Love or Hate

The new gallery located in Woods Hall across from the Ferguson center at the University of Alabama, was put on by Synasthetic Arts (SynArts), a non-profit corporation located in Tuscaloosa. The gallery was located in a small circular room showing all the pieces of art in one walk through. It was not time consuming at all and there are some very unique pieces, such as a giant cylinder of magazine and newspaper cut outs. Overall the gallery was bittersweet, some were loved, and others were despised.

As I was walking around the gallery, two pictures stopped me, one I loved, and one I did not care for. “The War Horse” was very appealing to me, the picture is so simple yet it raises a lot of thought-due to the colors and the placement of the horse. “Night Terrors” was the bottom on my list, it raised no thought and I did not feel anything when looking at the piece of work.

“The War Horse,” my favorite, is a picture of a horse leaning its head over a barbwire fence starring into the darkness of the night. The background is gray with black birds flying above the horses’ head. The colors in this picture are dark using grays, browns, and black, giving the viewer a sad angry mood wondering what the horse has been through in the past.

The artist, Laura Shill, uses mixed media in her work. She took the picture of the horse in the right lighting and uses specific software, Photoshop CS3, to edit the picture and colors. She then places the picture on the medium-sized canvas and puts random media’s such as wax and ink over the picture to make it look real.

In “The War Horse”, she puts wax over the picture giving it a shiny look. The canvas was raised on the top right corner and the bottom left corner, providing the piece a distinct look. Shill comments that there are no reasons for why she does a piece, things just inspire her.

The artist told me that taking the picture of the horse was very moving because, as the picture shows, the horse looks frightened and sad, yet it was so kind and gentle when she was taking the picture. “The War Horse” caught my eye because the horses’ eye shows a sense of sadness, a cry for help. I recommend going to the gallery and seeing this piece of work along with the other two she has done, she is a phenomenal artist.

Piece two, “Night Terrors,” is a picture of a person sleeping in a multi colored wooden room, with bats and purple blankets with yellow stars flying. “Night Terrors” does not give people thought; it gives off a very boring, slightly angry mood due to the random drawings. This piece of work is so simple, yet scattered at the same time with all the bats and blankets, blasting me with random thoughts of anger wondering why someone would paint this and what they were thinking.

The colors used in this are brown, black, purple and gold. Personally I am not a fan of those colors together and I feel as if the purple and gold look like royal colors rather than the “Night Terror” approach I feel the artist was trying to give- the artist should have used dark colors to give a scary look to the piece. The colors are very bold and ugly, which is possibly a reason I despise this piece so much.

“Night Terrors” is also mixed media; the artist used a lot of cut outs and pasted them onto the canvas along with painting the canvas. After feeling the canvas (I have to feel everything), I feel that it is rough and he used a lot of wood cut outs to finish the artwork for the walls and the floor of the room. The cut outs were mainly the “dreams” the kid was having. They were black and white cut outs for the bats and purple and gold cut outs for what looks like the blankets. I think the wood was giving a feeling of the wooden floor in the kid’s bedroom allowing him to not only see his nightmares but hear them also because of the echo on the wooden floor.

“Night Terrors” and “The War Horse” were very different looking pieces; both were trying to give off an angry, scared mood; yet only “The War Horse succeeded in this mood because of the colors and the specific look the horse gives off. Both pieces of work, as many others in the gallery, use mixed media, in completely different formats. Mixed media pieces are very neat because all are very unique depending on the artist. Some take pictures and paint over, others cut out objects, and some use different forms of paint and pastels, there are many other ways to create an art piece using your own ideas of mixed media. The gallery shows so many different kinds of art, helping the viewer understand what kind of art pops out to their likes.

I overall enjoyed the gallery because it has many great artists that are not known but have a passion for art. There are many unique pieces not described here I recommend seeing. Many of the artists are not making money but they just do it because they love it. Go to the gallery and support these artists’ dreams.