The undergraduate art show opens today, and after a semester and a half of work, some students will see the fruits of their labor in the Tarble Arts Center.

The three judges are Ellen Price, a printmaker who teaches at Miami University in Ohio; Chris Berti, a 3D studio art professor from Parkland Community College and John Bonadies, a graphic designer working in Champaign. 

They have already decided which artists featured in the show. 

Last year, 122 students entered 406 works. 107 works representing 58 artists made it past the judges into the gallery.

 Glenn Hild, art department chair, said usually the artwork accepted into the show remains around that number. 

Hild said most of the artists who get their work featured are upperclassmen.

The woman who loved cats

Marjorie Lair, a sophomore art major, prepared five pieces for this year’s show. 

Two of them are figure drawings; another is a still life depicting objects on table. The other two works are more of Lair’s style, she said. 

On one canvas, Lair painted five animal skull roaming through outer space. 

The shape of the skulls reminded her of spaceships, and she took the painting a step further by adding a background of stars to further emphasize what she saw in them.

 But Lair is most proud of a painting depicting a cat experiencing a hallucination after trying drugs for the first time. 

Lair’s obsession with cats has inspired most of her work and earned her a reputation among professors and peers. 

“I’m kind of just known as the crazy cat lady from Doudna.  And they’re (her classmates and professors) like, ‘Oh, she’s doing another cat,’” Lair said. 

Cats give viewers a glimpse of what her humor is like, though she explained that she takes art seriously. 

And her seriousness for art can be seen through the techniques she uses to create a scene. 

“The cats bring out my sense of humor, but I take my work seriously,” Lair said.

“That was 50 hours of work, where I did a lot with composition and color and texture.” 

In one of her earlier paintings, she painted several cats in suits snorting lines of catnip and taking shots of milk for and described it as a cat utopia.

Lair entered two pieces when the art show rolled around that were rejected. 

 One was a mountable sculpture of a moose head made with bristol board. 

What she made for the show was completely different from what judges had in mind, Lair said. 

“They were a bit too whimsical for what they were looking for,” Lair said.

Lair said that her creativity has learned to stretch itself and allowed her to figure out what kind of subjects her artwork will tackle. 

Lair found inspiration in artists like Ivan Albright, a famous painter who was known for making self-portraits in which he distorted his face. 

She is currently working a painting modeled after Albright’s style that will depict a mangy cat with a maniacal look postured on its face. 

Though Lair is on her way to finding a voice, she said making art can be a tedious process where the artist is just as puzzled as viewers about their work.

She said people curious to know about the ideas behind her work never bother her, especially when she feels like she has no explanation for the meaning in her art.

“You should ask artists what their work means to them, because then it makes us think,” Lair said. “It makes me realize that everything has a purpose.” 

Distorting reality 

While Lair’s work is done on a canvas, Irving Coleman’s artwork begins on a computer monitor. 

Coleman, a junior art major, used a process called printmaking to create an image of himself with a monster on his shoulder like a pirate with a parrot. 

The monster on his shoulder is himself. 

Coleman distorted his own face by thinning out his cheeks and sharpening his teeth to make them look like fangs. 

Coleman said he wanted to create a work of art that brought out his dark thoughts about the world around him.

Coleman said his work teeters between reality and surrealism. 

He said he uses this abstract form of art to flesh out mixed feelings within people. 

Coleman said people are complicated, and his artwork tries to tap into that complexity. 

He said that printing making is the best route for the image distortion he is so fond of. 

Coleman also said he enjoys model printing, a process that renders sculptures. Though different methods of printmaking exist, Coleman said his favorite part is starting a project off at the computer and watching it become something else.  He then works with chemicals to leave an imprint of the original image onto a stone. 

This part of printmaking is known as lithography. From there, he makes imprints of the image preserved in the stone. 

He said he wanted to get into videogame design but ended falling in love with graphic design. 

To complete this, he said he spent 2-3 hours a day for three weeks completing his project. 

Jaime Lopez can be reached at 581-2812 or jlopez2@eiu.edu.