senior thesis exhibition 2021

 Helen Dolan

In my work, I combine the image of the perfect, innocuous skinny girl with disruptive slapstick set in a Twilight Zone episode. Utilizing video, sculpture, and sound my works create a pastel paradise with hazy undertones of societal critique, paranoia, and anxiety. My work is informed by my ongoing research into inequity in the art world and art history texts, striving to create more inclusivity through education. I deploy the Barbie aesthetic to create a narrative that revolves around the dream dollhouse, playing with dolls, and scale. By creating private, intimate spaces, such as bedrooms and bathrooms, I showcase the power of quiet vulnerability. My works provide snapshots of solitary, intimate moments most often hidden from public view, highlighting the melancholy enjoyment of solitude. Viewers watch as the prim and proper facade falls, deepening the sense of loneliness as the character unravels--and finally takes ownership of that unraveling. In conjunction with using traditional female materials and labor practices of textiles and fabrics, I also integrate the matriarchal figure of “Grandma,” creating a dialogue of fibers and their comforts and discomforts. I want my viewers to find out that the perfect pastel-swathed girl isn’t so perfect after all and is just an artifact of a 1950’s time capsule.

 Sophie Donahue

My materials and process drive my work by allowing me to transform my view of the natural world, more full of patterns and isolated shapes than one truly sees in nature, into the tangible product of my prints and drawings. I love the complexities of pattern, tone, and shape that I’m able to draw out of the element of water in so many different ways. Capturing photographs of water in various places: my bath at home, the Mississippi River in the change of seasons from fall to winter, ice on the sunroof of my car, and other similar images, has allowed me to build a base library of references to work from. My larger charcoal drawings were inspired by a singular image, while my prints incorporate several, as well as newly developed shapes from the drawings themselves. Each layer builds upon the next, as each new creation becomes a more complex mix of ideas and overlap. The natural world amazes me in how much detail we take for granted everyday, with my work I bring attention to these small yet beautiful instances around us in our daily lives. Memory and imagination also play a part in my work, as they inspire new lines and shapes to occur where perhaps they hadn’t in real life at that exact moment, though added they make a more beautiful arrangement and completed idea. Within my work the viewer may find a range of emotions, perhaps even that reveal forgotten memories of their past.

The macro and micro scale both fascinate me, and I use this change of perspective in order to fragment my own imagery down to the tiniest details, or on the other hand enlarge and make figurative pieces more abstracted. I have begun taking bits and pieces of my own photos and combining, adding, subtracting, or changing them in some way to make a new composition completely. I enjoy creating larger works than I previously have because in them I find the freedom to be looser and less restricted in my mark making. When making a larger drawing I begin by laying out the entire piece by shape and values, then adding detail and bringing certain parts into focus, while erasing or blending others away into something more obscured. When translating these later to prints I take separate shapes, lines, and tones and arrange them into yet another new configuration once more. Through using multiple matrices in many different arrangements, I am able to bring out different compositions, that surprise and many times work even better than my formerly planned idea. With the process of printmaking, specifically drypoint and spit-biting, I have been able to explore the surface in a combined style of both small details and painterly, loose forms that together create a similar mood to that of my original photographs.

 Elsie Gray

My work is informed by the debilitating effects that eating disorders have on the body and mind. Through my own lived experience, I create unnerving images of eerie and horrific distortions of the body. My work draws attention to eating disorders and how these disorders emaciated the body and mind. Using materials such as steel, wire, wood and melted trash bags to illustrate the internal/physicalities of body dysmorphia. Bombarded by the visual culture of papery thin models and actresses, society has equated thinness with success. In my work I tackle ideas of female beauty standards and the fatal quest of thinness. I create confrontational pieces forcing the viewer to interact and watch as work withers away in front of them.

Luis Alvarez 

My subject matter is widely influenced by myths from ancient cultures like the Greeks, Aztecs, Mayans, Asian folktales. Or anything that gives off magical vibes, I’m here for it. While pulling inspiration from biodiversity and combining it with street art, pop culture, and religious aspects. I draw inspiration from all around me and mix and match with other aspects of life, often bringing it back to my roots or rural Chiapas, MX. Where I grew up surrounded by luscious green jungles, seeing nature as a beautiful part of my life. I want to show that part of me, whenever I think of home/jungle is when I am the happiest. The work itself is often between forms and materials, between two dimensional and three dimensional, the work is in a liminal state of otherness. The work invokes self-awareness to the viewers while challenging the viewer's perception of the world we live in today. Make them think about how they relate to it and how they understand it while perceiving the artwork with their views and morals.

With my ongoing work, I am making a multi-media sculpture. In which it takes the form of a reliquary. Taking on the body of a man with muscular features that of a Mesoamerican warrior. With functional doors in his abdomen area and the belly button being the way of opening it up. Giving off a sensual feeling as you touch down its abs and reach into it. Making the belly button a portal, within it revealing a painting inspired by the Mesoamericans. Going from a physical state into the spiritual realm. The painting within the doors is a jaguar coming out of a maiz (corn) lined with red fabric.

This piece is infused with great meaning towards life, honoring it the way the Mesoamericans did. The jaguar is one of their deities and the only one that could cross between realms. Making it a protector of the living and guiding the soul of the dead in the afterlife. The maiz is a very important element with this piece. A gift from the gods, a way to support life. Still used throughout Latin America as a sustainable part of our culinary experience. Making it the most versatile ingredient used for tamales, tortillas, pozole, flour, and more uses.

In most of my works I try to highlight the importance of life, and how sometimes we take it for granted. Life is a gift and we should take advantage of it. Even though my people have survived many hardships throughout time. I’m honoring my ancestors through my art pieces. Bringing them to the front and shining a light on their beliefs, which are still alive within our culture. To never forget when I come from.