The Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery inside the Grace Van Dyke Bird Library opened its doors for the semester’s first opening reception of “Surface” on Sept. 8. It will continue to be open to the public until Sept. 29.
Opening night featured numerous art pieces that decorated each wall and represented three different artists and their signature style of work.
All conveying different visual elements of art and design, Brett Anderson, Ellen Soffer and Dennis Sopczynski’s art work earned different reactions from visitors that focused among the diversity in balance, texture and dimension from each frame.
“It’s great. Here is a great opportunity to see art you may not typically see at school,” said Bakersfield College president Greg Chamberlain, as he studied Brett Anderson’s work.
Anderson’s style of printmaking displayed different etchings and engravings that depicted contorted mermaids, devils with horns, unicorns and abrupt images of people and their environment experiencing hopelessness and despair.
“The Revelator” was one of Anderson’s relief print pieces that showed an aged women with a prosthetic nose and worn, tired features looking up into the distance, as a small demonic creature clung to the back of her cloak, and a morphine needle occupying the opposite side of her body.
“I don’t know why he makes such graphic images, but they’re so beautifully detailed. To Brett, everything is fascinating. Everything has a symbolic purpose,” said Anderson’s mother and father in-law, Joe and Norma Navarrete.
“He really ought to consider putting these up on the web,” said Mr. Navarrete.
Adjacent to Anderson’s art was a completely different style of work by Allen Soffer.
BC sophomore Adriana Marquez was one student that seemed deeply affected by Soffer’s use of oil and acrylic on canvas.
“I don’t understand what this means, but it looks really pretty. I’d like to hang it up on my wall at home to bring some life into the place,” said Marquez.
Soffer’s canvas work was much larger in size and illustrated non-representational images of circular objects and contrasting colors that were painted with different strokes of repetition and rhythm.
The last artist, Dennis Sopczynski, displayed a completely different form of art, created with colored pencil on vellum and various cut outs from newspapers to form a collage.
According to Sopczynksi’s byline, his representational art of the use of water comes from the artist’s personal swimming background. Each piece portrays a swimming pool in a pointillist type of manner.
Although the artists are not students and will not be present to describe their work, a catalog of information is available at the gallery for visitors to learn more about each artist’s personal profile.