Walking with a group of friends to see the opening of the new exhibition at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA), private (dis)play, I had no idea what to expect. The concept sounded novel: exhibit pages from artists’ notebooks to gain an 
understanding of their inner lives, but I wondered how such an idea might be implemented effectively. After all, I thought as I jumped over the puddles of slush covering the unlit streets of University City, notebook pages alone are not very interesting.
As we entered the building and made our way to the exhibition room, I thought my worst fears were confirmed. The show was housed in a white exhibition space, and the nature of the art being shown made for a fairly drab appearance. Reluctantly I began to circle my way around the space, glancing at the notebooks and sheets of paper pinned and encased in plastic along the walls. Though the exhibit emphasized the sketchbook component of private work, the pieces took many forms. In addition to white sketchbook pages, the show housed larger sheets of paper with drawings done in pen, video monitors displaying digital animatics, lined sheets with watercolor, and even a few collages.
After I had perused through the gallery for a few minutes one of the curators, Jamie Adams, began to speak.
He related the concept behind the exhibition, and went on to explain the specific significance behind some of the sketches. Evidently most of the artists displayed were American painters and acquaintances of Adams or co-curator Katharine Kuharic. Some of the pieces I had seen started to make a little more sense as I began to understand their places in the evolution of the expression of each artist. These were not finished products displayed on the walls, but part of the process of creation, each one vibrating with the reckless energy of on-the-fly inspiration that is distilled into finished work. Adams, an art faculty member at Washington University, mentioned that one of the artists who had contributed to the show was present at the opening and stepped back to let John Jacobsmeyer speak.
Jacobsmeyer, a New York artist, displayed preparatory sketches for woodcut illustrations of the James Dickey poem “Sheep Child.” He spoke animatedly of his motivation, describing his fascination with American Sign Language’s robust vocabulary and complex syntax and his desire to include Sign Language in his illustrations as a storytelling technique. The illustrations 
themselves, richly detailed drawings of Dickey’s tale of a human-animal hybrid, are the mock-ups from which the woodcuts are being made. Jacobsmeyer’s final product will be an eighty-page realization of Dickey’s poem, told in sign language by the characters of the poem.
When Jacobsmeyer had finished his talk I wandered through the show again, this time viewing each work more carefully. What I had previously seen as unpolished now seemed ready for revision, and the arbitrary splashes of color in some now seemed not to be errors but to be suggestions of something to come. Exiting the building, I realized that a purely aesthetic experience is not the intent of private (dis)play. The show is best viewed not as an exhibition of finished products, but as a starting point for understanding the work of some of this country’s most prolific artists. The sketches, mock-ups, and collages that can be seen at COCA are the germs from which full-scale artworks grow, and should be appreciated as pieces of evidence that attest to a dynamic process.
Interested in more? Read additional student reviews on private (dis)play.