Two Engaging Art Exhibits on Campus
The Berkeley campus is the temporary home of two compelling art exhibits. The first, running through November 18 at the ASUC Art Studio Gallery, on the lower level of the MLK, Jr. Student Union features the artwork of former Marine and Gulf War Veteran turned art grad student Ehren Tool. The NewsCenter has all the information on Tool in this article, "From jarhead to bowl maker: Grad student Ehren Tool's art of war" which delves into the motivation behind his artwork (the simplistic interpretation would be that he is ant-war, but that would be wrong).

The link above contains a photographic slideshow (definitely worth seeing) featuring a number of his pieces currently on display, as well as an information on the meaning behind the symbolism that he uses. My favorite piece was called "393", which was made to commemorate the deaths of soldiers in Iraq:

For his piece "393," which commemorates the number of U.S. combat deaths the first year of the Iraq war, Tool made and decorated 393 ceramic cups by hand. "Each of the 393 U.S. dead were raised by someone. Someone whipped their ass and made sure they got to school," he explains. "Then they went to Iraq and were killed." After firing and glazing the cups, Tool shot each of them with a pellet gun and videotaped it shattering. Each set of fragments was displayed on an individual base in front of a screen playing the 50-minute video of their destruction.

A close-up of "393" is below, from here:


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