Laura Lucas

Kristin Dalton and Tucker Rzepecki are senior fine arts majors with an art exhibition in the Ritz Gallery of Grove Hall. Their exhibition is titled LOVE and Other Disasters.

“So much of our work deals with relationships and the name covers all our work,” said Rzepecki.

The exhibit contains about 15 of Dalton’s pieces and about 20 of Rzepecki’s.

Dalton describes her pieces as all portraits of friends and people in her life. “They deal with line and the importance of line work,” she said. Some of her works are from her dripping paint on people and taking pictures. She then painted pictures of the people in the photograph.

“People have marks on them; you can see their inner baggage,” she said. “People act very different with paint on them. I wanted everyone to look beautiful.”

Rzepecki said he has three different bodies of work. There are the practice pieces, the New Orleans series and the comics that deal with the frustration of dating. “The New Orleans series came from photos I took when I went down there to help clean up,” he said. “You don’t see the human side of what happened until you go down there? when I painted how it is, then you can show the shock and devastation that there is”.

The different pieces within the exhibit consist of paint, pencils, print making and water colors. Rzepecki said he used a variety of materials including canvas and paper while Dalton said she used paper exclusively.

Rzepecki said he tries not to think ahead about what he is going to paint. “The paintings took weeks to a few months to do. The drawings took a week or two,” he said. “You just stumble upon things and it slowly comes together. When I did one New Orleans painting, I got to thinking maybe another one would work, then did another and another.”

Dalton, on the other hand, said her pieces took two to 30 hours to create. “We both make our own projects. We are lucky to have professors who let us do that,” she said.

The exhibition runs from Feb. 11- 22 in the Ritz Gallery, which is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.. A reception will be held on Feb. 15 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and a gallery talk at 6 p.m.

#1.882820:3051832305.jpg:ritzgallery_SF.jpg:A selection from Tucker Rzepecki’s New Orleans series.:Stephanie Fischer