Art in Motion

Every once in a while, you see a sitting image that makes your mind move. Your eye floats up and out, and suddenly the lines in a frame suck you into the scene. You are speeding, and standing still.

You may be staring at "The Tor," a black-and-white photo triptych hanging in a corner of Bivins Building on East Campus. It's one of several shifting pieces now on display in conjunction with the Durham School of the Arts. Art in Motion, an exhibit by teachers from a nearby elementary school, is a sampler of five different media: photography, sculpture, ceramics, painting, and collage. The small collection vibrates with speed, color and the rumblings of an adolescent earthquake.

While Bivins is a small space, it still manages to house the work of the seven different artists. The pieces are given enough space to stand alone but grouped close enough so that one can make connections between the artwork and even the artists. Besides the recurring theme of physical action that makes most of the eye-candy, Art in Motion plays with vibrant twists on the familiar.

Among the standouts: Rodney S. Berry's chalk-and-watercolor self-portrait literally slides off the page. C. Darnell Thompson's slant on the Sarah B. Duke Gardens churns both classic and refreshing-a shot of the often-seen fountain, skewered and segmented into funhouse mirror proportions. While Kim Page's less remarkable oil work is more about tableau than motion, she nails a baby's face with the precision and subtlety of a Gerber photographer. And Paul Evans' "Adventures of Pecos Bill" is a thumping Tex-Mex collage, at once commercial and self-righteous with indigenous struggle. His themes of American Diaspora radiate with an energy that transcends the somber message and seems to sing. Alan Dehemer's gum bichromate plates, squeezed into a corner, mix gritty texture and mellow image. And there is the inimitable "The Tor," C. Darnell Thompson's spiral staircase of a photo sequence, leading the viewer up, out and around a tower's view.

But my favorites are the mounted ceramics by Sarah White, alien bowls with no beginning and no end. Knobby and gnarled, the clay twisted up, around and through itself, displaying hints of peachy gaze. Undoubtedly feminine and almost familiar, White's four pieces ("Lumen," "Fossa," "Venous," and "Myon") explode with coppery color and rounded, soothing spirals.

Sparkles to these artists; these mildly arresting pieces are moving in more ways than one.