Marina Gaytan / The Collegian

Creative art covered the walls of the DeRouchey Creative Design Studio in Fresno Thursday evening as artists and audience members mingled throughout the downtown space.

Themed “Variations of Flight,” this Art Hop venue on the corner of Van Ness Avenue and Hamilton Street featured student artists’ creations surrounding the concept of flight.

T-shirts, painted canvases, a few photos, and an old artist palette with a wood burned design spread across the studio’s three rooms.

Some of the artwork depicted birds, feathers and planes to describe flight while others showcased a more abstract personal interpretation of flight.

“This show is a collective, it’s a melting pot,” said event coordinator and art major at California State University, Fresno, Samuel Tekunoff.

“Flight is a weight within the metaphor of not being controlled by gravity and having the free will of moving through water, land and air,” Tekunoff said. With the help of fellow artist and friend, David Bogdanov, Tekunoff hand selected 10 artists specifically for the show.

Such diverse elements are represented in the show, Tekunoff explained, because each artist has specific skills and a unique interpretation of “flight.”

“By giving the artist the opportunity to do what they want, [the work] is more meaningful as they allow their own emotion, color, feel, passion and pent up aggression to create something [unique],” Tekunoff said.

His own work, centering on computer manipulative photography and digital illustration, exhibited Tekunoff’s personal perceptions of flight through a shark in motion, a lizard with feathers and a bird with open wings.

Tekunoff said he first took an interest in art in elementary school, competing in art competitions at The Big Fresno Fair and displaying his work at multiple Art Hops.

His inspiration to give fellow artists a space to display their work came four years ago when he approached several local galleries, hoping to display his work. Wait lists and gallery fees deterred him from doing so, Tekunoff said, and in frustration he created his own show, He gained the support of close friends, the DeRouchey family, who allowed him to use their renovated meat packing facility as a gallery.

The “Variations of Flight” show marks the third annual themed event Tekunoff coordinated.

Visitors mingled through the different rooms admiring, questioning or just examining the various pieces. The artists rarely strayed far from their own work.

Viewers mobbed them with questions and requests for interpretation of the pieces, Tekunoff said.

“I’m trying to change the perception of the word and the world of flight,” said Fresno State art major Justin Yando about his pieces. He explained that while attending community college he became interested in graffiti.

“That’s what inspired all this,” Yando said, pointing to his work which featured individuals and words, painted in a graffiti-like style. Yando described his work as “more urban” and open for interpretation. The characters themselves are not actually flying, he explained. However, elements in the work depict flight.

Artist Steph Hahn found her perception of flight in religion. Hahn’s four paintings interwove feathers with images of a human heart, a deer among greenery, a girl’s face and a single peacock feather. Each piece, she said, reflects a central spiritual theme.

“I try to portray my perspective on truth, which is glorifying God,” Hahn explained. Unlike the other artists, Hahn never graduated from college but explained that her art stemmed from attending a visual and performing arts magnet school.

Hahn moved to Fresno two years ago from Orange County and is currently part of the creative team at The Well Community Church.

She explained that her paintings exhibited an emotion of flight as well as its functionality. The lone peacock feather, Hahn explained, shows that the feather holds beauty but lacks function. She likened it to a single Christian becoming a part of a larger body of believers. The concept of truth, Hahn believes, relates to flight.

“Variations of Flight” reflected elements of each of the artists varying beliefs, passions and vocation, but in all of the works the common theme took flight.