The juried student is an annual affair where student work is judged by a select panel of impartial outsiders, strangers to the UMB art scene, who will dictate what is and what isn’t accepted. Over 35 artists and 90 pieces of their work, out of an estimated 130 submitted, will be displayed for another week.

United only by their ties to UMB, this show is open to everyone on campus, whether they are art majors or not. With no common theme and no specific format, the art is as varied as the media, from quilts to sculpture, paintings to collages. The 2002 show has had an even larger turnout than ever. Abstract or representational, eye-catching oddities abound within this stylist Noah’s Ark with examples of Cubism, Impressionism, photography, and etchings.

Pull, a charcoal piece on red rosin paper, spanning 68 inches in width and 93 inches in height is daunting in its depiction of rippling motion. One can almost feel the force of the sharply defined-onyx shadowed lines of the muscle heaving with the force of its exertions. The field of perceived flesh is almost grotesque in the fascination it holds for the viewer, reminiscent of the body of The Hulk, a comic book mutant.

In an interesting and unintentional move, Impressionism and Mannerism were placed side by side, demonstrating the definitive contrasts between both styles: the heavy-handed brushwork of the former versus the fine-point detailing of the latter. Hallie Lee’s Landscape and Herbert Kirshnit’s Night Docks, of the same Impressionist bent, provide a peculiar poignancy in their own thematic differences of bright sunny, rolling fields, and the shadowy darkness of ships drifting within a silent harbor. Jean Yonatis-Piccini recreated the dramatic stares of a mother and child within Eyes and the caring countenance of a Mother and Child.

Vanessa Boer found a way to incorporate soy sauce, coffee, ink, and wood, in a set of five untitled wood-framed pieces inscribed with pithy sayings like “I still don’t sleep on the right side” and “he counts all the cold places” on a background of bone and pieces of paper. Weirdly wonderful in its unorthodox mix of food and fundamentals and its message of longing.

There is such an eclectic variety of student authored pieces that there is enough to appeal to anyone’s particular preferences. The show runs until the end of the semester and the closing is May 15 from 5-9pm. Be sure to see the open studios on the 8th and 10th floor of Healey Library, also May 15, for that day only, running from 5-9pm.