The Art and Design Department hosted its second Senior Art Exhibit opening reception last Friday night at the Pollak Gallery and Rotary Ice House Gallery as graduating students showcased their graphic design pieces.
Students, professors, family members and friends came to celebrate with the artists while admiring their artwork. The gallery walls were decorated with logo and poster designs, including made up movie posters, digitally created creatures and environments and various products with artist designed packaging and labels. Each artist also shared a business card and resume for the attendees’ future needs in graphic design.
“Dead On,” a Grateful Dead tribute band, was playing at Pollak Theatre the same evening, allowing audience members a chance to view the art as they were picking up tickets from the box office. Some Deadheads walked around the gallery as they waited for the show to start, pointing at pieces that caught their eye.
The poster designs showcased ranged from humorous and playful to serious and political, like graphic designer Rick Cappetta’s 2010 Global Understanding Convention poster which was recognized at that year’s award ceremony. Jon Beebe offered a funny poster on the “Beginner’s Guide to Becoming a Bro” that showed a “Bro” equipped with flip-flops, a pink polo and body spray (apply thick and often), along with knowledge of drinking games. Beebe also displayed a three piece photo collage, the final portrait showing various Occupy Movement protestors holding signs in a united image.
George Caiella came to play soccer at the University, which is shown in a three-piece poster design, and says that was the main focus of his showcase. It shows him at the beginning with an introduction to soccer, halfway, where the artist transitions from high school to college and retired with a question mark and a quote “Where will life take me next?” Caiella, described on the Athletics website as a “hard-working and gritty player,” said he wanted to show his love for soccer through art and how it kept him motivated during his time at the University.
“As an Art major, a lot of time and energy goes into it, but it kind of makes the days go by faster because you’re always doing something,” he said. “Overall it was a really good experience, I had a great time.”
Timothy Ziegler presented some unique thought provoking art with three sets of three posters elegantly arranged. A propaganda poster series that was inspired by the popular “Keep Calm and Carry On” showed support for the Arab Spring, a movement Ziegler is very supportive of, an Anonymous inspired portrait, and finally a salute to the Occupy movement saying “Ideas Can Not Be Evicted.” To the side of this poster series, Ziegler exposes the grotesque and depressing life of the scratch off ticket gambler with the background of the portraits made up of winless lottery tickets.
“I hang out at Quick Chek a lot, and I was just really curious. I would sit there and draw for couple hours and drink coffee, just watching people scratching tickets off and leaving them there in disgust,” said Ziegler. “You can see they’ve got hope in their eyes, then they scratch it off and they’re completely distraught, and they go back and do it again. It’s like a poverty stricken casino.”
This was the first art exhibit Kyle San Andres has attended and he had no idea what to expect. He came out to support his friend Dan Rosell and with an interest to see other artists’ work.
“It was nice, I actually really liked it. His work was put up very nicely, he had a lot of interesting work,” said San Andres, a resident of Freehold. “Everything there from the paintings, even to the CGI animations he had, it was very interesting. It was nice to see how long they take to complete these great designs, a lot of hard work he’s put in.”
Rosell had his display of youthful bubbly posters in Ice House Gallery, revealing his energetic inspiration from pop punk, along with B-horror movie posters like Killer Lasers from Outer Space. He also showcased a “First Series Through History,” a three set poster series that replicates an inviting retro look at the introduction of the radio, television and the internet.
Kenny Passarelli offered some very appealing artwork that would also translate to some awesome tattoo designs. The pieces developed would fit perfect in any urban skateboard shop, with the loud colorful poster “Imagine Reality” or the graphic three piece “Organ Series” showing a gory depiction of the brain, heart and lungs telling viewers to think, feel and breathe. Passerelli also displayed his created “Hoodlum” characters, four guys perfectly detailed with beards, knee high socks and gauges in their ears, they look like the next best Adult Swim series.
Professor Pat Cresson was ecstatic for her students as she’s helped guide them and finalize their portfolios for the exhibit. She was especially thrilled with the amount of space the students had this year, making it much easier to hang the artwork and not having to crowd everybody’s work together. But Cresson was more thrilled to give warm compliments and share the joy with fellow attendees.
“I’m really excited, we’re very close in the Art Department… we know each other by first name and it’s really like a family. It’s an emotional thing,” Cresson said with a laugh. “A lot of these students I’ve had for three or four semesters, so I’ve seen them really grow and evolve and how much different their work is now from before. Some of them, they just blow my mind; their work has gotten so good.”
PHOTOS COURTESY of Dan Ste. Marie
