Stepping into the Art Gallery resembles entering a dream world. Intricate paintings dab the walls as ripples of light bathe the Gallery floor. Stripped of its shell, a piano rests aside with its final silent chord hanging in the air.
Betsy Lohrer Hall, an art professor at California State University, Fullerton, is featured in an exhibition titled “The Spaces in Between” in the Art Gallery until March 11.
It comprises unique performances, gouache on paper paintings, digital photographs printed on metallic paper and installations.
“As an artist, she has a wide range and vision. She can use any medium,” Dawn Ertle, undecided major said.
Lohrer-Hall’s exhibit, which was created over a span of three years, would have been the result of 20 years worth of work for other artists, Susanna Meiers, Art Gallery Curator said.
Meiers, a good friend of Lohrer-Hall has worked with her in the past. Last semester she taught print making at EC and displayed her art in the spring show, “Reflecting the Sacred.”
“City,” an elaborate assortment of beach trash including syringes and children’s toys, is one of two large-scale installations featured in the Art Gallery.
“I like how it has a strong pull on the people who come here because they see all of the bright colors,” Ertle said. “But then they read about it and it’s sad and disturbing. I like how that messes with the viewer.”
As alluring and morbid as the first installation is, the second, however, is more metaphorical and conceptual. “Home” is one of Lohrer Hall’s newest creations that includes suspended walls, historically based drawings, and a majestic white gown splattered with paint.
“I was thinking about not wanting to build fortress walls, but wanting to build a home that people could move around in,” Lohrer Hall said.
The piano piece that sits in the corner of the installation was found on the side of a road in Long Beach, Lohrer Hall said.
“I’m very interested in objects that have shared life with a person,” Lohrer Hall said. “So they have some kind of essence of that person.”
Her gouache on paper paintings share a life of its own as it embodies the theme of the exhibition.
Accompanying the exhibition, Lohrer-Hall also performed “Breaking Codes” late February where she tapped the names of God using various religions and languages in Morse code, with egg shells as an instrument.
Last Tuesday, Lohrer-Hall performed “Bedtime Stories” from her “Home” installation. Utilizing reflected light and shadow play, Lohrer-Hall read from a collection of dream inspired poems similar to haikus, according to an EC press release.
The performance also included poems composed during the exhibition from Gallery visitors.
“All of my work is partly about this idea of inter connectedness and fragility too,” Lohrer Hall said.
Admission for the Art Gallery is free.
