Muse Me: 2010 Summa Show at the McMaster Museum of Art

With another April comes another group of graduates from McMaster University’s undergraduate Studio Art program. This year’s exhibition boasts a website that I found useful mainly for putting names to familiar student faces and not much else, given that there’s far more pixel dimensions devoted to photos of the artists than images of their work, never mind any clue to titles I had neglected to jot down. Thankfully, I’ve been a guest at enough studio critiques with this group to connect faces to creative output, so it’s enough to ensure that none of the following goes uncredited, especially where credit is very much their due.

Danielle diNardo

As often happens when a group of young artists work in close proximity for four years, there are certain qualities that recur in ‘Muse Me’, this year’s installation of the annual Summa exhibition. Most notable in this group is a strong formalist concern, be it with colour palettes or the investigation of materials, which stands out foremost in the work of someone like Danielle diNardo, whose confidently understated mixed media work conceals rather than reveals her subjective narratives of family and home.

Kari Beddall

That refinement of personal interests into resolved visual works capable of opening a dialogue with an audience is a fundamental goal of any fine art education, and it’s a quality that recurs in some of the most intriguing works on show. Having seen Kari Beddall’s earlier works using stencil imagery spray painted on canvas, her site-specific wall painting as a support for a meticulously cut-out biomorphic shape is a great resolution to her practice.

Particularly promising is her attention to detail, as shown by this so-subtle-I-missed-it-the-first-time-around intervention into the ventilation cover below her designated corner of the gallery. It’s the sort of simple gesture that contributes a great deal to the viewer’s reading of her work while remaining light and whimsical.

Krysten Bell, My cock is much bigger than yours (detail), Acrylic and acrylic skins on canvas

For the first time, the Studio Art program and the McMaster Museum of Art have given valuable credence to these graduating artists by naming award winners at the opening reception, with a Faculty Award going to Leah Boyd’s sensitive but virtually un-photograph-able installation environment and a People’s Choice Award for Lisa Pinho’s sculptural recreation of an earthquake devastating an urban landscape (strangely enough, my shot of her work came out blurry with camera-shake). A Museum Award went to Krysten Bell’s large, brightly-coloured canvas, which both marks a proud end-point to this artist’s transition towards a non-objective study of light while making a curiously distinct statement with her purely provocative choice of title, which can only lead me to interpret the canvas’s predominant white splooge in the most unseemly ways imaginable.

Kristin Dillenbeck, Your Black Dot, Acrylic on canvas

Equally worthy of praise would be Kristin Dillenbeck’s painting, whose slightly more subdued colours derive from the dyes used in studying the biological structures of the human brain - Dillenbeck, like many Mac artists past and present, is a Combined Honours student whose work in an outside discipline (in this case, Psychology) has enriched her practice. The swirling chaos of her paint application is surprisingly well balanced by the presence of that small black dot at the lower right corner referenced in her title, demonstrating a great deal of restraint in her approach to the canvas as a whole.

Kaitlin Troisi, Back to what’s before and behind in the back of my mind, Ink and conte on mylar

Ainsley Nagy, Spatial Awareness (one of two paintings), Acrylic, gouache, pumice medium and pastel medium on canvas

In what is invariably a mixed assortment of a graduating class’s last great stands, quite a few works stand out for their exceptional promise. Kaitlin Troisi is easily the most accomplished draughtsman of her year, and has reduced her presentation to two haunting drawings on mylar that stand out even in a program with access to the Museum’s impressive archive of German Expressionist drawings and prints - this material recurs often enough in Mac’s studios, but Troisi owns every moody mark with deft aplomb and has a wonderful command of text in relation to her drawings besides. The modestly-stated accomplishment she brings to the show is mirrored in Ainsley Nagy’s two paintings, which skillfully fuse intense colour and murky blacks to create weighty canvases with remarkable depth. I was equally impressed by Amanda Moodie’s richly refined selection of earthy prints and Alex Scott’s suite of panel paintings manipulating the edge between subconscious chaos and mathematical control, though both artists’ works proved impossible to photograph in what was a slightly claustrophobic hang during a downright bustling reception.

‘Muse Me’ continues at the McMaster Museum of Art until May 1st.

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