The Fullerton College Art Gallery hosted its opening reception on Sept. 12 to display the amazing artwork created by the art department faculty. This event was an inspiration to anyone who wants to learn and become an artist.
The art faculty made art not only to show their own work, but to also influence fellow students and art students to get involved. It was an artist’s prometheus to its community and students. One common theme heard was that the artists would pay homage to their mentors for leading the way for them, and now they are paying it forward to other artists in hopes of keeping art alive.
The event was to consolidate the community by displaying various types of art from paintings, sculptures, digital art, and even 3D botanical art which helps bridge a gap between the professors and students by leaving a positive impact on the community via art.
There were many great pieces of art that left the viewer with an ambiguity of what it could be or mean. It was much like a dream where we get an image, but what does it symbolize? What does it teach us? A modicum of truth with plenty of interpretation.
Instructor Vonn Cummings Sumner, who teaches college level Painting and Drawing at FC, made a couple of extraordinary paintings that were influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic.
It showed a neat score of trees that lined up with the comic character “Krazy Kat,” in between the trees with a theme of “Not out of the woods yet,” which can be interpreted as the still present residual negative effects of the covid pandemic.
“I am attempting to make a language between comics and painting,” said Sumner.
Instructor David Beckman, who teaches Sculpture Tech, made a type of kinetic machine that generates words and cleverly changes the words “Yes” to “No” back and forward. This was quite an interesting thing to witness. He calls it “Something cute/not cute.”
“I made this piece to leave the viewer with something that makes you think it’s not cute art,” said Beckman.
There were also canvases of cartoon characters that would put a smile on anyone’s face that were made by instructor Phil Dimitriadis, who teaches Art Business & Museum Studies, Digital Art, and Drawing & Painting. His creations were these caricature style pug dogs, alligators with underbites, dragons and a mixture of alligators and dragons together, all of which would make great characters for an upcoming blockbuster movie.
“The goal for us professors here is to come here and get a job in art afterwards, this is a place to get your degree and not accumulate debt,” said Dimitriadis.
Upon entering further into the art show, there was 3D botanical art that is a mixture of sculptured pots with live plants in them made by professor Jayson Pineda who teaches beginning, intermediate, and advanced Ceramics classes on campus. His art was about the grief of losing a parent, and was aesthetically pleasing to the eye. All of the plants were his mother’s, where he cleverly decided to turn them into art.
“I wanted to take the negative of something, and make something positive out of it,” said Pineda.
Art history instructor Megan Debin made a video projection that was on the wall at the exhibit, promoting a video series called “Art Trippin,” where she informatively travels around the world and shows art from many different cultures and explores its rich history. She hopes to make it into a TV series soon.
The art department at Fullerton College and its faculty implore anyone interested in art to matriculate into one of their classes. The art program offers students help to hone and showcase their craft to the community.
This story was corrected. In a pervious version of this article, Instructor Vonn Cummings Sumner’s name was spelled incorrectly.
