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Art Reviews; Students, Teachers and Mentors

Compound Interest

Collaborative Concepts, 348 Main Street, Beacon, (845)838-1516, through April 11.

''Compound Interest,'' like ''Artists Under the Influence,'' reflects the special relationships between certain students and their teachers. For ''Compound Interest,'' the curators Joe Seipel and Richard Roth asked eight recent Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts professors to select eight graduate students and alumni to show their art alongside their own.

Bonnie Collura, with works like her incredibly wild and weird ''Abductor Red'' (2003): a life-size, free-standing super mutant sculpture, has had a profound effect on the visual language of her student Fernando Mastrangelo.

Mr. Mastrangelo's grouped installation of ''Anomie: Male'' (2003) and ''Anomie: Female'' (2003) carries that same new-biology, postnuclear mutation look.

Another clear link can be found in the works of James Hyde, and his student Ron Johnson. Mr. Hyde's ''Horizon'' (2003) is minimal, made of a clear sheet of plastic edged with a border of unraveling blue and green synthetic fabric. Mr. Johnson builds his narrative in ''Chance Meeting'' (2003) in layers of frosted Mylar, backed with colored cloth applied on edge, in sinuous, seductive patterns. Both artists entice us to redefine the space around us.

Diana Cooper's ''Speedway,'' (2004), a foam-core, post-Bauhaus scale model living and working space, pits 1960's pop against current issues revolving around the import of expressing one's personal taste. Sarah Brenneman seems to be taking Ms. Cooper's innate sense of form and function and making it her own in ''Mount Harvey, Mount Harvey, Mount Harvey, Mount Harvey, Mount Harvey'' (2004), a beautifully rendered watercolor and pencil work that integrates landscape and humankind's impulse to plot and organize ad infinitum.

I also found the relationship between Sheila Pepe and David McQueen to be a fertile one. Ms. Pepe's ''Study for Tunnel (Short)'' (2003), which comprises a web of colorful shoestrings tied in lacelike patterns, and joined from end to end, takes aim at the emotional pitfalls of our youth-oriented society.

Mr. McQueen's ''Lucky'' (2003), a presentation of 30 partly scratched quick-win-type lottery tickets, is a powerful statement, taking aim at another social stress, gambling.

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