Esteban Cortez / The Collegian

Iranian-born artist Hadieh Shafie carefully hand paints thousands of strips of paper. She uses various multi-colored strips and assembles them into groups to form a kaleidoscope of colors in a tightly rolled scroll.

In the end, thousands of scrolls come together to form what is essentially a scroll painting appropriately titled “20871 Pages,” a reference to the number of paper strips used to complete the large, circular piece.

Hints of color peek through to the ends of the scrolls and form rings of red, green, blue and yellow. If viewers examine the piece closely, they might see the Farsi text inside the core of the scrolls, a step that required absolute precision.

Shafie’s piece is one of 16 pieces featured at the 2nd annual Artist Invitational at the Fresno State Conley Art Gallery. Through Feb. 10, four nationally renowned artists will have pieces displayed in the gallery: digital media artist Kirkman Amyx, painter Richard Bruland, ceramics artist Roger Lee and Hadieh Shafie, a Baltimore-based artist.

Fresno State art professor Nick Potter organized the show and wanted to feature talented, professional artists at the invitational. Potter asked art department faculty to collaborate on ideas for the show. After reviewing works from recommended artists, a committee within the department decided to invite the four featured artists.

“When we saw the work for these artists, it just clicked,” Potter said. “Even though their work is very different, they all have this one main element, which is that they have a very meticulous, time-consuming approach to making their work.”

Kirkman Amyx, a San Francisco digital media artist, featured a 58-by-188-inch piece titled “Basic Cable” that consists of 69 individual panels that represent 69 cable TV channels. Each panel shows an entire week’s worth of television that is illustrated with 7,200 screenshots inserted into 1,440 cells that run five layers deep. Nearly 500,000 images were used to complete the entire piece.

Amyx began working on the project in 2008 and worked on it for four years. People who look at the panels closely will see repetitive patterns. A panel featuring PBS screenshots has several rows of vibrant, colorful cells due to the high programming of cartoons during the day.

“I’ve always been interested in how aspects of photography can capture a moment in time,” Amyx said at a Fresno State class lecture before the opening reception.

Amyx wanted to show the repetitive nature of cable TV in “Basic Cable.” A panel featuring screenshots from a jewelry channel is overwhelmingly purple, while a golf channel features screenshots primarily consisting of green.

Jaime Banuelos, a liberal studies student at Fresno State, used a magnifying glass to look at the individual cells featured in Amyx’s pieces.

“I was just admiring someone’s creativity to take TV programs and put it in this way,” Banuelos said about “Basic Cable.”

Potter said budget cuts throughout the university have made it more difficult to put on shows like the current exhibit. Although the Conley Art Gallery has various funding sources, it was costly to ship some of the pieces to the gallery, such as Shafie’s scroll piece, which was completed shortly before the exhibit. A grant from the Fresno State Middle East Studies Program also helped put on the show.

“We know that this is a very important thing to do here,” he said. “Students don’t get to see visiting artists often, so we’re working towards making this a permanent fixture of the department regardless of the budget.”

Amyx, Bruland and Lee presented lectures at the Conley Art 101 lecture hall and attended the opening reception on Tuesday. Conley Art Gallery technician Edward Lund said it was a popular lecture and that the hall was “jam-packed.” He said it was popular because students and the community took advantage of the opportunity to see professional artists with significant bodies of work in Fresno.

“It’s been exciting showing here,” said Amyx, who has shown his work throughout the United States. “It’s been a real wonderful reception from the faculty and students and it appears there’s a nice vibrant art community in Fresno.”

Potter hopes that students and people from the community take advantage of the exhibit, as it gives everyone an opportunity to see a diverse body of work from four very different artists.

Roger Lee’s ceramic piece “Swell” was popular among attendees. Dozens of red, pear-shaped sculptures that formed the piece hanged from the ceiling of the gallery and appeared to float in mid-air. From below, a continual pattern of red dots formed, which arguably unified the piece with the repetitiveness of the other works.

Although the theme of repetition and precision in the works was purely coincidental, Potter said that when the pieces were placed next to each other, they started to blend. It’s something people have to see in person, he added.

“I think [the artists] have all written interesting statements and approached the show in an interesting way,” Potter said. “It’s powerful work and very high quality, which I think comes from those artists being in major art cities and being influenced by their surroundings. People should take advantage of that.”

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