When Kyle Hittmeier, who grew up in Sacramento, received his bachelor's degree in art from the University of California, Davis, in 2007, he headed for New York.
He immersed himself in the heady culture of the Big Apple, supporting himself as a bartender, while continuing to work on his art.
He met a lot of interesting people doing that, but he longed to find a job that would use his skills as an artist. Now he works 40 hours a week doing architectural drawings for Julie Mehretu, a prominent New York artist, and makes his own art in his spare time.
Hittmeier, 27, is one of 11 artists included in the Pence Gallery's "Touching Base," an exhibit that presents works by former students of UC Davis art professor Robin Hill. Hill selected works by students, ages 23 to 35, who have gone on to establish professional careers and impressive exhibition records.
"These are students who have pushed themselves," she said at the gallery, "students I'm still in contact with who've been sending me announcements and emails about their work."
Hill is very proud of her pupils and organized the show to provide role models for her current students, so that they could see concrete examples of how studying art at UC Davis has benefited graduates.
The show includes abstracted paintings of night scenes by Caetlynn Booth, who has been featured in "Young American Painters," a prestigious publication of works by graduate students. There's also "101 Breaths," a series of slip-cast ceramic bags by Allison Taylor, who went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute and Brandeis University.
"101 Breaths" addresses the subject of anxiety attacks, treated by blowing into paper bags. After blowing into the bags, Taylor coated them with clay slip and fired them, burning away the paper and leaving the air entrapped in white ceramic "bags."
Like Daniel Glendening's "Monument for the Coming Age #8" – a silver laser print in the form of a concrete poem – it expresses a sense of anxiety about the times we live in and the future we face.
Hittmeier, too, hints at the emptiness of our experiences with a pair of drawings and a video, all titled "A Linear Perspective." The two drawings, one delicate and precise, the other obsessively worked and dark in tone, present images of empty or abandoned billboards that wait to be filled in by the viewer.
More quixotic are a pair of sculptures by Colby Claycomb, who like Hittmeier resides in Brooklyn and works as an art handler. "Sucker Punch" consists of slip-cast figures of Snow White's seven dwarfs attached to the wall along with strips of linoleum, a wandering pink form and a dented mailbox.
Its meaning is abstruse but it's fun to look at, as is "Unforeseen," a piece in which a rope bridge with a locked box in the middle is stretched over a blue quilt, suggesting a body of water.
Quirky, too, is Elizabeth Ottenheimer's ceramic sculpture "Cloud Mallow," a delicate arrangement of ghostly forms suggesting bleached bones and fungal growth. In contrast, Hilary Alder's arrangement of small pen-and-ink geometric abstractions speak of an orderly, rhythmic, almost rigid approach to form.
One of the standouts of the show is a small self-portrait by Amy Lincoln, another Brooklyn resident. This finely rendered, solemnly observed portrait of the artist on a red background is bound by an ornate blue frame that adds another dimension to the painting. Like her other works in the show, it reflects her interest in Northern Renaissance painters like Jan van Eyck and Petrus Christus.
Rounded out by Matthew Gottschalk's disturbing video "Rebirth of the Artist," Jason Trinidad's fictive robo-landscapes and intricate wood sculpture, and Ryan Gallant's mutely elegant sculpture "Cadence," a vortex of circular forms made of steel and concrete, the show is very much worth seeing.
TOUCHING BASE
What: Selected works by former UC Davis students who have gone on to establish professional careers and impressive exhibition records.
Where: Pence Gallery, 212 D St., Davis
When: 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, through April 21.
Cost: Free
Information: (530) 758-3370, www.pencegallery.org
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