My favorite kind of art is the kind that invites you to look at it, and you spend the entire day thinking about what it has to say. And that is exactly the situation I encountered when my friend-artist (frartist?) Kate and I went to the University Art Museum to look at the MFA Thesis work this Wednesday. The thesis gallery shows are usually my favorite shows that Colorado State puts up around campus because they remind me of an often-ignored fact: the art school here, while not the most recognized college at the university, has a surprisingly good output of compelling art. While I really dropped the ball here – the show ends this Friday, unfortunately – you should keep your eyes out for the next show the University Art Museum, called “Vision the City”, which, from what I can gather, is going to have two artists, one being a sort of abstract painter meets street artist, and the other being a photographer. But more on that later.

The MFA Thesis show this year featured five artists, all of which are fairly clever people. While I’m not certain what all the artist’s coursework was in, but there were paintings, sculpture, design, and fiber works. What really caught my eye first, though, were Tammi Brazee’s giant paintings. Since I dropped the ball (again) and forgot to take any pictures, I’m going to link to the artist’s portfolios.

Of the three or so paintings that were up, the one that definitely stood out first was 10 Performing Bears, which is a 72-inch by 144-inch acrylic on canvas painting. The scene evokes landscapes: the foreground is an abstract, atypical National Parks scenic view of mountains. In the foreground are tourists on a railed-off walkway, painted with primarily yellow colors. Amidst the landscape are ten identical, purple bears in a line, as if performing for a crowd. Of interesting note are the two window cleaners in the top, rightmost part of the painting, acting as if the whole painting itself is a window into a different world. Effectively, we are viewing people view nature. Her paintings are commentaries on the disconnected way we interact with nature. And, frankly, I think they are wildly successful with expressing that. The humans are disconnected from the landscape in two ways: not only are the separated by a railing, but also by the hues that the artist chose. And what’s more interesting, they all look mostly bored. It reminded Kate of every sort of scenic stop she’d ever been too: people drive up, walk over, snap some pictures, and then leave. Very rarely do people go into nature and directly interact with it anymore. Some of her other paintings deal with situations like this as well, such as camping or outdoor malls in mountain towns.

Another challenging piece was one of the two works that Sarah Rockett had in the show; specifically, His Ideal Woman, which was a wire drawing made from dark annealed steel wire. Effectively, it is a sculpture of intersecting planes. Each of the planes is a silhouette of women in stereotypical, sexist roles, such as baking, cleaning, laundry, and a receptive, sexual position. Certainly, it challenges and brings to the forefront issues about gender identity, and through the repetition of intersecting planes, it intensifies the power of the statement. Special attention should also be brought to the fantastic, technical work of the medium – the silhouettes are extremely accurate in representation.

Sharing the room with the paintings and sculptures is Whitney Crutchfield’s interesting piece: Plic Plac, which consists of seven combination wall-décor-and-furniture chairs. Or perhaps they’re primarily wall décor? Either way, they combine elements of design and elements of fiber practices, as they are constructed from fiber-reactive dye, cotton canvas, plywood, and hardware, as well as having been screen-printed and hand and machine cut. I like them, because they seem to have solved the problem of functionality with two-dimensional art. Would you rather have art on the wall, or art that you can take down and use when you need more chairs? They use repetition very well, also: the chairs are made up of four similarly sized trapezoid shapes, which also occur in the pattern of the fabric in a repeated way. All these shapes repeating create a very nice harmony, and it’s something that one would definitely want in their house.

Adjacent to the Tammi Brazee’s paintings is a very large wall hanging by Edwina Straub, titled Ripples, which is an interesting abstraction of ripples in a pool of still water, which references organic forms and creates a quite calming experience. These organic forms, created out of nothing but thread, radiate out from certain points on the hanging and slowly diminish in size. Likewise, the colors, which have been inspired by Indian Textiles, gradually shift and change. The size of it makes one wonder how long it took to create such a detailed and labor-intensive work.

In the corner behind Edwina Straub are some sculptures and drawings by Lindsey Phillips, which have something to say about the role of technology in our society today. The sculptures are (more or less) life-sized mosaic replicas of things like cellphones and iPods, referencing digital pixilation through form. These were alright, but the most interesting piece in her body of work is the collection of drawings above two of the cellphone mosaics – abstract, organic-looking drawings done in acrylic washes and ink, which borrow form from circuit boards. They are arranged in a sort of nebulous cloud between the two cellphones, referencing the concept of the “cloud” – that is, how information is accessed, stored, and distributed throughout the Internet.

            When it’s all said and done, the show is definitely worth going to – which sucks because this Friday will be the only chance to check it out before it closes. The gallery, which is at the University Center for the Arts, between Pitkin and Lake Street on Remington, will be open tomorrow from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Next time, I’ll be sure to bring a camera and double-check to see when the show ends