Students display art exhibit

Cal Poly students displayed an attention grabbing art exhibit Thursday near Dexter Lawn.

The display included six bikes latched to a water hose that trailed the handicap walkway, books laid open in the cemented dining areas and lopsided mattresses were suspended in the trees using cables.

“It looks crazy,” Travis Wilson, city regional planning junior, said. “I thought someone biked through the yard, wasted and drunk.”

As a project from Art 134, 3-D Design, students learn site-specific art.

Art professor Crissa Hewitt says the style is becoming more popular in the art industry. Site-specific art involves the manipulation and intertwining of art pieces within its environment.

“Students get the opportunity to work on a larger scale than what is in our classrooms,” Hewitt said. “Student had to scrounge for old things they don’t need because they were not supposed to spend any money.”

The art exhibit consisted of a combination of random items such as red paper cups, foil and two Downey balls.

“I brought three bikes to contribute to the project,” art and design senior Leonard Bessemer said.

The class worked in groups of four to five to create space.

“Basically the assignment was to create a type of space,” art and design junior Mark Stablein said. “The space is definitely open to interpretation,”

One group decided to name their exhibit “Delicacy” to represent the groups’ personal issues against the Cal Poly’s and San Luis Obispo’s treatment against bicyclists.

“They don’t have enough bike lanes,” Bessemer said “It represents how Cal Poly puts a handicap on its bike riders.”

Bessemer interpreted the formation of the bicycles on the handicap ramp as a story. The first bike on the ramp starts in a vertical position. Other bikes then follow the first, but these bikes were placed in obscure positions.

At the end of the line of bikes there was a black wire hand that represented the detrimental effects from riding bikes.

Another exhibit created by a different group had mattresses and radio speakers in trees.

“Lately, I haven’t been able to sleep much,” said Alexander Slarve, an art and design junior. “This piece means something to me but it doesn’t really matter because it’s really going to be about what it means to every person that walks by and sees it.”

The group began working on the project Thursday at 8 a.m. and was on display for the day.

“We put emotional and life experience to the pieces,” Stablein said.