rush's steel and acrylic sculpture.

The exhibit is from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, now through Dec. 13 in the Jean Paul Slusser Gallery in the Art & Architecture Building on North Campus."The faculty at the School of Art & Design constitutes an important part of the creative community in southeast Michigan," says A&D Dean Bryan Rogers. "As such the school's creative work, like scholarship and research at the University, is meant to set the pace

The exhibition also offers an opportunity to survey faculty work—to glimpse the wide range of the school's creative strengths at one time in one venue. This makes it particularly useful as a teaching tool for students."

A tour of the pieces on display in the ground-floor gallery reveals A&D faculty are moved by compelling contemporary themes and issues, such as the rising impact of technology on human beings and their culture. "As science and technology continue to change our environment and how we see ourselves as humans, so artists and designers address these changes," says A&D Associate Dean Mary Schmidt.

Works on display in the 2005 School of Art & Design Faculty Exhibition in the Jean Paul Slusser Gallery include Sadashi Inuzuka's installation art piece "Dubium," above, that features images projected on a milky, unfired clay slip solution, and Marianetta Porter's "They Came In Chains," that features altered artifacts: ironing boards which display graphic patterns. Shown below, one displays a diagram of how slaves were placed in slave ships; another lists new names given to slaves. The exhibit runs through Dec. 13. (Photo by Sophie Rasul)

Elona Van Ghent uses rapid prototyping technology to create a dozen or so palm-sized anthropomorphic creatures. "The piece asks us to consider the possibility of hybrid species," says Kate West, A&D associate director of communications. "One of the culture's current questions is what will happen to people as science transforms us as humans; artists reflect those concerns."

Brad Smith produced "Antecedents," featuring magnetic resonance images of a fetus. West says the piece explores the larger issue of how images can help impact and influence what we value.

Pieces made on-site, also known as installations, include Satoru Takahashi's huge martini glasses, tipped onto the floor where they loom larger than a companion house filled with bread, which confounds a sense of scale. For his installation, Inuzuka presents a dry clay slip circle as backdrop for projected colored liquid, creating an evocative and changing display of luminous color.

Of his oversized mural titled, "A Bad Idea," Cogswell says, "Adhesive shelf paper is part of our general culture, and not confined by the assumptions that often go with paint and high art. My interest in poetry and background in English literature comes through here." Cogswell, who also describes the piece as playful, adds, "But I am also aware that as a visual work it will not read like text, unless viewers throw a delicate switch in their minds to force that particular scansion, rather than the more rapid eye movement scanning that we normally use to negotiate bounded visual fields. I am interested in the process of throwing that little switch."

Work in the exhibition also addresses the culture wars, including issues of race, class and gender. "Artists and designers have always recognized their power to expose injustice, to discuss difference, to provoke needed changes in the culture," Rogers says, adding several artists/designers in the exhibition deal with these issues. Marianetta Porter's work alludes to the legacy of slavery through a series of ironing boards imprinted with images such as a diagram locating the slaves in the hold of the slave ship, and names given to slaves by their masters. Carol Jacobsen highlights injustices against women in the prison system with images that include the jail booking photos of Janis Joplin and Rosa Parks.

Some of the pieces in the exhibit offering practical improvements to our lives and environment include Shaun Jackson's child safety car seat, Allen Samuels' portable hygiene stations and Jan-Henrik Andersen's single-person rowboat.

The 2005 Faculty Exhibition is notable for the energy and variety of the work—from traditional painting and sculpture to video, light projects, installation and product design, organizers say.