Teaching and doing work together in ‘Collective Nouns’

Faculty shows always have intrigued me. After all, I expect to find a concentration of credible work because around here, so many of the people who teach at the college level are the same people who maintain an active exhibition schedule. How they do this, I do not know.

There is another dimension at play here: Along with finding out who the new names are, it is possible to get a snapshot of who is teaching the artists of the future.

In “Collective Nouns: MSCD Art Faculty Biennial,” on view through April 23 at the Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Center for Visual Art, all these elements come into play.  In fact, while walking through the galleries to the left side of this generous venue, I felt as if it were some sort of old home week, with work installed there by several artists who also were part of the last exhibition at CVA, “Colorado Abstract.”

But there are some surprises, too: people who should be out there showing more work, as well as a sense that the Metro art faculty is in a strong, supple period.

In essence, “Collective Nouns” is a group show of a different stripe, with different parameters than the usual group show. Yes, the 44 artists participating each have one work on view; and, yes, each chose the work to contribute to the show, a situation without the detached eye of a curator serving as a filter. 

These are artists joined by only one thing: the bond of teaching at the same institution. As it plays out, there is a variety of mediums I found pleasing. From photography to sculpture, from digital/film to painting to an installation involving electronically controlled balls rolling around on the floor as if they had a brain (Brian Evans’ Spheres), there is a lot to consider in these “Collective Nouns.”  And almost all pieces are fairly recent, as in vintage 2009, 2008 or 2007. 

Much of the power is in photography and painting, but not all of it. Beginning in the gallery at the right, works that stand out are the piece by Evans, as well as Kenn Bisio’s  2000 photograph Man With the Taped Eyes, an image that can be as simple as a lone figure in the dark or a comment on how the world bumbles along without heeding warning signs. Edie Winograde’s views of reenactments received a good airing last year at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, but the inclusion of Decisive Battle at San Antonio (La Porte, Texas, 2007) lends to this show a smart example of the clash of living in the past with living in the present. 

Moving around and into the the back, Bonnie Ferrill Roman’s Accumulation I, II and III combine artist-made paper, steel and wire into a sculptural work that plays off the wall and shadows.  Casey McGuire’s Trajectory, an assemblage of dog sled pulling monitors and DVD players, marries the Iditarod with Mad Max. And Kelly Monico’s film  Hitchcock Heroine (with Scott Bogus) offers quick cuts of vertical strips showing the auteur’s great damsels in distress; it turns a back screening room into a riveting place.

Another film looped in the back gallery proper, Sinae Lee’s video Time, is impossible not to get pulled into, since it shows a nude couple jumping up and down on a trampoline, the very picture of  innocent play. Turn the corner, and Jennifer Garner, who is director of CVA as well as on the Metro faculty, surprises with Self-Portrait #83: Teeming, a squad of found objects and sculptural pieces that seem to crawl up the wall. 

Moving into the galleries on the left side of CVA is like entering a world of fine painting, drawing and photography tackling the representational and the abstract. That includes Christofer Charles Taylor’s oil and mixed media on linen Mother E, a bright nod to expressionism that puts a fierce edge on figuration. Also in this area is Mark Brasuell’s The View From Up From Below, in which lines and cell-like forms come together in acrylic, metallic and iridescent paint on muslin, and Amy Metier’s oil on canvas Magellan, with its strong forms in orange and blue pulling together an abstract composition.

Anna Kaye forces close inspection of Apparition, since it appears to be a photo of a tree obscured by fog, but in reality is just that rendered in softly applied graphite and charcoal on paper. And Merlin Madrid’s untitled silver print photograph takes on an antique feel, a study of a face augmented by objects of memory.

So the faculty has had its turn, and it’s a fine turn at that, a reminder that teaching and doing go hand in hand when it comes to art. Next up will be the students’ opportunity to demonstrate what all that work was about: The Sm’ART BFA Thesis Exhibition, involving 31 emerging artists, goes up May 1.

IF YOU GO: “Collective Nouns: MSCD Art Faculty Biennial” is on view through April 23 at the Metropolitan State College of Denver Center for Visual Art, 1734 Wazee St. Information: 303-294-5207; www.MetroStateCVA.org