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Theater & Arts
Emily Davidson
Millennium Force, 2009
Spray paint, enamel and oil on panel
Art Academy of Cincinnati
Nick Scrimenti
Honest Abe, 2008
Relief print
Miami University
College students show off artwork at DAI
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Staff Writer
Updated 7:25 PM Sunday, June 21, 2009
DAYTON — If you’d peeked into Nick Scrimenti’s notebooks any time between his first day of kindergarten and his last day of college, you’d find the same thing.
Doodles and drawings.
It’s no wonder the Miami University student, who is from Kettering, grew up to be an artist.
“I have noticed I am constantly drawing, and being able to pursue a career doing what I enjoy seems like a good way to go,” he says.
The talented print maker is one of three collegians whose work is on display in the Dayton Art Institute’s Regional Artists Gallery. The others are Katy Nelson of Wright State University and Emily Davidson of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. The three collegians have been selected for the Yeck College Artist Fellowship and each has created a new body of work specifically for the DAI.
Scrimenti, who says his playful and comic art blends abstract, figurative and illustrative styles, once read that viewers in a gallery spend about 3-5 seconds at each artwork.
“My goal is to have so much going on in each of my works that the viewer has to stop and spend time to figure out the meaning,” he says. “There is meaning behind my work, however, it is not easily seen. I want the viewer to stay long enough to figure it out for themselves.”
His work, he adds, reflects a biographical or personal statement about people or issues such as financial and social problems.
At the age of 10 or 11, Davidson went with his elementary school class on a series of visits to Indianapolis Museum of Art.
She was hooked.
“I thought it was amazing that we could look at objects from art history and attempt to re-make them in a new context,” she remembers.
Her paintings, says Davidson, “depict spectacular encounters in which a fabricated experience meets idyllic landscape.”
“I want people to approach the work with a certain familiarity, to find a connection between the places I depict and their own experiences,” she says. “The works contain a certain banality, an uneasiness; often, they depict an event or spectacle in progress — and I want the viewer to really examine and question this spectacle as I’ve laid it out, physically and spatially in paint.”
Davidson, who is from Carmel, Ind., uses a variety of paint applications, surface treatments and materials to give her landscapes both depth and surface.
Nelson is a sculpture major who uses molds for the construction of her ceramics, then individualizes each piece by adding decorative elements.
The repetitive forms and elements used in the creation of her DAI series reflect her ideas about mass production and fashion.
Both Nelson’s grandmother and older brother both painted and she says she grew up with a pencil and paper in hand.
“I create objects that have meaning in my own life through time and place,” she explains. “ These objects are abstracted and constructed as individual units from nature.”
Nelson hopes visitors will find humor and fun in what she creates.
“These are like creatures that almost have a character on their own,” she says. “Most children like my work; they find connections to science fiction and cartoons.”
Works by the 2009 Yeck College Artist Fellows are on view in The Dayton Art Institute’s Regional Artists Gallery through Aug. 23. Admission is free.
For more information about the Yeck College Artists Fellowship program, call (937) 223-5277, ext. 335, or e-mail mwhitley@ daytonartinstitute.org.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or MMoss@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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