Matt Weir / The Collegian
Fresno State’s Phebe Conley Art Gallery has a new addition.
A collection of works from established artists of the California Contemporary Art Collective called “The Window Project” is on display in the Conley art building through Friday, Sept. 24.
Each of the artists’ works went on display this spring in the windows of Warnor’s Theater and are now displayed on campus.
The works of two artists, Juliana Harris and Anne Scheid, are physically installed at the front of the gallery, while the work of the remaining artists are digitally displayed in the back section.
Anne Scheid’s work, a collection of charcoal-and-pastel pieces, evokes an earthy but graphic feel. The idea of the safety in small spaces played a role in each of the pieces she created for “The Window Project,” earning the title of her collection “The Safety of Constraint.” Each piece in Scheid’s collection portrays a narrow view of a dark, abstract image, and after looking at each individual piece, the vague outline of a person starts to become more obvious. Each of the panels portray an obscured shot of each part of the person in a rough, marble-esque texture.
Juliana Harris’ collection of photographs, which are digitally manipulated to create abstract images of waterfalls, contribute to the tranquil atmosphere of the gallery. While Harris’ collection lends itself to a reflective state of mind, each of the pictures capture a sense of free motion that compliments the element of confined motion in Scheid’s collection.
Since both artists portray their subjects in black and white, each collection utilizes light and shadow. They freeze each frame in a graphic style that compliment the other artist’s work. Scheid’s sketchings are a set of traditional artwork, while Harris’s photographs were created digitally.
In the back section of the gallery, a slideshow of the remaining artists’ work plays on one of the walls. Trude McDermott’s collection, titled “Caverns,” portrays another shadowy contrast between light and dark. In a depiction of caves on the Central California coast, McDermott used pastels to obscure the line between dark and light colors.
The trend in each of the drawings is for the colors to brighten the closer it gets to the top.
Linda Koch’s “High Country” utilizes bright colors and eye-catching patterns to draw the writer’s attention downward. The landscapes Koch portrays are drastically different from the black-and-white depictions in Scheid’s, Harris’ and McDermott’s artwork. The abstract patterns created by the paint embody colorful, textural images that lend themselves to a contrasting feel from the collections displayed in the front of the gallery.
Each of the artists featured in the gallery created artwork that encompassed the spirit of the landmarks and natural phenomena. In addition to each of the artists’ contributions, the Conley Art Gallery has a slideshow of the collections being installed in the initial venue, Warnor’s Theater. The feel that the collection has in the windows of the theater is well demonstrated in the photographs of the slideshow, but Fresno State students and the public alike will likely enjoy the atmosphere in the gallery as they peruse the collection.