Clutter, bags and compost comprise gallery exhibit

Paul Dickinson, Pamela Howard, Dean Kessmann

Regina Gouger Miller Gallery

Carnegie Mellon… Paul Dickinson, Pamela Howard, Dean Kessmann

Regina Gouger Miller Gallery

Carnegie Mellon University

Through December 17

(412) 268-3618

Art can be moved with a shovel and smell like decomposing food. Art can be cluttered ashtrays and cities made of paper bags. Art can even be stark and simple.

Artwork from Paul Dickinson, Pamela Howard and Dean Kessmann is on display at Carnegie Mellon’s Regina Gouger Miller Gallery until Dec. 17. The gallery is divided into three floors, each featuring one of the artists.

On the first floor, Paul Dickinson’s installation work can be found. Dickinson borrows elements from popular culture in his sound, video and installation works.

Four small, wooden boxes look like they’ve been placed randomly on the floor. A low, almost inaudible noise fills the space, broken occasionally by static. In his piece, “Dantien Subwoofer,” low sound warbles slightly from a wooden box.

In “Music for Worms and Compost (Trio Remix),” the lid to three boxes filled with rotting food and worms can be opened, revealing the compost pile. A shovel found in the boxes can be used to stir around the decomposing contents, producing a static sound.

The second floor of the gallery features Pamela Howard’s installation, “Three Fragments from the Marriage, 1953,” a comic chamber opera by Bohuslav Martinu from the short story by Nikolai Gogol.

Howard has worked as a stage designer in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. Her work has allowed her to realize more than 200 productions, and she is currently an artist in residence at Carnegie Mellon.

In the middle of the large room is an upright piano with rows of wooden chairs on either side facing away from it.

In one section of the room, the living conditions of a bachelor in 1953 are revealed through empty bottles of wine, cigarette butts, ashtrays and buckets for collecting rain. In another corner of the room, a young girl’s bedroom is presented — a bed with pink sheets and a floral pattern is surrounded by a white dresser, a small, pink rug and copies of “Bazaar” and “Vogue.”

On the floor, a city made of paper bags can be found. Above this city flies a flock of birds fashioned out of wire hangers. A light casts the shadows of this flock of birds on the wall, creating a unique and surprising effect.

Dean Kessmann’s artwork is on the third floor of the gallery. Compared to the other floors, the third floor is open and has a sleek look — Kessmann’s square and rectangular works hang neatly on the white walls, accentuating the exhibit, “Fragmented Information and Consumer Byproduct.”

In two corners of the room, Kessmann’s square digital pigment prints of crumpled plastic bags are displayed. The prints look like organic beings — an organ or enlarged image of a cell. The title of each print reveals the true identity of the image. “Wal-Mart,” a dark blue-and-black print that looks like a blue jellyfish, is actually a crumpled plastic bag.

“Have a Nice Day” looks like a clear globule with a yellow streak. With closer inspection, the viewer can see the distorted image of a smiley face.

Kessmann’s larger prints are in the center of the room. Here, rectangular digital pigment prints, varying in size, are lined with colorful, horizontal lines. The prints contain fragments of images from different sources.

In “Terna Celeste, November/December” lines of different colors — blue, purple, brown and white — run down the print. It’s difficult to discern the picture in each line, but the fragments create a whole image with a textured look.

Each floor of the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery offers an interesting perspective on the artists and their works. Through innovative uses of garbage, paper bags and plastic, Paul Dickinson, Pamela Howard and Dean Kessmann explore the possibilities of mediums, space and art.