STUDENTS GET FEEL OF GALLERY WORLD IN ANNUAL JURIED ART EXHIBITION

Ceramic sculpture and pottery wait to be judged at Southeast Missouri State University's Art Student Juried Assessment Exhibition.

SIU art professor Rick Smith spent Tuesday examining and reacting to art by Southeast students. He was looking for how the students handle ideas and whether those ideas are competently expressed and in a personal way. He might be looking for "something on the edge."

Smith is the juror for Southeast's annual Art Student Juried Assessment Exhibition, which requires him to sift through 300 entries to arrive at the 30 or 40 that will be displayed at the University Museum.

The annual Art Student Juried Assessment Exhibition opens Friday. A reception for the students will be held from 4-6 p.m.

The exhibit showcases the work created by students in their classes during the past year. Each student submitted at least two pieces of work for judging.

Part of Smith's task is to assess the overall quality of the work. "Certain areas are stronger than others," he said Tuesday, singling out ceramics and fiber art. But he said he has found interesting work in all the media represented sculpture, drawing, painting, print-making, fiber arts and ceramics.

He has been confronted with a diversity of work, including hand-dyed indigo kimonos, a big sculpture that looks like a wedge of cheese infested with mice, ceramic boxes Smith calls "architectonic" for their monumental feel, a nude self-portrait, and plates and mysterious objects made from fired clay.

Smith also is attuned to how the student presents the work, whether or not it is ready to be put into a gallery.

This is the same process students must go through if they want to see their work in galleries after graduation.

"This is a great first stop to get them on their feet," he said.

"I would hope they might see it as criticism in a positive light," he says of his job as a juror. "This gets the artist more used to the process of handling rejection."

Much of the artwork in the show is for sale. The top prize in Southeast's show are $250. SIU's student competition gives away $20,000 from a trust. Some years that amount is split among a number of student artists, others it goes to a single artist.

Looking at a drawing he says was sensitively handled -- "This person is in control of the charcoal" -- Smith says drawing is a complex medium.

Giving the same work another complement, he says, "It looks as though the artist was paying attention to what they were seeing as opposed to what they know."

Smith is the head of the metalworking and blacksmithing program at SIU, which is the only university in the country treating blacksmithing as an art form.

He will present a lecture at 11 a.m. April 7 in the University Center Ballroom. His artwork will be on display at Arts Council's Gallery 100 beginning the same day.

Work Smith does not select for the student exhibition will be displayed in the halls of the Art Building after Sunday. This is in the tradition of the "Salon de Refuse," mid-18th century shows in which Parisian artists whose work was not deemed worthy by judges exhibited anyway.

The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. The exhibits will remain on display until April 28.