Purchase Event Tres: The Junior Print and Photo Show

My roommate, Mike, is a printmaking major and he and I are always talking about art. More specifically, we like to talk about different ways of combining such an odd field as New Media and combining it with the more traditional printmaking. I enjoy gaining new perspectives on the practice of art, so I was thoroughly surprised when I attended the Junior Print Show and the Junior Photo Show.
Like I said, my roommate is a printmaker, so I did feel an obligation to attend his show. I didn’t look at like it was a chore or anything and I soon found out there was really no need to. Walking into the Triangle Gallery in the VA building, I was treated to quite a sight. The walls were literally covered with art, with every spare inch used as efficiently as possible. The gallery was abuzz with people, with a jazz trio playing in the corner.
I was drawn to a series of pieces that my roommate did. They were paper casts of modern household electronic objects such as a fan or a computer monitor. Using cotton pulp he was able to accurately recreate each object. I found the thought that what I was seeing was a computer monitor in some ways, but wasn’t in others. This reminded me a lot of the way people interact on the internet. Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, you never really know what you are going get.
Down the hall from the Print show was the Junior Photo show. There were many issues dealt with in the show but I was drawn to a series of nudes. In a few of the photos, there were two naked men out in a ditch in some field. One seemed to be working on a laptop while the other was posing with a small television. The idea of taking these everyday objects out of their environment and juxtaposing them with two naked men in ditch made me chuckle. Another series of photos dealt with blue collar Americans. All were portraits taken of patrons of a bar in Brooklyn. Each photo seemed to tell a story about its subject. I even took to making up stories of my own and giving these complete strangers their own history.
After being exposed to so much art for so long (2 hours), I left the VA feeling inspired to make my own art. I really wanted to delve into an issue and explore it. Maybe someday the art that I make will evoke a similar reaction out of someone else. After all, that is art: a game of give and take.