SAEC highlights SUNY Oswego students

Art observers look at art pieces featured in Tyler Hall at SUNY Oswego on Friday Feb. 10, 2017 in the 54th Annual Juried Student Exhibition .

On Friday the Tyler Hall Art Gallery held the 54th Annual Juried Student Exhibition with Seth Roger’s Miller, Nicholas Greco and Brian Springsteen earning best in show honors.

The audience made up of mainly faculty, students and parents got to see several SUNY Oswego students display their artistic talents. The art exhibition featured all types of work ranging from sculpting to complex colored pencil drawings and digitally created artwork.

SUNY Oswego alumni Chris Harold and Stephen Brucker were on hand at the exhibition in the role of jurors for selecting the best in show honors. Miller won the 3-D category with his piece “Bitter,” Springsteen won the 2-D category with her piece “Old Steel Bridges” and Nicholas Greco earned best in show for graphic design with his piece “Endangered Species.”

The SAEC, or Student Art Exhibition Committee hosted Friday night’s event that gave SUNY Oswego students the opportunity to showcase their work. Being the hosts for the event the SAEC also gave out SAEC Purchase Awards to several artists. Amanda Adams, Paul Farinelli, Trevor Krencik and Jessica Kummrow won SAEC awards for their digital illustrations “Found Objects,” “A Portrait of the Artist’s Mother,” “Election 2016” and “Pompey, NY” respectively.

As is frequently seen while some showcased the beauty of the art form they were working with some students went further to use the piece as a reflection of society. With pieces such as “Election 2016” there is a societal topic underlying the artwork itself.

SUNY Oswego student and artist PJ Gebhardt had two pieces on display. In his two digital illustrations “Leading the Blind 1” and “Leading the Blind 2” Gebhardt displayed the relationship he sees between people and technology.

“My inspiration came from the single tagline the blind leading the blind and how they might as well blind,” Gebhardt said. “People being on their phones and stuff (are) missing out on life.”

Left: “Leading the Blind 1” by PJ Gebhardt in the Tyler Hall Art Gallery shows a blind person leading others who are on mobile devices. Right: “Leading the Blind 2” by PJ Gebhardt in the Tyler Hall Art Gallery shows children laying on a playground while using mobile devices.

Suzanne Beason was the only SAEC award winner who did not win for a digital illustration. Instead, Beason won the award in the category for mixed media/pastel drawing over monotype with her piece titled “Rodin’s Subject.

The third and final category for the awards portion of the event was the Presidential Purchase Awards. Trevor Krencik won a second award on Friday evening for a separate digital illustration titled “Oblivious.” Mark Linkletter and Brandon Smith also won Presidential Purchase Awards for their digital illustrations with Linkletter’s “Play Nice” and Smith’s “Geometric Owl.”

Rounding out the final category of awards were Marie DiLorenzo with her photography piece “Scrapyard” and another photography piece by David Dross “An Art Unknown 2.”

Although every piece cannot be an award winner students were still happy that they got to show off what they are passionate about.

“My favorite sport is volleyball and it was a representable piece about yourself so I chose a volleyball,” SUNY Oswego student and artist Amanda Gordon said.

Amanda Gordon’s “Volleyball and Sweater” sits on display at the 54th Annual SAEC Juried Student Exhibition in Tyler Hall on Feb. 10 ,2017.

Although many of the pieces featured in the exhibition were crafted originally for an art course through the school the artists seem to enjoy having more freedom and choice with their artwork. Within art courses there are assignments that direct the artist and their composition and other assignments where the students are given the liberty to take their piece in the direction they choose.

“I like this piece the best because it was like my own decision to do this piece,” artist and SUNY Oswego student Kaitlin Pullis said.

“Imprisoned” a digital illustration by Kaitlin Pullis hangs in Tyler Hall as part of the 54th Annual SAEC Juried Exhibition on Feb. 10, 2017.

Pullis highlighted the joy she gets from having a choice of direction for the piece. With Gordon she is a digital illustrator who pushed her bounds and tried ceramic work. When given the freedom of choice the artists can best put their abilities on display.

The SAEC tries to foster the learning about and creation of art not just for art majors but to all students by opening the exhibition not only to students majoring in art, but to all SUNY Oswego students.