The First Friday Artists Market is a sort of flea market-style affair where students pay a small fee for a table and get to hawk some of their art to their fellows. As is traditional with this kind of affair, a decent amount of what was being sold was either poorly made or simply boring. On the boring end of the spectrum there were mugs with "cute" little customizable graphics on them. On the poorly made end of the spectrum, there was a decent amount of the abstract art that makes you think more about what you are going to have for lunch later today than the meaning of life, and of course there was the booth that sells those crappy little bead bracelets that obviously took all of thirty seconds to put together, look boring and cost five dollars.
If I sound a bit harsh towards those bracelets, let me assure you, it is because I hated them - not only were they ugly and overpriced, but the people selling them had the most annoying way of advertising their wares (buy your girlfriend one, tell her you made it, blah, blah, blah).
However, you shouldn't let those three or four artists color your opinions of the Hopkins art scene towards the negative; there were artists there that were actually good, and who more than made up for their lesser brethren.
First there was junior Ava Yap, who can be found at ovoquill.deviantart.com. She was selling five prints of different pieces of her digital art, and frankly her shading is fantastic. While her art does not seem to have any real direction, or deeper unifying meaning, her practiced talent allows her to produce beauty anyway.
Her two best pieces of art were "Liquefy," a picture of a mysteriously smiling face slowly melting, and "On The Shoulder of a Giant," a picture she made for her father for Father's Day. Both of these prints can be found on her website.
The next artist was the supremely talented senior April Cui. She showcased a large number of water colors and acrylics, all of which were quite good. What was perhaps most impressive about her different pieces were the dramatically different styles she employed; while her acrylic paintings were largely done in a very impressionistic style with an obvious focus on the individual characters and the lighting of the paintings, her water colors and pen drawings were incredibly intricate, almost reminiscent of the photorealism movement in the level of details present.
Perhaps her best work was a water color of a gold fish swimming in his bowl. In the curvature of the bowl you can see the world around him. Just a fantastic work of art.
My personal favorites from the market were two paper-mache sculptures created by Hopkins alum Weston Andersen. The two pieces that he showcased were phenomenal. If anyone has the space in their room for something almost human sized I would recommend you go out and buy one of his works at once.
The first of his two pieces, "Luggage," was a sculpture of a life-sized child made entirely out of road maps, sitting in a suitcase, curled up into the fetal position, with more maps sprinkled around the base. It seemed as if it was a living child without a stable home, literally just some humanoid luggage to whoever took care of it.
His second piece, whose title I could not find, was a person frozen in motion, with an unplugged electrical cord trailing from his leg. It looked like some sort of robot who, in the middle of doing something, was unplugged and left to die.
The last really great artist there was another acrylic painter. However, unlike Cui, he did not in the slightest embrace impressionism. If anything, he did pop-art; weaving pop culture references throughout all of his art. Probably his best work, "Fear and Loathing in Bikini Bottom," takes the iconic movie poster for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and replaces Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist, with the equally as jaded Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants.
All in all, the art fair was fantastic, and sophomore Alex Dash, the man who organized/started the whole thing deserves a round of applause. From what I understand, this should be a monthly event, so come on down to Levering this May and support some Hopkins artists.
