Two art students share dreams, studio space

On a quiet Sunday night, the McCalla Sculpture Center's woodshop studio is home to Gaberial Meldahl, his current project and his drum set. There is hardly anyone else in the entire building, which can be full of people during regular hours. \nWearing a frumpy T-shirt, corduroys and '70s style sneakers, Meldahl sports an I-just-woke-up hairdo. But his friends say that's his natural style. He can't sit still, and his eyes dart back and forth from his drums to his project in the middle of the room. \nA senior in the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, Meldahl didn't find his way to his current major -- sculpture -- easily. When he first got to IU, he wanted to be an art education major, but realized that teaching little kids wasn't for him. He wanted something more. \nThree changes of major and six years later, Meldahl is on his way to graduating in May. His final project -- a large scale geodesic dome -- will be part of a School of Fine Arts Gallery exhibition of BFA students. The exhibit started Wednesday and runs through Saturday. Other parts of the BFA/MFA exhibitions follow throughout the end of March and April. \n"Young artists cross lines a lot," said Dana Sperry, associate director of SoFA Gallery. "It's interesting to see how this space can be used." \nBut the exhibition isn't a culminating point for Meldahl. It is only a beginning. \nThe building that Meldahl and other sculpture students consider home -- the McCalla Center -- used to be McCalla Elementary School. When the school closed in 1973, the University acquired the building. The old classrooms have been transformed into creative spaces with tall windows and high ceilings, maximizing the daylight and creating the ultimate studio space. \nMeldahl's space at McCalla is a large open room with small windows and high ceilings. It used to be the stage of the former elementary school's auditorium -- the rails for the curtains still remain on the ceiling. A comfortable couch sits waiting for tired sculptors, and Meldahl's drum set found a nook on one of the rafters. \n"No other students besides art majors get to have a space like this," Meldahl said. "It's all our own. We can do whatever we want here."\nMeldahl shares the giant room with three other students. But this space has been mostly his own for the past month. His geodesic dome, complete with a working TV inside and a standard-size white mailbox outside, has been taking up most of the floor space. His friend and studio partner Thomas Vannatter, who is a fifth-year senior in the same program, has gotten mad at Meldahl a couple of times for "spreading his stuff all over," Meldahl said. \nBoth Vannatter and Meldahl said art influences every aspect of their lives: their clothes, their friends, the music they listen to, the food they eat, their jobs. Vannater lives in a small "colony" of artists in Bloomington -- musicians, writers, sculptors, painters and designers. \n"I used to wake up on a Sunday morning to my upstairs neighbor playing blues on his bass guitar," Vannatter said. "There is a sort of holy trinity -- artists, musicians and writers. We're on the same wavelength but we don't have to argue about technique."\nBoth Meldahl and Vannatter said a true artist is always searching. With everything an artist does, he or she defies stereotypes. \n"There is no normal for an artist," Meldahl said. "People think that being a fine arts major is easy."\nBut one stereotype holds true for both: the image of a poor artist and constant money woes. Meldahl works two jobs in addition to taking 15 credit hours and working on his projects. Vannatter, on the other hand, tries to get by with grants, scholarships and loans. \n"Everyone I know is dead broke," Vannatter said. \nMoney problems are partly the reason behind Vannatter's latest venture. Along with his Sculpture S371 class, Vannatter has participated in transforming a previous "hole-in-the-wall" space into "The Lazy Monk," an art project turned temporary restaurant that was open for a couple of weeks in March. The class teacher and Vannatter's friend Stuart Hyatt lead the project. Hyatt, an MFA student at SoFA, postulated that one's own body could be used as a medium for creativity. \n"The idea of being an artist isolated in the studio is kind of an old model for how one works," Hyatt said. "There's not going to be some grand patron that walks into your studio and discovers your genius."\nMeldahl holds this theory true for everything he does. Everyone is free to interpret his art -- for him, there is no right or wrong interpretation, he said. He doesn't refer to his art as functional, but it's not conventional by any means. \nVannatter agrees wholeheartedly. \n"There's no such thing as functional art," he said. "If it's art, then it's not functional."\nOne of Vannatter's most recent projects included bringing a well-used couch from the students' studio space into a gallery, sitting on the couch for a couple hours and talking to anyone who would sit down. For Vannatter, the couch became art instead of a functioning couch. Both artists said they see a marked difference between art and design. The two aren't designers, they are artists, who make art for people who don't necessarily go to museums, they said.\n"If you have a toaster and call it art, then it's not a toaster," he said. "If you design a toaster, then it's a functioning kitchen appliance"