UO museum offers showy send-off for arts students.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

In recent years, the spring exhibition showcasing work by University of Oregon master of fine arts students has been spread around various downtown art galleries.

That's because the university art museum - now officially the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art - has been closed for renovations. Now the museum has re-opened, and this year's MFA show, all in one place again, barely fills the spacious exhibition hall in which it's been installed. Whole areas of gallery wall are blank, leaving the room looking a little unlived-in.

Nevertheless, there is nothing like a grand setting to make art look good, and having the MFA show at the new Schnitzer certainly gives these artists a splendid send-off into their various careers.

The nine artists and their media are Amjad Faur, photography; Todd Griffith, painting; Ukiko Honda, metalsmithing and jewelry; Kristie Johnson, printmaking; Sally Metcalf, fibers; Marshall Roemen, painting; Angaleen Schroeder, photography; Joseph Stengel-Goetz, visual design; and Chad Tolley, printmaking.

Here are a few works that particularly struck me:

The biggest work in the room, and one of the largest paintings you're likely to see anywhere, is Roemen's "Predicament." A square piece of canvas measuring 13 feet, 4 inches on a side, the painting runs almost from floor to ceiling on the gallery wall. The image is so large that it helps to stand against the opposite wall to view it clearly.

When you do, you'll see a face - a woman's? - reflected in a silver platter, or perhaps in a shiny tabletop. The silvery face is almost ghostly the way it disappears as you walk closer to the canvas, or comes back into focus as you retreat. Small details surprise: In two of the corners are the toes of a couple of old-fashioned black tennis shoes, as though you're looking down at your own or someone else's feet.

The painting is impressive and engaging and yet not entirely satisfying; scale is interesting, but not quite enough on its own to carry the day.

Around the corner of a short gallery wall, Schroeder's "Propriety" is a photographic reflection on women's roles and women's implements. The odd but appealing little work, to which I found myself drawn back repeatedly, combines a setting of nine square black-and-white photographs of a young woman in various ordinary costumes, along with a 20-square grid of similar photographs of household items the woman might use.

Underneath hangs a series of hand-embroidered napkins.

Schroeder's work is nicely presented on all levels. The photographs are interesting, individually and together; the grids invite the eye to compare and contrast the images; and the napkins are a quirky accent that are like adding a touch of salt to a fresh vegetable.

A more straightforward, and much more brooding, set of photographs is Faur's "We Who Believe in the Unseen." It is a series of seven very large black-and-white prints - about 24 by 30 inches each - showing a spare, stagy scene, with a cloth-covered table at its center, something like a magic act without the magician.

In each photograph, something different is happening. An indefinite black object sits there in one; a swirl of smoke or fog hangs over the table in another. In his brief statement, Faur says he's exploring the tension between the unseen mystery of Islam and the actuality of photography. His work is elegant, simple and tantalizing.

In her artist's statement, Metcalf says simply that she has been "manipulating plant parts since I was a small child." That's a refreshingly direct and nonconceptual description of her beautifully sculpted fiber art, some of which resembles sea anemones gone wild.

Her "Treasure Trove" is a free-standing tower, perhaps three feet tall. Its sweeping wood bark surfaces are accented with a series of rough metal pegs. Tension between the organic bark and tooled metal highlights the graceful form.

EXHIBIT REVIEW

MFA 2005

What: Art by nine students completing the University of Oregon master of fine arts program

Where: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, 1430 Johnson Lane, on the UO campus

When: Through June 26

Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday

Admission: $5

CAPTION(S):

Marshall Roemen's painting "Predicament," more than 13 feet square, is included in the MFA exhibit.