While we are beginning the long and relentless workload our schedules present, it’s nice to know an intellectual release is located on campus. From now until Oct 12, three exceptional UT graduates, Gerald Collings, David Giansante and Daniel Hesidence will be exhibiting works in the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery.
Last Friday I was fortunate enough to listen to the artists speak before the official opening that night. It was hard for me to imagine them being such good friends while surrounded by such different work. To the far left sat Gilbert DeMeza, inspiration, teacher and father figure to the three, who often went to great lengths for his students. In his early years as a professor, he said he often had to drive around Tampa looking for old cans of house-paint and other items that his students could use. Thanks to the guidance and assistance of DeMeza and Gallery Director Dorothy Cowden, the artists were able to establish themselves in the art world, as well as being able to return to UT to share it with students.
To the right of DeMeza, was Daniel Hesidence. Hesidence was born in Akron, Ohio. He was the last of the three to graduate from UT receiving his bachelor of fine arts, in 1998. He would later go on to receive his masters in fine arts from Hunter College in 2001. Hesidence like Collings and Giansante, would ultimately call New York City his final destination. I found myself drawn to both his approach to art as well as the outcome that came from his mentality. Using warm colors and choppy strokes, Hesidence was able to bring a sense of a beautiful sadness to his art. In one particular piece, which was untitled, I caught myself wanting to reach out and grab the back of what seemed to be one of my mother’s dresses slightly familiar in my translation of the painting, yet completely foreign in sight.
Slouched in his chair, Gerald Collings was the next speaker. It was his certain passive-aggressiveness that interested me in his work, claiming that the ideas that turn into paintings generate themselves. Collings graduated in 1997 with a BFA and would later study at the Hoffberger School of Painting in Baltimore, graduating in 2000 with his MFA. He encouraged students to find a graduate school that is “right for them” as he filled his random interjections with anecdotes from college days. “It’s about what you need as a person,” he said. I would suggest looking over his work last because I found that his paintings, more so than the others, held multiple erotic and curious meaning.
The final speaker was David Giansante. One of his pieces loomed overhead; however, he seemed to be completely calm and refused to acknowledge its presence. Receiving his BFA from UT in 1997 as well as an MA and MFA at Boston University in 1999, he told the audience that discipline is important. Giansante said that art happens as a result of dialogues between the artist’s idea and the work itself. He said that UT taught him the tools which he chose to work with, as well as how to speak through to his work. Those conversations between artists and artwork can be clearly heard through the symmetry and bright colors displayed in Giansante’s paintings. His paintings are beautiful and overwhelming at first, but after a few moments spent with each piece, one can put a sentence into place to describe his empowering stories.
UT has been the focal point for each of these artists, claiming that it was the space they were given from professors that enabled them to discover the art that would define them as artists.