What do flying deer, a rap music video and animal bones have in common?
Nothing, except the fact that they are all featured in the Undergraduate Scholarship Award Exhibition, which prides itself on its diversity of media and content.
“This work, if characterized by anything, is characterized by an incredibly wide range of ways of working. In that sense it’s extremely diverse,” said Russell Ferguson, chair of the art department. “That’s characteristic with the art department at UCLA. We encourage a lot of different ways of working.”
Featuring the work of 13 undergraduate students, the Undergraduate Scholarship Award Exhibition runs through Dec. 11 at the Broad Art Center’s New Wight Gallery and is free and open to the public.
With no common theme between the separate works, the exhibit includes sculptures, paintings, videos and performance, not to mention a diverse range of content,
“I hope that people on campus and students from other departments come by and see what our students are doing. I think everyone can form their own opinion about what work they like, and if they don’t, that’s OK, too,” Ferguson said.
The scholarship recipients were nominated and chosen by faculty members at the end of last year for the 2008-2009 UCLA Department of Art and School of the Arts and Architecture scholarship awards.
“I think it’s just a good way to showcase some of our own students’ work for the campus community more broadly, and even people outside the UCLA community,” he said.
Fourth-year art student Tameka Norris worked with two other UCLA alumni to create her music video, set to have its world premiere at the exhibit’s opening reception Thursday night.
“It’s going to be these obnoxious, two really big flat screen monitors on either side with me in the center,” Norris said.
“I’m rapping and it’s kind of parodying women and how women are represented in music videos. … I’m kind of making fun of UCLA and myself and art.”
In the video, Norris, who is also a working music artist, is the featured rapper for her song “Licker” under her rapper alias “mynameisnotshorty.”
“The music video is kind of racy because it’s really parodying what we see on TV,” she said. “I just really hope that people think that it’s fun. But I can understand that people may also be a little bit repulsed by it at the same time. I think it’s really just up to the viewer to decide.”
The exhibit is different from the other smaller-scale exhibits put on by the art department because it is also a celebration for the students chosen as scholarships recipients.
“It’s going to be really fun. It’s going to be like a big party,” Norris said.
Fourth-year art student George Barker has a total of six pieces in the exhibit that make up his montage, titled “Home and Family.” Two of the pieces replicate 19th century spiritualist photography that capture ghosts and apparitions.
“People encounter (my) work and they’re confronted with having to question what it’s about, why it’s there in the first place, why we display it and why they’re having a reaction to it,” he said.
Barker’s installation also involves four sculptures that include discarded objects and dead animal parts. He hopes that the provocative subject matter forces viewers to question its connection to the seemingly contradictory title “Home and Family.”
“I’m hoping that people look at (the art), like it or not, repulsed or not, and they at least have some kind of visceral reaction that will kind of engage the thought process within themselves,” he said.
Fourth-year art student Jennifer Gorst’s works in the exhibit focus on an equally interesting theme: deer. Her three pieces include a sculpture she calls “flying nuclear deer,” shadow plays, and deer wearing gas masks and giving birth.
“I really got stuck on the form (of deer) for a while. I can’t really explain it. If you just start working on something and you can’t let it go, you just kind of resign yourself to letting it take you over. You get it out of your system,” she said.
“I started using the same form but with a different medium so I could get practice with the different types of sculptural materials.”
Gorst admits that her style has “evolved” since transferring to UCLA and being given more creative freedom.
“Since coming to UCLA I’ve decided I kind of wanted to do work that I really wanted to do, and have more fun with it because the demands in the art department are pretty high, so (you) might as well enjoy yourself,” she said.
The Undergraduate Scholarship Award Exhibition is the largest Gorst has participated in and, like Norris, she hopes viewers see the lighthearted side of her work.
“I hope they get a sense of fun, and I hope (viewers) use some of my imagery to reflect a little bit on (their) relationship with the environment and other living things, and just let their imagination have a little bit of fun,” Gorst said.
For the 13 scholarship winners, the exhibit is a chance to not only show their work, but to enjoy the freedom that comes with artistic expression.
“We work so hard on these things (that) by the time we’re done with it we’re not trying to make people happy but we really want people to engage in the work,” Gorst said.
“If somebody walks away getting a feeling from it or smiling or having some kind of thought that they didn’t have before, then I guess it’s all worth it.”
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