Former Senior Art Majors

Iris Alden (no statement available)

Samuel Chasan (no images available)

It’s Time for Me-Time

How long did you work today? Too long. It’s time for a break, exactly what you deserve. And just for you, right here, is the place you need. No down payments, no accruing interest, no height requirement, no late fees or overdraft charges included. Just relaxation, entertainment, and pleasure. Food? There for you. Comfortable seating? There for you. Television? There for you.
Free of charge.
That’s right. For a limited time only - eat, lounge, and watch television to your hearts content. If it’s been a long day and you need some good quiet me-time, escape from your obnoxious boss, your overbearing parents, your needy significant other, your work and your homework, and just relax.
And if it hasn’t been a tough day but rather an awesome day, an amazing day, a mediocre day, a pleasant day, a dreary day or a dandy day, then now it’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy yourself. You‘ve earned it.

It’s Time For Me-Time.

Julia Da Rosa

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait is an exploration of collective humanity and personal identity. It is a study in the point and periphery of individual identity. My intimate friends and family are painted alongside strangers to form a crowd. The faces blur in and out of focus, suspended in an indefinable environment—a blue void—to simulate memories both defined and on the fringe of being forgotten. Each person painted in Self-Portrait has influenced and shaped my identity in one way or another. In a society where individuality is valued above community, this work is a personal reflection of the paradox of human identity; I am an individual whose very being was created in the context and company of others.
Oil paint offers a way to deeply explore a subject because of the time and intimacy the material requires. Self-Portrait is painted with a combination of many thin transparent layers and loose impasto to maintain controlled freedom. The suspended transparent paintings create a physical space reaching beyond the plane of the walls. The viewer becomes a member of the crowd by walking in the space between the canvas and Plexiglas. In this way the viewer becomes integral part of the work.

Lauren Hisada

“Landscape”

              “Landscape” is an exploration of that which governs the mechanisms behind sight and ocular interpretations of substance and depth. Through the deliberate fragmentation of three-dimensional information into two-dimensional planes, an otherwise easily recognizable and comprehensible form is communicated in an alternate mode.
In “Landscape”, the camera becomes an extension of the eye. This is not something foreign to us, as we exist in a time that encourages dependency on technology as a means of delivering accurate and more complete information. To view reality through a lens is its own paradox; on what basis do we determine the worth of a vantage point?
The subconscious refusal or absorption of visual information is both inherently formulaic and subjective. Opinions on that which characterizes an environment will therefore differ on an individual basis. How much information do we absorb before developing (what we believe to be) a complete sense of the spaces we occupy? Is it possible that we are not as well acquainted with our surroundings as we perceive? Also vital to evaluate is the role we play within the spaces with which we interact. The line between separation and amalgamation blurs when occupiers and environment exist in a state of flux.
 
Materials: foam, paper

Katie Higgins

Title: Sister’s Story
Materials: Hand-quilted and embroidered book
Year: 2010
Quilt. Book. Written words. These are all means of conveying a narrative, each one unique, and each one potent with meaning. The combination of these three elements allows for an exploration of the interrelation between image and text in the telling of a story, as well as of the traditions at work in the process and inheritance of storytelling. Quilting appeals to a tradition of recording familial and communal history, relying on particular patterns as a means of indicating different relationships, events, people, and objects. The fabrics used for quilt squares are often taken from worn or used objects holding memories and meaning for the quilt’s maker. As a result, quilts function within a deeply personal narrative that, through its use of pleasing visual patterns and a practical form, speaks beyond its individual history to a universal audience.
The quilt-book draws not only upon this rich history of the quilt, but also upon the format of cloth children’s books. Echoing the soft, brightly colored books geared towards infants and young children, this form speaks both to the process of maturation that stems from childhood and the tangible, hands-on interaction that such books encourage. This, combined with the quilt’s traditional emphasis on the personal narrative, provides a fitting setting through which to explore the loss and disappointment suffered through the shedding of childhood’s shining-eyed skin. Centered around a series of sayings and narratives born of childhood games and mispronunciations, this story plays the images and the text one off of the other, using scraps of cloth indoctrinated with particular personal meanings to compliment the intimacy of the story that accompanies them. The speaking of this whirlwind of whimsy and adage seeks to preserve them – capture them before they fade – and to reflect on the fact that they are already, in some sense, gone, past, irretrievable in their full force and meaning – the meaning of a child.

Mia Huth (no statement available)

Sally Klann

I started a sketchbook in the eighth grade devoted entirely to drawing faces. Contour, depth, line, value. Eyes, ears, mouth, nose. I was striving for the ability to capture some one, some emotion, with my eyes, recreate them with my hands and ultimately give the observer the ability to recognize my rendering as something more than a sketch. The human face has continued to dominate my sketchbooks, paintings, prints, and observations, becoming a tool to organize and compose my ideas into logical, tangible, visual declarations. My concern with others’ ability to recognize themselves gave way to the realization that I was trying to recognize myself in the faces I created, to question why I continually went back to the same subjects, why I used that material, that color, that line. For each face I began to see the persona I adapted when around that individual; the identity I was striving to embody in their presence. This then led me to question whether my identity is the compilation of different characters I play based upon how I think certain categories of people perceive me, or how I judge myself.
I use photographs as initial sketches for my work, using the lens to capture a private observation of a candid moment or requesting the full attention of the subject. The sketch combines with a personal knowledge, opinion and perception of the person or place. Expression, person and pose, meld with color, texture and technique to present both a reaction to, and an interaction with, the people through whose eyes I judge myself.

Warren McDermott (no statement available)

Nanda Maw Lin (no statement available)

Allie Rood

Recurring Dream

Discomfort can dramatically alter one’s sense of self. We can, in fact, locate a definition of ourselves in opposition to what we find revolting. Confronting the abject or what is defined as “other” offers the opportunity to reevaluate unacknowledged relationships between the body and the “other.”

This work explores the grotesque both as a record of human action and in the way it alters human action.
Though often thought of as unclean, it is not specifically lack of cleanliness that causes abjection; rather it is how perceptions of the abject disturb one’s sense of identity, system, and order. Within this environment, the manipulation of space and the use of specific “unclean” materials shift the viewer’s perception and experience of place and self as he or she interacts with the work.

Joanna Swan

"Art is an obsession with life and after all, as we are human beings, our greatest obsession is with ourselves"
-Francis Bacon

I began these paintings on Myspace.com browsing for profile pictures, the only criteria being a) the photo was a representation of the user—a clearly discernible figure—and b) the user had extended their arm, camera in hand, to snap a self-portrait. Painted in oil and acrylic, these figures occupy an imagined psychological space, a reality wallpapered with banner ads and ornate designs inspired by Victorian wallpaper. These aesthetic decisions rose from an interest in online identity, consumer culture, globalization, and reinvention of self through virtual representation.
A phenomenon specific and perhaps central to the age of Internet and social networking is this "Myspace Photo", conspicuous too on LinkedIn, Livejournal, Youtube, eHarmony, Twitter, and Facebook. Extending one's arm and snapping a self-portrait has become as second-nature, to those interested in sharing themselves on the internet, as the traditional family portrait. This gesture, echoed by Myspace's 100-some-million "friends" and their legion of profile pictures blurs the lines between public and private, but also enters and exits the brain without leaving much more than a fleeting twinge of scorn, jealousy, or--in most cases--total apathy.
"In the future everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame," says Warhol. While this impetus for self-reflection, self-promotion, and social affirmation has existed for as long as society itself, technology has done nothing if not enable and arguably capitalize on these very human and very universal traits. Perhaps with late capitalism arrives the human being's self-image as commodity, replicated ad nauseum.
According to painter Arnout Killian, 'Painting is done in a primitive fashion, by hand, and so the images automatically acquire psychological overtones […] because painting has remained this primitive, it has the ability to comment […] Painting can freeze images, in a way other media can't". In referencing the art-historical style of portraiture, and through using this "primitive" medium and painstakingly slow process, I hope to create a dissonance between the paintings and their original online counterparts--relics from the ephemeral Babel of image culture. If nothing else, I invite the viewer to pause and consider the implications of our fast-paced, image-saturated, consumption-based culture and its effects on individual existence and reality, both on- and off-line.

Andrew Witherspoon

Processes in Time

Buying food for dinner, figuring out where your friends will be tonight, keeping up with the most recent news cycle. These are everyday processes whose methods have been fundamentally altered by a growing desire for efficiency and speed.

The rapid development of technology in the fields of communication and mass production has left little time to analyze why these processes have changed and how they are related. A personal narrative presented through text messages can divulge not only monotonous personal minutia, but deeper insight into the communication trends of a larger social group. Information spreads virally through social media at speeds that often eclipses comprehension. The efficiency of mass production has changed how food is produced and distributed, placing the privilege of choice at a premium. Living contemporarily with this futuristic revolution based on efficiency makes it difficult to take a snap shot of the constant movement.

Infographics are designed for this challenge, for freezing a complex motion and allowing the viewer the time and multiple perspectives necessary for contemplation. Typography and graphics unite in clear and concise images to feed the culture of shrinking attention spans. There is no time for understanding, but maybe a second to think.