The Badger Herald: ArtsEtc.: Showcase sculpts minds of both students, artists

Updated Saturday, November 21, 2009, at 6:41 p.m.

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ArtsEtc.

Showcase sculpts minds of both students, artists

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Also by Jenna Hindi:

By Jenna Hindi, posted Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:00 a.m.

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The 80th Annual Student Art Show, going on now at the Memorial Union, gives University of Wisconsin students yet another chance for their artwork to be added to the university’s growing collection of about 1,300 pieces from more than 500 artists.

Jurors Barbara C. Buenger, art history professor at UW, and Jake Stockinger, Arts & Culture desk editor at The Capital Times, said in their jurors’ statement it was a pleasant surprise to be able to easily select work of such high quality.

Throughout the Porter Butts and Class of 1925 Galleries on the second floor of the Union, a variety of pieces can be found ranging from pencil sketches to modern collages to oil paintings. One video documents customers entering and exiting State Street’s Triangle Market, while another features a woman lying naked in a forest surrounded by passing deer.

“I think almost everybody would find something that they like,” Stockinger said in an interview with The Badger Herald about the assortment of artwork displayed. “They might not like everything, but there is something there that would appeal to them.”

This diverse collection could be attributed to the fact that all UW students were eligible to submit pieces, not just art majors.

“You get photographers and people who do art as a hobby,” Stockinger said. “They love doing it, and that’s why they do it — not for a career. A lot of students have their own vision and are clearly working toward art that is original.”

Opening the show to non-art students has also attracted a wider range of students who can visit the display to see art that has been produced right on campus.

Stockinger and Buenger awarded the Sally Owen Marshall Best in Show award to UW graduate student Matthew Bindert. Stockinger said Bindert’s use of wood block print and a canvas, repetition and abstracted black and white captured the attention of both jurors and visitors of the exhibition.

“Everyone who went to go look at it would walk away but come back to it again,” commented Stockinger. “I have a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder, and so I love repetition and this I think captures it very, very well.”

According to Bindert, he combined repetition and abstraction with influences in his life to create his piece, called “Interconnectedness.”

“DNA charting, textiles and modern corporate structures are some elements I have drawn from … that inspired the abstract forms in my piece,” Bindert said of his award-winning artwork in an e-mail to The Badger Herald.

In order to ensure the final display would be a sample of the artistic talent throughout campus, the jurors selected at most one piece from each student, and they emphasize the show is available to all residents in the Madison area, not just art students.

“You do not have to be a professional artist to make art and to appreciate art,” Stockinger said.

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