Color your day with Student Union art exhibits

It's part of the daily grind, but in the course of the day we need respites, time for ourselves, as it were.

Ergo, there are three art exhibits currently hanging in the Union that are worthy of a look. Worthy of making part of your lunch break between now and Aug. 14.

First, Max Hammond's "Desert Solitaire" in the Union Gallery on the first floor. It's next to the deli.

Hammond's oil painting exhibit takes it's title from the Edward Abbey memoir, and the dream-like geometric landscapes he creates are solitude and hyper-real desert defined.

His works are studies in squares and pyramids. All the paintings are cast in deep or bright colors that are nothing if not mood evocative.

Pieces like "Penance for Fear" and "The Seduction of Solitude" the single small shape cast in a sea of a dominate scale iterates the very loneliness of our rigid, line defined lives.

The painting "Remnants of Innocence and Shame" show the viewer a partial cube bright with red and blue, apparently broken by the gray land and the green sky. The very dullness of everyday life wears away the emotions of children.

The two other exhibits in the Union are on the second and third floor, respectively. They hang in the common areas where students study and sleep. Leave a second before or after you sit down to take a look.

"The Land," a collection of landscapes put together by the Arizona Women's Caucus, features some interesting pieces along with other standard water color work.

Justine Clarysse's vibrant "Dragon Sunset" rolls the typical in fantasy, intensifying color with imagination to good effect. The brilliant reds and oranges are tongues of flame licking the dark blue sky.

"Lake Powell with Tumbleweeds" is Jenny Kilb's landscape. Looking down the canyon to the lake. The tumble weeds and the mountains beyond look like flesh, bathed in a very Georgia O'Keefe light.

Another neat-o piece is Scarlet Decker's "Shakespeare's Sister," where a huge blue wave smothers a faded brick wall, while two brighter brick red shapes stand undamaged by the flood. The shapes look like nothing if not the backs of high heeled shoes.

Finally, on the third floor, Carolyn Lavender's collection of mixed-media drawings called "Collectivity," seems to be a statement on both majesty of nature and the relatively constant human attack on it.

Lavender's subject, for the most part, is the bear. Using one image so many times and working in black and white allows a constant context for the exhibit. Stand out pieces include the mountainous "Bear 12" and the human hands and feet that touch and trod on "Zoo Bear"

Lavender lays a brick shaped net over many of her works and includes the human hand several times. The majestic bear is captured.