Art Review

In the library, there is an abundance of student art, particularly photography. For this review, I chose to compare and contrast two photographs close to the periodicals section on the first floor.

Krystal Carlson’s piece shows the bright lights of a city, with an emphasis on traffic moving quickly through the night. The lights are able to show the speed of the nighttime drivers, the way the lights blur together as if they are all one long line of bright light. There are three different sections of traffic showing these speedy lines. One of them is thiner, and bright red. Unlike the other two sections, which are bright white, like a flashlight, the red lines appear to disappear in the night. The middle line is long enough that it seems to link itself to the small, faint lights of the big buildings. The shortest section ends abruptly with what appears to be from cars coming from the other direction. When I look at the piece closer, the long, white lines resemble spaghetti. Some of the spaghetti is short and splits at the end, and another noodle is very long and slightly wavy.

The bright lights and buildings behind them do not tell us their location. One of the buildings is amber and yellow brown in color. It is one of the tallest in the picture. Another building has a UFO looking shape at the top. It is white, silver white, with more cool tones than the lights on the the late night road.

Like Carlson’s photograph, the setting of Spencer Eiseman’s piece is nighttime. The object in the photograph is ambiguous, although to this reviewer, it looks like an amusement park ride at night. Carlson and Eiseman also share their use of bright light as the main focus of their pieces. Spaced like a spider web, the long lines stretch out and look like a strand of pearls. The pearls compete with the gold and dark yellow unclosed circles and lights in the piece. There is use of repetition with the yellow “C” shaped objects. Few other colors are present other than yellow and bright white. Another difference between Eiseman and Carlton is the direct the picture is going. Carlton’s is forward into an blurry distance, while Eiseman’s seems to be taken from the side view.

I think photography students and enthusiasts would appreciate these pieces. I think it would be interesting to have some background information about the photographs too, such as when the picture was taken, what was the artist’s idea or intent and in Eiseman’s case, what it is the audience is viewing. Students needing a break from a study marathon might enjoy perusing the small collection of pictures.