OU student's casual vision earns reward

Published: February 8, 2008

NORMAN — There is something wonderfully casual, relaxed and introspective about the subject of an oil by Jeremy Nelson which won the $750 T. G. Mays Purchase Award in the University of Oklahoma Student Art Exhibition.

Nelson won the award for "Aziza,” a painting of a young woman on a nondescript green bench, smiling slightly, one arm on her knee, pondering something as she leans back against a reflecting surface.

"After realizing that studying real life is as much a challenge as creating illusions from scratch, my work is about harmonizing the two,” Nelson said of his top award-winning work.

Jurored by Aaron W. Jones, arts education director for the Oklahoma Arts Council, the 94th annual OU student show is on view at Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

A bearded black man wearing a dark, loosely draped robe, holds his open hand up in a gesture of peace, standing in front of a yellow-orange background that gives him a religious aura in an acrylic by Christa May.

May won one of two $500 FJJMA Museum Association Awards for the composition, called "Joe Holding the Keys to Rome,” which incorporates two real keys to give it a more realistic edge.

A young man seems lost in thought, "Remembering Home,” sitting in a chair with its springs popping out, in a water-based oil by Mariah Johnson which won the second museum association award.

Johnson also uses nine multiple canvases, golden rectangles and ambiguous visual information — such as two pairs of hands and a tiny head that looks far away — to give "Remembering Home” a cubistic dimension.

Cracks between strips of rusted, welded steel create powerful "Lines” in a free-standing, 8-foot-tall sculpture by Julien Beaucourt, an international student from France.

Beaucourt won one of two $500 John R. Potts Jr. Sculpture Awards for "Lines.”

The second Potts award went to Jordan Strickland, who put a small bedside lamp on top of a small, open wooden cabinet, displayed on the wall, filled with pink and red paper constructions.

Strickland described the somewhat surrealistic wall piece, called "Night Stand,” as an attempt to express one of the original ideas "that seem to materialize at the moment of sleep.”

Gouged out holes and circular, scribble-like scratch marks on an open, square steel column, a little over six feet high, interact nicely with blobs of glass attached to its surface in a sculpture by Tess Barton.

Barton won the $500 Mainsite Contemporary Art Award for the free-standing steel and glass sculpture, called "Harmony,” which has its own interior light source.

Winning the $500 Joe Taylor Figurative Sculpture Award was Jamie Henderson for a white plaster study of the head of a man whose wrinkled brow and anxious expression suggest "Uncertainty.”

Containing many outstanding works that didn't win awards, or won awards of lesser amounts, the OU student exhibit is well worth visiting during its run through April 6.

— John Brandenburg

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