Spring Break
MOJO: Great art abounds
Bridget Jones
Issue date: 9/12/07 Section: News
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Upon entering the gallery, I was caught in an atmosphere of realistic scenes mixed with bold shapes and colors. The artistic styles of Nunes and Larson are very different, but both portray the world in which we live.
"We both rely a lot on geometric shapes. I play with a lot of depth and sense of space," said Kyle R. Larson, a graduate art student at Sacramento State. "Linda does that too, but very differently. She likes to create shapes and forms almost like a machine had made them."
Larson's paintings are intensely real that I had to stop and compare them to scenes I had experienced in my own life. I could relate to the crowded streets, the boring airports and the feelings of sadness. Larson's human forms are very gray for the most part. The facial expressions range from quietly, yet joyfully content, to deep despair and apathy.
In Larson's "Airport I," the top half of a man is shown sitting up against an airport window. A colorful plane in the background is clearly the painting's focus, but as I studied the work, I was intrigued by how ghostlike and apathetic the man looked. Larson explained that this man is experiencing a situation many of us are all too familiar with.
"It's the mundane, kind of oppressive state…These mundane scenes that everyone has to endure sometimes," Larson said, pointing out the fact that everyone must sometimes be bored out of their minds in hopes of experiencing more interesting moments of life.
Nunes' work leans much more towards the imaginary side of life with a variety of abstract, yet boldly, colorful shapes. Although the edgy lines of her paintings seem to pull the shapes apart, there is an obvious symmetry within them that made me think of simple real world objects such as balls, boxes, shelves, pulleys and stairs.
In Nunes' "Moon Over," splashes of reds, oranges, yellows, browns and blues mold a variety of shapes together. The resulting effect is a piece that looks like an explosion of anger as well as a state of complete calmness.
"Shapes, Plains and Space" is displayed until Friday from 12 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a reception on Friday night from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
This mix of beautiful drudgery and emotional edginess is representative of some of many brilliant works of art at Sac State. Don't miss out!
Bridget Jones can be reached at bjones@statehornet.com
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