“Salon de Refuses.” It sounds royal at best, fancy at least.

The name, which is in spirit of the Salon de Refuses of mid-1800s Paris, is actually the title of an exhibition coordinated by students whose artwork was not accepted into the annual student art exhibition.

My first impression of the lively exhibit was that it was full of color. The artwork was displayed Friday evening in the Humanities Building Room 102.

The artwork in the room was “ethnic.” I hate using the word because it sounds politically correct but that was the first word that I thought of when I saw the room.

Stan Holder’s artwork was featured in the show. His artwork is what can be described as pop collage. A few of his pieces are made up of colorful backgrounds with historical figures pasted on top.

One of my favorite pieces is by Holder. The backdrop is what looks like the African safari at midnight with African tribesman and animals pasted on top. The piece is colorful and bright.

The thing that I like the most about this piece is that it reminds me of the Lion King. Maybe it’s the colors or maybe it’s the beginning song of the movie that sounds automatically in my head just by looking at it, but something about it brings me right back to my childhood. This piece made me feel something.

My other favorite piece was a piece titled ‘Goddess of death” drawn by Leo Casso. The artwork is a deep green for the backdrop and gold for the subject. The subject is what looks to be a hindu goddess or another deity from another religion, sitting criss-cross on the ground.

I liked this piece so much because it also reminded me of my grandmother’s house. Not the deity necessarily, but the colors and stillness of the painting. There’s also something simply beautiful about it that made me just stand and stare at it for a while.

My third favorite piece was a sculpture. It was a wooden boat, barely held together by a metal road. The edges looked burned and the piece itself gave the impression that it was falling apart. While looking at it, I began to think of Noah’s Ark and how it must have looked. And I imagine, if it was real, that it looked something like this after 30 years of sitting in the sun, waiting to be used again.

There were many other pieces of artwork that in my opinion, deserved to be in the upstairs gallery. This isn’t to say that any of the artwork in the gallery didn’t deserve to be there, but rather that a majority, if not all the artwork in the reject exhibition could have been curated there as well.

Sometimes, people miss the point that just because a piece of art doesn’t look like it would belong in a gallery, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t.

The whole purpose of “Salon de Refuses” is to display the talent and skill of other artists, to show that their work is still important and valuable.

“Salon de Refuses” is an exhibition of rejects. But who said rejects are bad?