Art teachers analyze student work everyday. Now, the tables have turned.

Graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in the SF State exhibition design class have assembled, installed, and are maintaining a faculty exhibition in the Fine Arts Gallery. The free show features work by 19 members of the Art Department faculty.

“It’s kind of nice to be able to see your teachers work on display,” said Adam Martin, an art major.

On opening night of the exhibit, various varietals of Charles Shaw wine flowed as students and faculty toasted to the culmination of weeks of tedious work. The exhibition design class met in four all day sessions to set up the gallery.

“I loved working on the exhibit but there was just so much to do and none of us had ever done it before,” said Jennifer Jordan, 26, an art major enrolled in the design and exhibition class.

The students had the most trouble setting up Assistant Professor Gail Dawson’s “Nightwatch,” which includes two drawings and a film she produced depicting people viewing artwork. The students said it took almost five hours to hang up the three pieces.

The largest piece on display was done by Conceptual/Information Arts Program Professor Stephen Wilson. His installation, “Traces of Culture,” uses a data projector to produce a 6-foot by 4/5-foot image. The interactive computer mediated event shows information as entertainment.

Wilson, who has been teaching for 20 years in the department, said it took two months to create the conceptual art piece.

“It’s all about how images relate to the times,” said the Art Institute of Chicago graduate.

The interactive piece was created with the Director computer program and uses the search engine Google -- in real time -- to take images from the Internet. These images are chosen when the viewer clicks on a word in a particular “game.”

In “The Cinema of Famous Texts,” visitors enter a virtual movie theater and click on the title of a famous book. The program then downloads the text of that book. A viewer can choose any word from the text and the screen will then display images Google associated with that word.

In Wilson’s “Name That Search Term,” visitors are contestants in a game show. An image from the Internet is shown to the contestant who must decide which search term was used to produce the image. When a picture of a ship was shown to SF State student Robert Kerseg, the terms rural Russia, guitar tablature, and gyre were on his list of options to pick from.

“I didn’t do too good, I only got 13 points,” said Kerseg, who ran out of time finding the appropriate search term for the picture of a ship -- turns out the correct answer was “gyre,” a word Kerseg hadn’t heard before.

Kerseg wasn't the only student present during the Feb. 24 opening gala. Sharon Bliss, the gallery manager and assistant curator, said there was about 500 people in attendance on the first night of the exhibit. Even with such a large audience, the gallery was only flanked with a few problems.

In Associate Professor of Art Mario Laplante’s “Illuminée,” 309 ceramic priests were dipped in beeswax, with four foot wicks protruding from their heads. They are arranged in the center of the gallery floor in eight concentric circles. Half of the priests fell down like toy soldiers when an older woman who was talking with a friend at the time walked into the middle of the configuration. Gallery workers donning white gloves scrambled to reassemble the delicate wax pieces. The entire ordeal was taken care of in a few minutes and white posts were set up to protect the artwork from future harm.

The commotion did attract more viewers to the piece. Kyle Gibson, a SF State student majoring in photography, liked “Illuminée” but did not understand how it related to what the artist’s statement described.

The statement asked how a church “that preaches the impermissibility of so many forms of consensual, adult sex simultaneously tolerate, ignore, and cover up the sexual abuse of children by its own priests.”

“You have to have a pretty vivid imagination to connect the two from looking at his piece,” said Gibson. “It’s like I could buy each wax priest for $10.99 and set it next to my super Jesus action figure.”

Other students echoed Gibson’s confused sentiments when viewing the faculty art.

In Art Department Chair Sylvia Solochek Walters’ “ Border Order With Pink” and “Bear Ballad III,” the artist’s statement notes that it “reflects and comments on the passage of time.”

Lucrecia Tromcos, an art student at SF State, said she didn’t quite understand how it related to time but she did think the pieces were beautiful.

“I haven’t seen her work before but it’s like – whoa – that’s what she does,” said Tromcos.

In “Border Order With Pink,” a floral border that comes from an 18th century decorative European Jewish wedding certificate is used.

“I can’t really get into what my influences are,” said Walters, her glasses resting on the edge of her nose. “ But part of it is illuminated manuscripts, art history and family stories,” said the retiring department chair.

Not all of the faculty artists present were unwilling to discuss their work.

Professor Francisco Pérez Cardona invited viewers to “come up with their own conclusions” about “En Proceso de Regeneración,” which uses moss as part of his mixed media piece.

“If you have any questions – just ask,” said the professor.

Amelia DePrimo, an art and theater major, said she loved the art she saw at the gallery.

“It’s great to see your teachers work up there and then be able to talk about it with them,” said DePrimo.

The Faculty Exhibition runs until March 18 in the Fine Arts Gallery located in the Fine Arts Building, room 238. Admission is free and gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. and on Wednesdays it closes at 6 p.m.