Every year, the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design has a juried exhibition of artwork created by its loyal undergraduate students. The stakes are high; two participants whose work is deemed “best in show” are awarded a whopping $2,000 prize each, with several honorable mentions bringing in $100 as well. The jury usually consists of University affiliates, this year being made up of three alumni of the Stamps School (before it was the Stamps School). The decisions of said jury are always much debated for weeks after the cuts are made.
This year, the exhibition consists of many design projects, from toothpaste lids that hold your brush in place to vegetable peelers that fit on your thumb, a few tables, prints, and various other media. The winning projects were Hillary Butterworth’s mesmerizing drawing machine that changes what forms it creates based on how close people are standing to it, and a presentation of video and collage made with a jaw-operated pinhole camera by Nick Williams. Of course they deserve the award, and had it been up to me, I would have chosen the same two projects.
In addition to the juried show, however, something a little different took place. The students who didn’t make the cut put together their own exhibition, affectionately titled “The Shit Show”. It was installed in the street gallery outside Slusser, right next to the work that was deemed higher quality by the panel of alumni. On the night of both openings, December 2nd, there were also installations put up in the senior studios, videos in a room played on a large digital projector, and performances to augment the work in the street gallery.
Upon entering the building, one first encounters the unjuried work leading up to the large open room scattered with objects and images. The general consensus was that if nobody had expressed there were two distinct exhibitions going on, they would have thought it all the same show, judging by the quality of work. The biggest difference, it was said, was that the work in the Shit Show actually had something that the juried work lacked in some cases: character. While not every piece in the street gallery is a masterpiece, there is a definite diversity of media, content, and form that’s exciting in comparison to the cleanly finished pieces all spaced out along the walls and floor of the Slusser Gallery. I even heard one or two brave souls venture to posit that the Shit Show was maybe even better than the Salon – I mean the Stamps show.
While I think it’s good to give students an opportunity to show their work in a professional setting, and a little friendly competition to be healthy, it seems like the pressure exerted on students to make what the University defines as “exceptional” work can be overwhelming, and leads to tension between friends and fellow artists who may or may not have gotten in. It is especially difficult to walk through the Slusser gallery with the idea that every piece inside was specifically and individually decided to be “better” than yours, despite what people have said or your own judgments about the work. When it comes down to it, the process of comparing two completely different projects about different things made with different materials is ultimately completely subjective. It’s probably helpful in the long run to get used to being denied access to exhibitions, as keeping our expectations in check results in happier surprises when things do work out. All in all, every artist has to learn to deal with rejection – but is their undergraduate University the right place for this kind of put-down? Ask around and your answers would likely be split by the line drawn between those artists who were good (or lucky) enough to make it into the show this year.
Both the Juried Exhibition and the Shit Show will be displayed for the next week or so: come on up to North Campus and decide for yourself which show is “better” – or appreciate them both for what they are, without marginalizing one collection of work in favor of the other. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it not?
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!