Penn State art students will showcase their work in the School of Visual Arts Undergraduate Juried Exhibition through February 9 at the Zoller Gallery.

The exhibit is a combination of pieces by students throughout the 2005-06 school year.

"It's anything -- the show is very broad," Zoller Gallery Director Will Snyder said. "The limit is three pieces".

Snyder said about 110 students submitted artwork, and Marcia Tucker -- a freelance writer, art critic and lecturer -- juried 40 to 43 pieces. Of the works chosen, six were given awards at the exhibition opening this past Monday. Five $100 awards were given for art supplies and one Kara D. Berggren award of $500 was given.

"My impression when I walked in the gallery for the first time was that it was very good work. It was at a very good level for the most part, so it made it harder to choose," Tucker said.

Tucker lives in Santa Barbara and teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

"People think that you have a set of criteria for critiquing art," said Tucker, who has been critiquing art since 1961. "It's years of thinking about art, looking at art. You never go at it with a set of criteria."

Sean Darby (senior-sculpture) has two works in the exhibit.

"I attached a camcorder to a chimp in a dog carrier, and there's a 35-foot cord that goes with it and it has a docking base that has a TV screen," Darby said. "Someone with the dog carrier can take it around the museum."

Darby's other piece is a bank he created on wheels.

"It has a bipolar looking thing, maybe an ex-war veteran, with an IV bag attached to it, also in a wheel chair that looks like a tank," he said. "And it has a giant phallus so that looks like the cannon on the tank, but that's where you put the money in, the tip of the phallus."

Darby's experience as an art student is reflected in his second sculpture.

"And it's also sort of because I'm an art student and going to be in a lot of debt," he said. "You feel sorry for the piece and I get money, so that's what that piece is about."

Amy Mash (senior-drawing and painting) also submitted multiple works.

"I submitted a large painting; I think it's about 4-by-6 feet that's of a body of a stomach with the hands squeezing the stomach," she said. "And that one I did over the summer. That was when I was working on a lot of body paintings mainly involving squeezing flesh."

Mash said she was interested in the skin as a physical boundary for her untitled oil on canvas.

"It's of a wall that had been painted but sort of, the paint was all chipping and it made this really beautiful pattern," she said. "I'm sort of interested in the textures and how even though it's kind of disgusting it's still really beautiful looking at it out of context."

Ann Schwartz (senior-painting and drawing) has two pieces in the exhibition, one of which is a hard-edge, acrylic painting in which there are mostly 90-degree angles.

Darby said he is looking forward to the public interpreting the artwork.

"It's good to get an outsider's viewpoint," he said. "I think people should come because there are so many different ideas, so many different opinions represented through the work."