Land exhibit at CCAD features works by five alumni from different eras

For the exhibit “Land” at the Columbus College of Art & Design, five alumni of the college decided to go big.

From a king-size mural, to a trampoline, and a 37-foot-long carved tree limb from an Ohio farm, the artists make striking and imposing use of CCAD’s spacious Beeler Gallery.

As for the exhibit title, said Faculty Director of Galleries and exhibit curator Tim Rietenbach, the word “land” encompasses broad meanings.

“There are a few conventional landscapes but it’s more about the flexibility of that word,” Rietenbach said.

That the works aren’t obviously connected to a theme doesn’t matter. Each piece has an intriguing backstory, and all are vivid and arresting.

Kurt Lightner, a 1993 graduate who works from his studio in Queens, New York, spent 15 years carving a large tree limb from his family farm in Troy, Ohio. Using script from his great-great-grandfather’s farm journals, Lightner meticulously entered notes about planting and harvesting crops over the seasons in small letters up and down the numerous branches. The piece, titled “Work,” is a marvel of engineering as well as a marvel to behold.

Lightner also has two big, colorful landscapes of tropical-like trees and scenes of migrant farm workers hunched over in fields as they pick —identified as people only by their plaid shirts.

In a small room across from Lightner’s tree limb is the appropriately placed “Trees (Please),” one of two short videos by artist Kate Rhoades, a 2010 graduate who lives in Oakland, California. In both this work and her kaleidoscopic-like “Incantations Against Fascism,” Rhoades uses her own voice as sound narration.