Compelled to create.

Byline: CHRIS STOLLAR 20Below News Team / The Register-Guard

WHILE MEANDERING through art displays garnishing the long exhibition halls, the judges smiled as they admired paintings and sculptures that brought flowers, faces and fire to life.

Then they stopped. Before their eyes was "Fountain," a work submitted by Marcel Duchamp, the French-born American artist. Sudden gasps escaped from the critics' drooping mouths. Crafted from ceramic, the small object displayed neither beauty nor ugliness.

It was a toilet.

Duchamp's "art" shocked both critic and casual observer at the 1917 New York City exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists. By displaying an unaltered, mundane object as an artistic sculpture, Duchamp challenged the very definition of art that humans held to for centuries.

But what once infuriated thousands of observers, most people today simply accept with indifference. The 21st century conception of art embraces not only toilets, but lines, scribbles and even nothingness.

Art can include a beautiful painting of sunlight dancing across a quiet brook, but it also can be found in the graffiti-laden suburbs of Los Angeles or the loud, caustic noise of a death-metal concert.

When faced with such a diversity of media, no teen-ager can help but eventually ask the questions: What is art? Why does it exist?

For answers, we look to human experience. Every human being, whether a punk rock singer or Wall Street businessman, desires to create, because we are art-making creatures. When strumming a guitar or illustrating pictures for a corporate presentation, humans demonstrate their passion for art.

This attribute even displays its brilliance in the mundane aspects of life, when people decorate the table for dinner, style their hair or admire the intricate design of a moth fluttering outside under a warm, summer evening's sky.

The inherent desire for beauty and creativity arises from the very core of humankind's being. We all desire to communicate, and art allows us to do that by expressing our ideas, beliefs and emotions about the world in a way that writing and speaking never can provide. People use art to display both life's goodness and futility.

"My experience of life is both marvelous and incredibly beautiful yet at times a crushing disappointment," says R. Wesley Hurd, director of art projects at Gutenberg College in Eugene. "I see and experience beauty, creativity, mercy, victory, goodness and knowledge - but also futility, hate, failure, brokenness, injustice and ignorance.

`Art is a special language we use when we need to speak about what is important, be it beautiful or tragic. If I say something very personal to you about which I think and feel strongly, I release something from me - I have taken from the `stuff' of my world, creatively reshaped it, and put it back out in the world for you or others to hear or see or feel what I thought and felt about it. Art is a form of human communication which we use to mirror life to ourselves and to others.'

Throughout history, humans have found many different channels for this communication, including the cave, canvas and car. Teens in particular have utilized a wide range of media: poetry, graffiti, music, clothing, tattooing, piercing, doodling, acting - even hair.

Teens use lyrics and guitars to both express their love for a friend and their hatred for life's meaninglessness. Even the hairstyles and clothes chosen express personalities and concerns.

"A work of art is the product of the total personality of the artist," art historian and critic Allen Leepa says. "It is not simply the result of a number of isolated special sensibilities.

`The artist's point of view, his philosophy of life, is reflected in his emotional projection on canvas. The projection is an integrated statement of himself."

The four images reproduced on the front of this 20Below section provide examples of three different media that 20Below artists Kelly Lee, David Seltzer, Naomi Reichman and Kira Davis used to communicate their ideas to the world.

In Lee's charcoal drawing, the bleak figures hanging lifelessly immediately provoke questions: Who are these human beings? Why are they dead?

Two years ago, Lee entered an art contest for African-Americans. While expected to depict blacks being oppressed, Lee, an African- American, drew a picture of white Jews hanging from Nazi abuse.

Criticizing Kelly's lack of attention to her own race, the judges asked why she depicted such a scene.

"I was trying to illustrate that suffering is universal," Lee says. "We often get caught up in our own ethnic struggles and forget that other races struggle, too. In order to overcome pain and evil it takes the strength of humanity, not just the strength of ethnicity."

Using charcoal, Lee communicated a deeply personal belief about racial suffering.

In contrast to Lee's serious art sits Seltzer's lighter illustration of a man with his back to the sunset, bearing a sword in his hand. While not making any profound statement, Seltzer's drawing communicates a story and his love for imagination that no other medium could properly provide.

"Comics are entertaining and great at telling stories," Seltzer says. "Instead of the reader's imagination, it's the artist who provides the images.

"When I was younger and my parents worked during the day, my brother and I would tell stories to each other and then illustrate them. We would even draw ourselves into the worlds we created.

`Teens have always made up their own comics - doodling on a homework paper while bored in class, trying to copy a cool drawing they might have seen, or filling a notebook with illustrations."

Using the more realistic medium of photography, Reichman's picture of a smiling woman (in this case, fellow 20Below staffer Davis) equally grabs our attention, but in a different way. We are drawn first to Davis' beaming eyes and smile, which both represent a memory.

In her artwork, Reichman loves focusing on people and trying to preserve snapshots in life that only a camera can obtain.

"Photography is about capturing in gold those precious moments in peoples' lives," Reichman says. "I love catching people's emotions and experiences and sharing them with people.

`It gives the observer a flavor of that person's life, because no one can experience everything for themselves."

Through her photographs, Reichman communicates her love for the lives of others.

Like Reichman, Davis expresses her own passion for memories through photographs. The fishnet legging and long cigarette holder immediately draw us into this picture, taken for a school project.

"Photography allows me to communicate with my world through a fascinating medium," Davis says. "Pictures leave impressions on your mind, and photography allows you to preserve those impressions."

Whether using charcoal, comic strips, photographs or our own flesh as canvas, every teen-ager and human being seek ways to communicate thoughts about this futile and purposeful world.

Perhaps our art will one day hang in a museum, leaving the passions poured into it for the observer to marvel at and interpret. If not, our art still contains meaning, for it communicates the creator's personal idea about the beauty and ugliness in this world.

Chris Stollar is a sophomore at Gutenberg College in Eugene. He can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail].