Works of art featuring vibrant quilts and carefully bonded books filled with calligraphy-lettered poems line the white walls throughout the Art Gallery’s exhibit, “In Tandem”.
The Art Gallery will showcase “In Tandem” until March 20 and is open on Monday and Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Wednesday and Thursday from noon to 8 p.m.
“In Tandem” reveals works of art by five couples that have, over the years, done works of art together and apart.
Couples Jeff and Jocelyn Foye, Keiko Fukazawa and Dennis Callwood, Barbara Jones and Gustavo Leclerc, Richard and Lois Pio, Laura Stickney and Vilma Mendillo are the examples of how influence on one another can create masterpieces.
Art Gallery curator Susanna Meiers said the five artist couples in this exhibition were selected, in part, because their artwork bears significant evidence of the influence, of one partner upon the other.
“Additionally, both partners create separately as well as together,” Meiers said.
She also said that Richard and Lois Pio, who are friends of hers, influenced the exhibition.
“The Pios have been married for more than sixty years and have ridden thousands of miles together via their tandem bicycle,” she said.
Meiers said their compositions are indeed different, but the way all of the couples compliment one another is what makes the works so special.
“I think it’s an opportunity to look at not only the work by these ten different artists but also to look at how people affect each other when they are related closely,” Meiers said.
Michael Miller, EC exhibition manager, said that the more students come to the Gallery the more they will be able to possibly find their creative selves.
“With the response that this particular exhibition has been getting, this might be the one to help students get that much closer to finding it,” he said.
Several EC students said all of the compositions were great in their own right.
Students Anthony Torres, Ariana Centeno, Dion Reed and Mike Alveraz said that they were drawn to their works of art not only because of the way they look, but also because of the story behind them.
“I love when artwork has a story behind it,” Alveraz said.
Fukazawa made some collaborative pieces with inmates from the California correctional system, making what Callwood called a “Japanese pop and American graffiti” fusion.
Fukazawa’s decorated vessels, were shattered into pieces and the fragments dispersed to parolees who added drawings and graffiti. These shards were then pieced together with Keiko’s traditional Japanese erotic drawings and reassembled into patchwork vessels
“I wanted to show the humaneness of them (the incarcerated),” Fukazawa said. “The compositions from all of the couples hold a certain quality that was humane and passionate for we were all made under the influence of being in love.”
