Gordon Senior has been Chairman of the Art Department at California State University Stanislaus (Stan State) since 2002. On Thursday, Apr. 13, the school began their month-long exhibition in downtown Turlock.
 “The Silent Harvest” is the name of Gordon Senior’s installation.  It is located in the art space at 135 West Main Street, and is open through May 6.  The gallery is open to the public in the afternoons, and goes into the evenings on Thursday through Saturday.
This is the 22^nd installation at the downtown location.  The exhibitions began in September of 2014.  The sculptures and works on paper were well received during the reception on Thursday night. 
“It represents in some ways, me and my way of learning about the world we live in…generally based on nature, ecology, environments, and most other things,” Senior said. “Some of the pieces have taken fourteen years to develop while other pieces like the harvest stones took about four years.”  
 Some of Gordon’s work showed an array of tools that had no purpose as well as harvest stones with strands of wheat rolled around them.  One of his pieces was a sculpture of a carefully torn out weed that had been in the ground for some time.  Other pieces of Gordon’s art were a vast selection of beads as well as an army of rabbits riding down a river.   This is probably his intention and the genesis of the name of the installation.
Another artist, Benjamin Rosenthal, also exhibited at the gallery. Rosenthal lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas, and presented a video art installation with animation.  His entire room comprised the work of art on a video screen on each wall.  Most everyone who attended the reception was impressed.
Every video that there was had shown 3D images that were made with Maya, which is a computer animation and modeling software from Autodesk.  Other images were made with Adobe premier but in this particular art installation, Benjamin used products from the early seventies/late sixties on one-of-a-kind and unique equipment.  One of the green images in Benjamin’s installation is from a Dave Jones raster scanner which there is only one left in the entire world in which he produced in residency in New York. 
“A lot of the material hails from the early days of video art history,” Benjamin said.  “I do everything pretty much.  I do performances as well as drawings of consistent objects.” 
Benjamin teaches at the University of Kansas and thinks it is really important to have art that is contemporary and pushes the boundaries of what people believe to be traditional art.
Both installations can be viewed at the art space in downtown Turlock through May 8.