In Focus: This Week @ the Student Art Galleries

My highlights for this week's art event at the Student Art Galleries are here! Here's a glimpse to what you must see.

1.

The Circle Painting Project will leave you smudged with paint and with inspiration for communal art. Visit the Max L. Gatov Gallery, where project leader and Cal State Long Beach MFA student Hiep Nguyen sticks to his catchy motto: "Art for All. All for Art." (There's a lot more to this than the picture you see above, but you've got to walk into the gallery for yourself. It will wow you!)

2.

Juicy bits of souvenirs from a trip into a foreign land are nicely lined up in the Max L. Gatov Gallery East for The Cambodian Project's multimedia show, "Art and Social Action 2008." Amazingly, 20 CSULB students traveled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in January, where, upon encountering the city's schoolchildren, the Long Beach students employed non-verbal communication lesson plans, which helped developed their new young friends' sense of self, relationship to their community, gave some inspiration to dream and, well, helped build this colorful medley of art.

3.

It's more about listening in the Dennis W. Dutzi Gallery, where tiki-esque melodies ride through along the background of this installation. Although I'm not sure of the creators of this art piece, I'm sure that the music sounded as if it was composed by a factory line of workers hitting on pots or banging on rails. Hints of piano interspersed in the layers of this tricky music made room for a whimsical moment of observation. Update: This is Laura Duphily's "fiber works" collection.

4.

On display in the Merlino Gallery, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual (LGBT) Artist Collective "uses interactive installation to explore issues of Freedom and Imprisonment." While I'm not clear on how those precise issues of freedom and imprisonment were translated in this group show, I collected a sense of release in all the artists' works, especially in Robin Anne Lynch's "Eyes Within." In the desriptions of her work, Lynch says that her art pieces, which are horizontal cut-outs of her eyes in multiple technoligically-altered tones, are an "introspective look into the mystical world of a catlike and aloof young artist." I like her spirit.

5.

Dozens of artists are featured in the Marilyn Werby Gallery for the Art Education Student Group Show, "Windows." But I especially enjoyed this "Busy Work" by Lydia Simson. Made of pencil, watercolor and gouache, I think Simson's work is so incandescent and cool that I'll have to visit the galleries one more time to see it, before it's all gone Thursday.

All photos and video by Barbara Navarro.

This week's art event will end on Thursday.

To view higlighlights of last week's art event at the Student Art Galleries, please click here.

Hours for the galleries:
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday — 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Wednesday — 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Opening receptions for the student art galleries are on Sundays from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.