Andrea Moreau and Michael Green present their Master’s of Fine Arts exhibitions in a dual show with both drawings and sculptures.
Moreau used postage stamps as starting points for drawings and paintings. She accumulated stamps from various countries such as Poland, Mongolia and the United States and used her imagination to create the landscape surrounding the stamp.
It took more than 12 green colored pencils and an entire weekend to create one of her pieces, a work that crept off the page and onto the gallery wall. Moreau used a stamp from Poland of an airplane flying over a forest. She drew thin, intricate lines from the work onto the wall of the gallery in a continuation of the forest on the stamp.
There is mystery in the stamps because a lot of them have images that do not make sense, Moreau said.
“Everything becomes called into question and morphed into other things,” she said.
Moreau extended bodies from the heads of some stamps; to the rigid portrait of the King of Spain she added a body riding a bike.
Green built his sculptures from wood, ceramics, plasticine and recycled portions of past artwork. His sculptures include objects that could be store bought, but closer analysis reveals a hand-built ladder and chair.
“A major thing I work with is function and nonfunction,” Green said. There are varying degrees of reality and recognition of what the viewer understands, he said.
One of Green’s sculptures is an aqua-colored ladder set atop a table with a clear jar setting on top of the ladder.
Although Moreau and Green’s works are very different they really compliment each other, said Michael Mercil, associate professor in the College of the Arts and adviser to both students.
“Both of their works are highly imaginative,” Mercil said. “They share an interest in how color works and an interest in surface and materials.”
Green said color is an important part to bring to sculpture. It has the power to do something different with sculpture, he said.
“One of the nice things about (Green’s) work is the juxtaposition of materials and surfaces,” Mercil said. A tension between different materials and surfaces and how color and material separate and unite all of those things at once, he said.
Moreau’s only piece not centered on a stamp is an experiment with snow spray. She made snowflake stencils and with the help of fake snow created a virtual blizzard on a wall of the gallery.
“The snowflake piece addresses (Moreau’s) fascination with surface and materials,” Mercil said.
“The show can be characterized overall as a little surrealist surprise,” he said.
