Artists Guild concludes Vision Days with interactive exhibit

More than 100 people packed the smoke-filled Bowl Room in Houston Hall yesterday evening for the Artist Guild's "Vision Tunnel" exhibition. The spring show was the culmination of the Guild's Vision Days -- a week-long event featuring a variety of works by University undergraduates. Each of the works involved spectator collaboration. "Our goal was to infuse the campus with art and to make people more aware," explained College freshman Diana Falchuk, incoming Guild president. "Penn has a real pre-professional environment, and we want to remind everybody that art is a part of our lives." "Vision Tunnel" included more than 35 works, ranging from traditional photography, collages and paintings to more progressive collaborative works and poetry. "We got the name 'Vision Tunnel' because everyone at Penn was walking around with tunnel vision," said College senior Adam Matta, the Guild's outgoing manager. "We wanted to completely turn that around." "The Walk" and "Female Bodies in Art" -- the most prominent of the collaborative pieces -- garnered a great deal of attention from both exhibitors and spectators. Organized by College senior Laura Amrofell, "The Walk" was created during Vision Days by having participants walk on hardening clay and plaster. The final work included not only the dried slabs, but also a slide presentation and a sound recording of the process. "Not everybody is visually-oriented," Amrofell said. "With the audio recording of the walking, there's more of an immediate impact." The second collaborative work, "Female Bodies in Art," was produced by eight female students. For the project, the women dipped their bodies in materials such as eggs, coffee and tempura paint to create eight individual canvases. Like "The Walk," "Females Bodies in Art" included pictures of the process. "I didn't really understand the stuff with the food," said John Spitzer, an employee of the American Law Institute, who attended the event. "But it's obvious they put in a lot of time and effort." College junior Javier Villar, incoming Guild vice president, added that the organization wanted to make everything about the "Vision Tunnel" exhibition an artwork in itself. In accordance with that goal, the Guild decorated the Bowl Room with foil and strategically placed the pieces within the space. Guitarist Eddie Belmont, a College senior, contributed music to the exhibition. He played a wide variety of pieces, from classical to modern compositions. The Guild overcame an early obstacle when College sophomore and Houston Hall employee Josh Culbertson forced College senior and outgoing Guild President Rori Duboff to remove alcohol that the Guild had planned to serve attendees. "I'm fucking 21 and everyone here is fucking 21," Duboff said. "We're not trying to be illegal. The University administration should understand how much effort students are putting into things and work with us rather than dropping stuff on us at the last minute." Attendees said they enjoyed viewing the exhibition. "This was a great opportunity for me to check out what the artists at Penn are doing," College senior Debra Shiau said.E

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