Briana Berninghaus

This body of work is a formal exploration of technique and break down that focuses on the study of horse statues. I use charcoal, ink, acrylic and oil paint, brushes and paper towels to render the images on paper. These materials are forgiving and allow me to work with my hands and other objects to allow for layering, texture and varying line quality. The process is gestural and shows the history of adding and subtracting while searching for form. My palette keeps to natural tones to reflect nature.

This work was inspired by the artist Jean-Louis Sauvat, who found enjoyment in studying the movements of horses. His sketch-like style and loose brush strokes inspired me to loosen up my style and become less depictive and create a simpler, more gestural image of the horse. This work captures the horse’s beauty and movements more objectively rather than being picturesque. Horses have always been in my life, thus allowing me to see the art in their movements and features.

 

Margaret Coyne

My work is an exploration of self portraiture through abstraction and deconstruction of the figure, using printmaking and sculpture. ​The impetus for the abstracted portraits comes from a need to recreate a sense of nostalgia and remembering the past in a skewed way.​ In this longing for a time that never existed and search for something that never was, the duplicity of memory has become apparent, leaving a sense of self doubt. I explore that conflict through these pieces, using each to explore a different perception of the same experiences.

I approach my work process with spontaneity to reflect the emotion in my subjects. My work with printmaking is focused on carving freely, allowing the wood to have a hand. I try to find a balance between proportion and distortion, focusing on the lines and form of the face, while warping features and adding textures. My sculpture is driven by the material as well, focusing on bright colors and mixed textures, combining representational imagery with the abstract. Through this process of sculpture and printmaking, I attempt to reconstruct a “whole” figure using disparate parts of my inner self. This abstraction of portraiture allows my work to show the confusion that comes with this inconsistency of memory.

 

Madaline Haney

This collection of work is mainly focused on printmaking, but also includes my newfound love for bookbinding and sewing. As a plus size non-binary person it never felt like clothing companies were ever considering someone like me when they made a new line. And after years of never being able to find clothes made for my body type I decided I wanted to create my own clothing. I began teaching myself how to sew this past summer and fell in love with it. I was able to create something made for me and only me, a way to give back to myself. Every single article of clothing is either coming straight from my closet or machine sewn by me. 

My work has commonly consisted of traditional woodcut reliefs with themes of social justice. I wanted to shift my creativity and focus on myself. With this new body of work I have either sewn together or altered articles of clothing with the inclusion of custom printed patterns. I am using a mixture of older prints as well as incorporating new prints for this as a way to recreate some of my favorite pieces of work. Each design is hand carved and printed in relief; a method where carved material creates a raised image where the surface of the block will be inked. Although relief printing can be accomplished with many materials, I use linoleum and shina wood as my primary base for printing. Bookbinding is a more recent art form that I have learned. The style used here is a pamphlet sewn book, with a cover designed in a French Door style. The images are made by linoleum relief prints and the book is hand-bound; sewn, glued and pressed.

 

Mary Kippley

My mother was born and raised in Vietnam, though, as a mixed woman, that’s not apparent to the average bystander. Despite knowing this, I was oddly disheartened when I had to explain this heritage to my classmates in a recent creative writing class. Shortly after, it struck me that, though my childhood home could be defined as Vietnamese-white Catholic, physiognomically, I was a light-skinned black woman. The story my physical features told others did not necessarily reflect the story I held within me.

It is this revelation that drives these prints. Within them, I investigate the practice of using the body as a shorthand for the identity and experiences of the individual, mainly through scrutinizing my own self. Through a series of disjointed self-portraits, I attempt to exemplify the fragmentation that comes with viewing oneself as a series of disparate elements rather than a whole person, as well as invite questioning of a culture whose racial categorization and separation leads to this worldview. It is mainly this exploration of perimeter as well as the ‘whole vs the sum of its parts’ concept that I experiment with, both within the play of line vs value in my aquatints and within the comic-inspired panels of my reliefs prints. Through this visualization of plurality that I reclaim my right to be Black, White, ​and​ Asian, regardless of any racial standards I’ve internalized.

 

Erin Smothers

This story is about identity. It is a coming of age narrative following a cyborg as she searches for her place in a binary world. Is she human or is she a machine? Is she capable of love and emotions? To display this inner turmoil, I have utilized media indicators: when she feels more robotic, the medium is digitally rendered, and when she feels more human, the images are hand-printed. In this body of work, I wanted to emphasize color and the relationship between digital and traditional art. I was drawn to pixel art because it obscures images. The characters, as a result, are ambiguous, so the story can apply to a wide range of audiences and become whatever they need it to become. In terms of the process, I chose to stamp each individual pixel by hand in the ‘human’ pieces, not only to show the care and dedication that I felt towards this series, but also to highlight the mistakes that come with being human. As I am a Studio Art major and a Digital Media Arts minor, this intersection between media is especially interesting to explore, both from a personal standpoint and a storytelling perspective.

This series is of great personal importance to me, as it is also a way for me to showcase my love to my soulmate, Cate. We’ve worked through this entire process together from creation; I made the art and gave a general plot line, and with it, she wrote an intricate and emotional novel. As the characters in our works discover their own idea of what it means to love, especially within a lesbian relationship, so too do Cate and I relive the significant moments of our time together.

 

Kate Toriseva

As someone strongly connected to my family history, interacting with history through my work has felt only natural. Turning towards tradition and the history in art felt equally as natural. As an artist, a farmer, and a lover of history, working off of a historical artist who represented the love of land and technical artistic skill was important. The artist I chose, John Constable, represents a tradition of the romanticisation of land while being technically skilled, and as a result, my work has become a sort of “conversation” between me and him, as I analyze and reinterpret his skills and subject matters.

Studying Constable's work and rephrasing it through my own work has created a back and forth between historical tradition and modern art and I aim to highlight. Through my process I am studying Constable’s work, and summarizing it through highlighting the strength of his work, leaving a commentary on his pieces. In this process, I have tried to engage in the contrast between myself and Constable, embracing the medium of high art: oil paint, in an acknowledgement of Constable as a part of artistic canon, while representing myself through the use of cheap and humble canvases such as cardboard.​ ​This mixture of elements, both the medium and the content, become a bridging of past and present, and solidifies the dichotomy of my conversation with Constable.

 

Rachel Weelborg

I am interested in the exploration of line in my work. I feel that the presence of line within a piece creates excitement and movement, while the quality of that line can create the character and feeling of a place, object, or being. In my pieces I used gouache, pencil, and marker — my aim was to keep the feeling and movement of the initial pencil sketch of the piece while using paint over it. I am drawn to artists’ sketches because of the looseness and thought that is present within them, and I wanted to keep that alive within my own work. I find that I am sometimes too careful when using paint, so I wanted to give myself permission to be carefree with the gouache in order to create movement and looseness within the pieces. In my pieces, I referenced photos of my family’s barn while it was being constructed. During this phase of construction there were many exposed beams and structural elements, and with that I felt that there was an opportunity for me to play with the structure and lines of the space.

 

Sydney Yozamp

My artwork reflects the great appreciation I have for people and their beauty. I focus on realistic portraiture, but with a twist of abstract elements and how those concepts can combine and communicate with each other. I will often combine the illustration of a subject with different ways in which I can manipulate the medium of choice. I strive to create a unique and colorful piece that inspires viewers to think more about the portrait, and find ways to better understand not only the subject in the piece, but the artist behind it as well. I want to create a deeper connection between people and art, which I do through a large variety of artistic techniques, including the use of bright, bold movements contrasted with the smaller, more precise details I enjoy capturing in my subjects the most. In more recent years I've been captivated by color theory and how colors interact with one another. I aspire to show my processes and experimentations in effort to learn more and understand how color can completely change and development my work. As I continue this process in painting, I am also starting to incorporate other mediums in my portraits, and I hope to further grow as an artist and expand into new horizons outside of portraits in the future.