Norfolk program sharpens talents of the best

The Norfolk summer painting program admits about 25 students every year--and not just from Yale. Considering the selectivity of the program, it's no surprise that the Undergraduate Gallery at the Art & Architecture Building is featuring the work of Dawn Ogawa, PC '98, Aitana de la Jara, DC '98, and Lisa Ericson, BR '98, three senior art majors who were picked for the program.

These artists incorporate fantasy with unlikely juxtapositions into their constructed worlds, while managing to make them convincing with their sense of pictorial space. The three clearly possess technical skill, but don't rely exclusively on it, taking liberties of depiction to communicate their visions.

Dawn Ogawa exhibits landscapes on a variety of scales. A small series of prints arranged on an Asian-style folding screen invites close contemplation, while expansive triptychs demand a greater distance. All convey a detailed naturalism, with a painterly layering of texture to indicate depth. The most engaging of her works is a panoramic green pasture complemented by red farm trucks. Here, Ogawa's technique of using multiple, sprawling canvases to extend her scenes works especially well. She breaks the monotonous horizontal flow with a central canvas that has different proportions, giving the work a distinct focus and reinforcing the spontaneous mood of its many cropped compositions.

Aitana de la Jara's work is less cohesive, exploring a greater range of media and themes. Some of her small prints, drawings, and paint sketches hint at the expressions of several larger works, while others seem entirely disconnected. A sense of narrative pervades the stronger paintings and prints, as in a scene of two naked figures embracing on a rooftop above a construction site. The viewer identifies simultaneously with these characters and with the voyeurism of the larger scene, creating a strange tension of observation. This painting also owes its force to la Jara's collage of expressive styles, used skillfully to suggest the movement of figures against a sedentary background.

Lisa Ericson's paintings immediately capture attention, and succeed in retaining it. Her theatrical self-portraits examine the interplay of figures and dramatic props, often masks. She infuses her settings with bold stage lighting, a flood of artificial saturation rather than a natural diffusion. The modeling of her characters reveals a solid control of form, which she manipulates to spotlight certain gestures and features. While Ericson's paintings contain implicit narrative, they leave plenty of room for interpretation. In one scene, the artist paints herself in a confrontational pose, her face covered with a chalky mask of makeup. Over her shoulder in the background, the circus-like figure of an obese man in a leotard approaches, carrying a small girl. The viewer, distracted by dynamic brushwork, can only speculate about their relationship.

Norfolk artists experience an intensive summer, but their work is well rewarded. Yalies can appreciate the fruits of that labor just by heading over to the A & A Building.

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