Schema exhibit presents 20 examples of artists' reality: Mixed artwork highlights perceptions of the life through artistic imaination
by Connie Yu, Reporter

   In the mist of a blinding snowstorm, artist Tom Delaney saw a faint horizontal line emerging from the almost-whiteout peripheral vision on Lake Michigan.

   He transformed that experience into his drawing Lakeshore with vigorous lines across the misty white and a horizon appearing ambiguously on the snow-piled ice.

   The viewer sees a vast space of blurry white, with a tiny nail-sized wooden post near the mysterious line to spot the pier of the lake.

   "My work is symbolic in nature, reduced to essentials, elemental," he said, "and suggests that each rendered landscape, still life or abstract image, is more than meets the eye."

   Lakeshore is one of the 20 drawings featured in Schema, A Drawing Show exhibit at the Carillon Gallery on South Campus.

   According to exhibit publicity, Schema reflects "a pattern imposed on complex reality or experience to assist in explaining, mediate perception, or guide response."

    "[Schema is] a pattern on what the artists perceive as the reality they pass on to the world," Elaine Taylor, assistant professor, said, "The theme is an excellent definition of art."

   The exhibit, which closes tomorrow, features four contemporary local artists portraying a diversity of patterns, as well as techniques.

    About 30 people, primarily art students and families, or friends of the artists attended the exhibit opening Jan. 31.

   "I want to let people understand what the whole art of drawing is about," Taylor said.

   Ann Allen, director of the Arlington Museum of Art, presented four charcoal drawings with simple designs and the "mundane converge."

   "I'm intrigued with some of the simple ways our need for decoration, beauty, and creativity expresses itself in our daily lives," she said in a statement.

   Okra Boy, a colored-pencil okra character, appeared with his unique humor in the drawings of Brenda Chambers, an adjunct art professor at Texas Christian University.

   In Okra Boy Prepares for the Worst, Okra Boy gets ready for the possible war on Iraq by wearing a poison mask with his fingers concealing the mask's nosepiece.

    In Pickled Okra 2002, on the other hand, the okra seems to be enjoying bathing in a glass full of martini.

   "Art Euphoria (Chambers' current art style) is all about art and creativity and passion," she said.

   Pamela Mahaffey applied her training in ceramic sculpture into her spiral designs, composing countless fine lines to create a graphic look of complex shapes.

   The exhibit, which features about four to five drawings per artist, is a rare opportunity for the artists, as well as the students, Taylor said.

   Galleries generally feature many artists in a show to draw more crowds, so the artists rarely have a chance to present a selection of works in an exhibit, she said.

   "You are not going to see this kind of thing very often," she said. "That's what's good about an institutional gallery."

   Starting this semester, the Carillon Gallery will feature one exhibit every two weeks, an increase from one every month last fall.

   By increasing the number of exhibits this semester, Taylor said she hopes the gallery will become better known and attract more visitors.

   The next exhibit, scheduled to open Friday, Feb. 14, will focus on the color red. Red, Red will spotlight about10 artists.

   "The idea is to bring the students in and let them see a variety of different arts," she said, "[arts] that give you ideas, show all the possibilities and enhance your view of the world."

    For the outsiders, people who dread going to an art exhibit and pretending to understand the show, Taylor suggests more exposure to art, as well as finding the type of art that connects and inspires.

   "The first thing to looking at art is to find out more about it," she said.

   "Does it make you feel a certain way? Does it make you peek into another reality?

   "The way of an artist is to make us look beyond what we think, we see or know," she said.

   Exhibits in the gallery are non-profit, but Taylor said she will provide contact information for the artists to patrons who wish to purchase any of the art pieces currently on display.