Athough leaner and more streamlined than previous exhibitions, the 21st annual juried student exhibition in the Main gallery of the Art building is bursting with the idiosyncratic visions of UTSA's art students. Last April's show featured 56 pieces while this year only 44 pieces were exhibited.

"There is a very high quality of work this year because more work was submitted than ever," Student Art Guild President, Larry Crist, said. "The works were narrowed down to fewer than ever, bringing the standard way up." Graduate and undergraduate art students submitted 226 entries, compared to 193 last spring.

The Student Art Guild and the UTSA department of Art and Art History sponsors the exhibition held at the 1604 campus in the spring, and the Student Art Guild sponsor the exhibition at the Blue Star Art Center in the fall.

Awards were announced at the opening on Thursday, as were the winners of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts research conference.

Taking a cue from the fall exhibition, the floor of the Main Art gallery in the Art building is crowded with sculptures.

Large, dangerous looking pieces such as Eileen Woolfey's "Driftwood," a welded metal form that evokes a shattered helix and balance of buoyancy and weight. Jimmy Kuehnle's "Danger Bike II" is a twisted amalgamation of fenders, spokes and wheels that invites questions about the sanity of its rider or whether it can be ridden at all.

Riley Robinson, ArtPace studio director and local artist, juried the exhibition. "I focused on things that had wide appeal, and I had a wide focus," Robinson said. "I can read what the assignment was in the [student's] piece. If I saw they went beyond that, that's what caught my eye."

Robinson earned a Master's of Fine Art degree in sculpture at UTSA in 1994. He said he enjoyed jurying the UTSA exhibition because it allowed him to see the synthesis of idea and image and to make selections based on finished artworks.

The title of this year's exhibit, "Resolutions," reflects that idea. Students' works resolve various aesthetic problems and, at least tentatively, social issues.

Laurel Gibson's "Relics" took best of show and in the COLFA research conference, her piece took first place in the graduate category.

Gibson, a student, worked with Egyptian plaster, a self-glazing clay used by ancient Egyptians, to create a set of hand grenades.

Because of the delicate nature of the medium they look like decaying relics. "These recall a time when there is no war, and these are from the afterglow," Gibson said.

Gibson chose hand grenades to represent our civilization because "war is prevalent in our civilization. You read about it every day," she said.

Senior Jimmy Saito's piece, "Fish Tank," a plexi-glass fish tank filled with water and gold fish, also evokes war, but Saito is less interested in social commentary. "I just thought of the play on word, 'Fish Tank,'" he said. "I like goofy art."

Other pieces are more personal and contemplative. Junior Daniel Morgan's "Heart Diptych," which took first place in the undergraduate print making category, consists of an inked woodblock hanging adjacent to a print pulled from the block depicting a human heart. "I wanted this to be about the process of making it; you can see where the wood is carved out of the block," Morgan said. "You don't see the hand of the artist in the print, but you do in the block."

Morgan made the paper for his print from personal letters, sketches, dried leaves and shaving from the wood block. "It is biographical in the material it is made from but not necessarily the content," he said.

Junior Rex Hausmann referred to the bible for inspiration. His piece "Judas" is part of a larger project entitled "D' Antoni: The Fusion of Art and Music," which he is creating with his brother, who plays piano.

Eric Hausmann's sparse, lucid piano playing complements Hausmann's violent, heavily textured painting. "At one point this was so wet I had to put [the paint] on with my fingers to get it to grip," Rex said.

The painting is part of a series which focuses on the 12 apostles. The piece moves from the top right to the bottom right; the beginning of Judas' life to his betrayal of Jesus, he explained.

Other works include photographs, drawings and videos. Styles vary from traditional to contemporary and experimental, reflecting the diversity and talent of UTSA's art students.

The exhibition will be on display until May 6. The gallery is open from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Monday- Friday and from 2:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. on Sunday.