Art Beat: Juried exhibit at Grimshaw-Gudewicz gallery shows students honing their craft

For only the second time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, fine art and applied art students are displaying their work in the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery at Bristol Community College’s Fall River campus.

The first-year and sophomore students are nearing the end of the academic year and are exhibiting work created for foundation program classes, including drawing, two-dimensional design, typography, photography, painting, publication design and computer graphics.

Upon graduation, they will receive an associate’s degree in art and many will likely continue onto pursue a bachelor of fine arts degree (and beyond) at other institutions of higher learning.

Gallery director Kathleen Hancock describes the show as a “capstone event.” It is an opportunity for the students to prepare works for exhibition and navigate submission requirements, as any professional artist would do.

As the exhibition was juried, the students had to wait to find out if their work had been accepted for inclusion. That wait itself might be the source of a bit of youthful anxiety but ultimately it’s a life lesson that prepares one for a future as an artist, anticipating acceptance or rejection into other art programs, into other shows, to gallery representation, to a job in the art world or a graphic design studio.  And yes, even to what some art critic might say.

And this sometimes curmudgeonly art critic is delighted to have found much to enjoy in this exhibition. It must be noted, that for no reasons other than the sheer volume of work on display and space limitation, the commentary can not include all the participating artists.

The Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery does not shy away from difficult subject matter as exhibition fodder, having shows in the recent past that  have focused on life during a global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and personal identity “beyond the binary.”

A college gallery need not court controversy but neither should it cower from it. That said, it was exhilarating to see an exhibition that seemed to be truly just about developing new skills, exploring a variety of media and finding pleasure in making art.

Abbey Grundy’s charcoal drawing of a statue of muscular male torso sans head, arms and legs is handsomely rendered.  Picking up each curve of the abdomen and chest, while balancing the light and darkness in the background, Grundy utilizes the simplest of tools to firmly anchor an object in space.

With a decidedly reductivist palette, Jill Law’s painting of a curvaceous nude (photograph cropped to skirt the editorial caveat restricting full frontal female nudity) is luscious in its simplicity: an alabaster figure against a field of crimson, somehow nodding to the European masters while being absolutely contemporary.

Jamie Gravette’s monochromatic portrait of the actor Giancarlo Esposito, of “Breaking Bad,” “The Mandalorian” and  “Godfather of Harlem” fame, created with Adobe Photoshop, is exquisitely detailed. Playing with light and a deft technological touch, Gravette makes every detail count: the shine in his pupils, the five o-clock shadow, the cartoonish squiggles of his hair.

Rugile Guillotte’s iPad and Apple Pencil digital drawing of a wolf with the hide and horns of a ram tied to it (as it turns back to make the innocent lamb follows) was created for a graphic design class. It’s quite possible that a career in children’s book illustration might be in Guillotte’s future.

An assignment to create a self-portrait in Illustrator and incorporating something that was a representation of self in the background, led Amya Fraser to create an engaging, brilliantly hued version of herself, in which a series of eyes float in the sky. And could there be a better  symbol than peering eyes to represent the curiosity of an artist?

For the same assignment, Molly Harrington’s long dark hair and bright white tee shirt pop against a sky of pale blue and gray-orange clouds on which an array of swirls have been set. Perhaps her “representation of self” are her fingerprints? Wonderful concept and execution.

Madeline Pina exhibited a four-part series of gouache paintings illustrating poems from a collection called “Homage to the Lame Wolf” by Serbian poet Vasko Popa. Riffing on a creation myth and featuring a pair of cartoon skeletons comforting a weeping wolf, Pina’s work is curious, engaging, and will likely have me reading Serbian poetry, which was not in my summer plans.

Other works of particular note: Sarah Cabral’s bovine memento mori painting; Alex Tetreault’s pop arty drawing of boxing gloves; and Zoie Botelho’s computer graphic depiction of row of townhouses, in tropical tangerine, yellow, pastel green and sky blue.

Every student artist in the exhibition is ripe with talent and possibility. And I’ll continue to watch their development. And report back.

“Annual Juried Student Art & Design Exhibition: Selected Works From All Fine Art and Graphic Design Courses” is on display at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery, Bristol Community College, 777 Elsbree St., Fall River, until May 20.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Art Beat visits annual juried exhibit at Grimshaw-Gudewicz gallery