Students' artwork on display at Fresno Met

By ERIKA LINDQUIST

Paintings full of color, emotion, meaning and experience by five Fresno State art majors are on display at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum.

In collaboration with the Department of Art and Design, the Met “has provided a year-long artist-in-residence program for junior and senior art majors,” said Diadre Metzler, the director of education for the museum. “The internship allows the artists to develop their original work in a studio space provided to them by the museum.”

The five students honored as artists in residence are Jessica Travers, Bill Fenn, Jamison Gish, Chris Scharnick and Maria Melgar. Their collection is titled “Audacious Capitalist Realism.”

Travers, who has been painting since she was a child, has several paintings for viewing that reflect her own experiences.

“The work I create comes from within but is only an interpretation of events and ideas,” Travers said. “I want the viewer to see what they want from each piece, and the projection of themselves on each piece will bring them much closer to it.”

Travers said her artwork is abstract, not a narrative.

One of Travers’ abstract paintings represents silent film actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin.

“I used to watch him when I was a child,” said Travers, who said she likes black and white movies and believes “expression is more important than noise.”

Using mixed media, Travers creates a dark and gloomy feeling with dark colors and sad faces that scatter the painting and stare in every direction. The faces represent the silent film actor.

“It’s kind of got a sad feeling to it,” she said. “He was a great pioneer, but he was ridiculed.”

Fenn also has paintings on display. With lots of color and experimenting, Fenn said he uses “beauty” to draw people to his work.

“The most effective paintings are those that are beautiful,” he said. The “beautiful” paintings are the ones that bring the most attention. But Fenn said beauty is different for everyone.

Along with the opportunity to have their artwork displayed, each of the five students are “responsible for developing and teaching an experimental session for children and high school students relating either to the intern’s work or to museum exhibitions,” Metzler said.

Fenn said having his artwork displayed is “fantastic” because of the exposure. “The Met is really doing us a favor.”

Having the gallery show is “the best part,” Travers said.