By
Kate VonderPorten
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Grad students from across the country show work at Lionel Rombach Gallery
When the UA put out a national call for Master of Fine Arts candidates to submit artwork for an exhibit, Frank Rimbach did not hesitate to heed the call.
Rimbach was chosen to be a part of "The Ties that Bind," a University of Arizona sponsored art show featuring the work of 17 graduate students from across the nation. Each student's work deals with issues of family, childhood and home represented in the visual arts.
The exhibition, now on display at the Lionel Rombach Gallery in the UA Fine Arts Complex, ran under the same name in conjunction with the UA's annual Graduate Art History symposium in late February.
In previous years, the gallery show has occurred along with the symposium and included only local MFA candidates. However this year, show curator Kohl Mathews wanted to open the exhibit to graduate students from across the country.
"I wanted to broaden the scope from local artists to artists from across the country," said Mathews, also a UA fine arts graduate student. "I feel the general public will enjoy the different media used by these artists."
Mathew's idea was met with a tremendous feedback from potential UA artists as well as artists from universities across the country.
"I received an overwhelming response and narrowed the show down to 17 artists," she said. "I am a graduate student myself, and we are the future artists of the world."
Currently an MFA candidate, Rimbach, who received his BFA degree from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M., said he is excited to be one of the artists chosen for the show.
"I was quite honored to be chosen," he said.
Rimbach's work also corresponds with the theme of family constructs on which the show is based.
"My family is a big influence in my work, and I draw on memories of them in everyday situations for my work," he said.
Like many other artists included in the show, Rimbach deals with these memories while confronting his viewer with everyday rituals they may often overlook and take for granted.
"People have a certain dogmatic way of doing things - the same meal, the same spices and we really don't analyze our own positions in our lives," he said. "It is a gradual awakening that you look at (in the painting) and ask yourself 'what is my ritual this morning and how does it affect my day?'"
Rimbach said he hopes his work will allow people to have a greater appreciation for the mundane aspects of the world around them.
"I hope that my work will inspire a higher level of observation for people. I think we are so used to quick things and have lost sight of really studying, looking and thinking about something," he said. "I don't know if that is just as a culture or as a generation. People don't have a lot of patience."
Rimbach said he hopes he will be appreciated for his ideas as well as his application of paint.
"I want my work to be both interesting to the mind and to the eye. I want to attract you visually and then I want to involve your mind," he said "I want my audience to be drawn in by the craft and also a certain familiarity that is there in my subject matter."
Scenes of common, everyday experiences pervade Rimbach's work and provide it with a simple motif.
"My work is more about painting what you see and not a grand theme that is too obscure and anybody's guess," Rimbach said. "I think it is a more honest way to work."
"I am exploring the everyday things in my work" he added. "I think that it is a sweet life and if you are inclined to elevating humanity it is a good way to go."
"The Ties that Bind," now at the Lionel Rombach Gallery in the UA Fine Arts Complex, runs through March 28.
