UM artists emulate elders > Influences shine through at student art exhibition

ORONO — Imitation is a kind of flattery. For art students, it’s also a good way of learning what works.

This spring, more than in the past, the University of Maine’s annual student exhibition suggests that young artists are paying attention to their elders. The result is a more sophisticated collection of work, rich with a mix of respect for the past and new vision for the future.

Some of the tributes are obvious, as in “Collaborations with Louise,” by Carey Lattimore. Rockland-born artist Louise Nevelson is honored in this large, black-painted sculpture of steel, wood and Styrofoam, which stays respectfully within Nevelson’s own stylistic boundaries.

Other influences are unnamed, without being hard to see. Josh Jacobson’s beautiful monoprint “… And the Thunder Roared” evokes the spirit of the university’s own Michael Lewis, with its patchy light smashing through a storm of red, black and blue darkness.

The Department of Art show, 72 works selected by Alison Ferris, Bowdoin College Museum of Art curator, has several bright spots whose confidence seems to come in part from a knowledge of past art. In her watercolor painting “My Backyard,” Claire Leighton Grindel plays with refreshing freedom over a large surface, unafraid of pastel drips and blotches.

Her style is fresh, loose, abstract in its childishness, with trees and sky only barely recognizable. Insecure in their inexperience, many young artists try to tightly control every brushstroke. It seems possible that a knowledge of Matisse or Marin, talents liberated by simple pleasures, may be part of what made “My Backyard” possible.

Different in every way from the watercolor landscape, but similarly self-assured, is Anne Corbett’s “After the Ball.” A man in a kilt is surrounded by women in gowns, all sharply described in vibrant greens, red and purples. The acrylic painting succeeds in conveying a crackling energy and a sense of occasion. Shadows in waves of hair and folds of clothing contrast with highlights, giving the effect of low-relief sculpture.

Rendered with a fullness that sometimes escapes the student’s short attention span, the picture gives up nice details: a doll in a pocket, paneling around a door, a tassel dangling at an elbow. The mood and dark-outlined style call to mind Mexican murals and the paintings of Frida Kahlo.

Some very competent work is found in traditional art class assignments. Willa Wirth’s wide-eyed “Self Portrait” in pastel is impressive for its clarity of expression: half-bemused and head-on, with nothing hidden. It’s astonishing how much the portrait’s directness reveals about the artist.

And then there are gems that spring from a mysterious place deep in the imagination. “Spooky” is the word that springs to mind when studying Cassie Frayer’s “Music,” a weird hybrid of cartoon and photograph. It’s hard to say what the title means, or why the girl in the ink drawing opens her eyes so wide the whites are visible all around.

Questions aside, the strange image is undeniably arresting, dramatic in its immediacy and its dissimilarity to anything else in the gallery. The show’s curator apparently was struck as well; she judged “Music” the best of show.

A juror’s award went to Carol Ann Livingstone for “The Self,” a coppery monoprint study of the human form in which the body is a heavy whole, seemingly cast from molten gold, sleek and bald like an Oscar statuette or tabloid alien.

Jon Ferland captured another juror’s award for “We All Live,” a bulbous, yellow-painted, wooden submarine that opens on hinges to reveal a pointy-collared shirt with a label reading “The Beatles.”

Also worth noting upstairs is another wooden construction, “Piece for Peace,” by Matthew Charland, with its graceful overlap of what looks like old-fashioned school desk tops, and Helene Acker Farrar’s “Unknown Times.”

A fascinating etching, it superimposes numbers, years like “1974” and “1967,” over a woman’s midsection that looks like a cork bulletin board flocked with tack holes. The result is a sense of time passing, years wearing the surface from smooth perfection to a more real, marred confusion.

The Department of Art Student Exhibition will run through May 1 at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Orono. The museum is located in Carnegie Hall and is open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday.