Art Museum hosts biennial faculty showcase

By John Caldwell
Daily Forty-Niner

Students and faculty found themselves surrounded by an eclectic mix of artists and their artwork at the opening ceremony for "Long Beach 2000: Faculty Biennial," in the University Art Museum Thursday.

The exhibition showcases the work of fine arts lecturers and professors at Cal State Long Beach. Every two years, art department faculty members provide the university and local community with a look at their artistic expertise. An incredible mix of media is represented including painting, sculpture, ceramics, illustrations and a variety of daring modern art works.

"Even though it's a regular event it's never routine," said Stacey Atchley, a spokeswoman for the Art Museum. "We never know what we're going to get until they bring it down."

Despite a wide spectrum of realized ideas, the art that currently adorns the walls and floors of the museum works together to create a provocative collection.

A delicate oil painting depicting a solemn nude couple seated next to each other hangs next to a sculpture incorporating a duck skeleton, a can with "duck feces" written on the front and clumps of wiry black hair.

"I had this horrible nightmare," said Paul Koudinaris, an art history lecturer, of his duck skeleton piece curiously named "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." "It's a coalescence of the film, which is what you see here."

Koudinaris, a man whose many piercings and jewelry pieces jingled along with his rapid-fire conversation, proudly pointed to a rusty hose clamp on the edge of his sculpture.

"That's actually the wedding ring Joe DiMaggio gave to Marilyn Monroe," Koudinaris deadpanned. "I'm friends with the guy who mummified Joe DiMaggio's body."

Contrasting Koudinaris' adventurous composition were several large images of the silhouette of a man holding a book in various poses. Todd Gray, who teaches fine art photography and digital imagery at CSULB, selected the images from over 200,000 frames in a video installation he created.

"Video and the visual image have taken over the book," Gray said. "I'm just trying to find ways the book affects our body and the book affects our mind."

Across the room from Gray's three large images was a Christmas tree made from large green bottles turned inward on a wire frame. A string of outdoor Christmas lights flashed on and off as people gathered around looking perplexed.

"Most of my work is free association," said Christopher Miles, a lecturer in the arts department and creator of the festive piece. "Seeing as how it's December, I thought it would be nice."

One particularly captivating work occupying the corner of a room in the back of the Art Museum was "Unheard Voices," by Carlos Silveira.

More than 50 strings of pills in an assortment of shapes, colors and sizes hung from the ceiling over dozens of prescription pill bottles resembling a shelf in the back of a pharmacy. A column of white candles with the top row partly burned was flanked by a black and white image of a woman with hands crossed on one side and a woman holding a young man on the other.

The powerful imagery evokes a sense of disparity by victims of disease as they wait for the drug companies to discover a cure, not just a short-term remedy.

Photo by University Art Museum

"An Attempt to Choose my Favorite Artists (Mark Toby, Sesshu, Kim Yasuda)," by Chuck Nicholson

Photo by University Art Museum

"Crucible" by Tony Marsh.