With an incredible theme of Polychromatic and Time and Space, a closing reception was held on Dec. 3rd, presenting two artists and their take on their work which was featured in the gallery.
The closing reception began with a brief introduction by art professor Hagop Najarian, who provided a fair explanation that well defined the theme.
Unfortunately, artist Carrie Paul couldn’t make it but her work was still featured within the gallery.
The panel began with Najarian opening with a descriptive background of each artist, John Koller and Sarah Joe Frieden.
Koller received his bachelors in 1994 at San Jose State and his masters at Cal State Long Beach in 2005. He worked in the field of graphic design transitioning into photography, where he noticed that creating art was his passion.
His work is a unique blend of colored surface and tapered edges bringing the presentation to a whole new level.
Najarian inserted that he was blown away by Koller’s work. “Someone [that] likes to work with color [while] thinking about space and texture in the darker paintings were just kind of amazing,” Najarian said.
Because Koller comes from a mixed ethnic background, being that his mother is Salvadorean and his father German, it became a large inspiration in his artwork.
“That kind of ties in also to like the the cultural blend and probably a some of my aesthetic,” answered Koller.
Although both of the artists are originally from the Bay Area, Frieden took a different approach to the theme of the gallery.
Impressively receiving a degree in painting and printmaking from UCLA, Frieden’s work has been exhibited nationally, including Australia, Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Japan.
Her enthusiasm for art began as a child from the culture that she was exposed to with her family since they were so visually oriented.
“I grew up around these Hungarian grandparents with all of these amazing embroidered everything in this house. There were just cushions, and pillows, and lots of art books,” Frieden explained.
As both a graphic designer and an illustrator, Frieden believed that it’s about being tight and loose within your work.
She began to work with lots of paper which she very much loved. From that point, she began to paint and cut up older paintings that served no interest to her. This slowly led her to much more abstracted work.
Cheryl, a student majoring in architecture, believed that from the presentation, one thing that captured her attention from both artists was that they thought outside the box, Frieden in particular.
“Her art is magic worrying. It transcends into something. The beautiful part of it is that she creates without error. And if there’s mistakes, then you just keep going. That’s what she utilizes in her art,” said Cheryl.
The artwork and the artists overall represented that perfectionism is impossible to create but chaos will further include itself regardless so that’s what makes art original and magical.
