By Josh Hughes
Every year the twelve Bachelor of Fine Arts students get a few opportunities to showcase their work at the galleries around campus, culminating in a show at the Western Gallery. But before they can get to that point, the artists get a first chance to display their work that will continue and develop throughout the year. Often centered around themes of emergence, growth, development, this year’s aptly named Germination follows suit. While the exhibition has now ended, the show let gave the audience an introduction into each of the twelve artists’ distinct work and styles, which are sure to expand as the year goes on. In case you missed the exhibit, however, here’s a rundown of half of the students who make up the BFA, along with their work (next week’s issue will feature a spotlight on the other six artists):
Corinne Barber:
Barber’s piece in the exhibit, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”, is a mixed media work that combines collage and oil paint to explore the relationship between rather disparate objects. Divided into four implied rectangles, her work contemplates ideas of disintegration and vulnerability.
“The upper layers of skin have dried and flaked into the air and all that I am is pink, tender, raw,” reads a quote from Anthony Marra, a fiction writer, that Barber selected to accompany the piece. Pink certainly dominates the image, beyond the black and white segments, complete with a human brain inhabiting the bottom right of the image. Faces in the upper right are covered by barren houses, bringing to mind either ideas about exposed emptiness or the guarded nature of self-identity.
Isis Beckwith:
“As an artist, my interest in realism has led to an exploration of painting, photography, ber art and mixed media,” opens Beckwith’s artist statement in the gallery. Her two works, “Pygmy”, a painting, and “Untitled”, a cloth textile, certainly express this versatility— especially since they exist alongside each other.
“Pygmy” is a sparing acrylic painting that centers on a pygmy owl resting on top a prickly pear cactus. The background shows a full moon against the pitch black sky. Layered atop the whole painting is a thin-lined geometric design, lifting the piece beyond imaginable reality. A quietly introspective scene, the owl stares slightly beyond the viewer, and the elegantly curved cactus wraps just over the bird’s head.
“Untitled”, on the other spectrum, lays woven cotton rope under a piece of drift wood, recalling Sheila Klein’s hanging textile currently in the Western Gallery. Dangling almost like jewelry, the woven artwork evokes a perpetual sense of fragility.
Corinne Barber:
Barber’s piece in the exhibit, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”, is a mixed media work that combines collage and oil paint to explore the relationship between rather disparate objects. Divided into four implied rectangles, her work contemplates ideas of disintegration and vulnerability.
“The upper layers of skin have dried and flaked into the air and all that I am is pink, tender, raw,” reads a quote from Anthony Marra, a fiction writer, that Barber selected to accompany the piece. Pink certainly dominates the image, beyond the black and white segments, complete with a human brain inhabiting the bottom right of the image. Faces in the upper right are covered by barren houses, bringing to mind either ideas about exposed emptiness or the guarded nature of self-identity.
Isis Beckwith:
“As an artist, my interest in realism has led to an exploration of painting, photography, ber art and mixed media,” opens Beckwith’s artist statement in the gallery. Her two works, “Pygmy”, a painting, and “Untitled”, a cloth textile, certainly express this versatility— especially since they exist alongside each other.
“Pygmy” is a sparing acrylic painting that centers on a pygmy owl resting on top a prickly pear cactus. The background shows a full moon against the pitch black sky. Layered atop the whole painting is a thin-lined geometric design, lifting the piece beyond imaginable reality. A quietly introspective scene, the owl stares slightly beyond the viewer, and the elegantly curved cactus wraps just over the bird’s head.
“Untitled”, on the other spectrum, lays woven cotton rope under a piece of drift wood, recalling Sheila Klein’s hanging textile currently in the Western Gallery. Dangling almost like jewelry, the woven artwork evokes a perpetual sense of fragility.
Anastasia DeVol:
DeVol’s triptych for the gallery, “It’s Only in the Autumn … at I Can Take Breaths … at Make Me Want to Take More Breaths” displays in three succinct images the universality of human experiences and the spectrum of familial and historical relationships. A layering of copper intaglio prints, the three images portray a similar event that DeVol’s family has experienced time and time again: campside conversation in the glow of Autumn leaves.
Her inspiration lies in photography, taking and appropriating three nearly identical photos of her mother and grandmother, herself and her cousins and brother to showcase a familial lineage. The resulting images give off an immediate feeling of warmth that speak to the culminating effect of similar events.
“In layering these images in a palette evocative of the CMYK color mode I am referencing the fact that these past events all come together to create a full spectrum for the life and experiences of me and my family,” says DeVol of her work.
Austin Herman
Herman’s “Untitled” and “No Need For You To Come With Me” present, in the form of copper etchings, the unsatisfying nostalgia of final interactions. He addresses the idea that (usually) it’s impossible to know the last interaction any given person will have with another person, and his two works in Germination take this idea and make a physical sensation out of it in the form of layered printing.
“This work allowed me to give that influence away to an artifact that takes form through texture and symbolic imagery etched into copper,” says Herman, giving meaning to the erratic, delicately off-kilter nature of his work. The images themselves appear to exist in a disillusioned state where humanesque gures stand in the abyss amidst strange geometry. “No Need For You To Come With Me” especially achieves an effect of sensational incompleteness through a series of three of the same images that slightly differ in their layering. The center of the triptych appears the most layered and spastic, bringing to mind the insatiable closure of two people meeting and parting for the last time.
DeVol’s triptych for the gallery, “It’s Only in the Autumn … at I Can Take Breaths … at Make Me Want to Take More Breaths” displays in three succinct images the universality of human experiences and the spectrum of familial and historical relationships. A layering of copper intaglio prints, the three images portray a similar event that DeVol’s family has experienced time and time again: campside conversation in the glow of Autumn leaves.
Her inspiration lies in photography, taking and appropriating three nearly identical photos of her mother and grandmother, herself and her cousins and brother to showcase a familial lineage. The resulting images give off an immediate feeling of warmth that speak to the culminating effect of similar events.
“In layering these images in a palette evocative of the CMYK color mode I am referencing the fact that these past events all come together to create a full spectrum for the life and experiences of me and my family,” says DeVol of her work.
Austin Herman
Herman’s “Untitled” and “No Need For You To Come With Me” present, in the form of copper etchings, the unsatisfying nostalgia of final interactions. He addresses the idea that (usually) it’s impossible to know the last interaction any given person will have with another person, and his two works in Germination take this idea and make a physical sensation out of it in the form of layered printing.
“This work allowed me to give that influence away to an artifact that takes form through texture and symbolic imagery etched into copper,” says Herman, giving meaning to the erratic, delicately off-kilter nature of his work. The images themselves appear to exist in a disillusioned state where humanesque gures stand in the abyss amidst strange geometry. “No Need For You To Come With Me” especially achieves an effect of sensational incompleteness through a series of three of the same images that slightly differ in their layering. The center of the triptych appears the most layered and spastic, bringing to mind the insatiable closure of two people meeting and parting for the last time.
Katie Howard
Howard’s “Skin” is an examination of the imperfections of body through close up paintings that obscure specificity. The piece, which is comprised of sixteen different mini canvasses that fit together as a square, abstracts the skin of the human body to boil it down to its most necessary and unique components. Belly buttons, birthmarks, stretch marks and veins appear in otherwise nondescript fields of skin.
“I want the viewer to realize their relationship with their own imperfections upon seeing my work,” reads Howard’s artist statement, speaking to ideas about what perceived body imperfections are and trying to invert them. The uniqueness of human body plays the central role in Howard’s work, and her vignettes of close up skin allow the viewer to hold up a mirror to their own image and physical attributes. Howard says that she intends to explore body interactions throughout the rest of her BFA.
Abigail Kuchar
Fresh off of her own exhibit at the B Gallery on campus, Kuchar explores ideas about organic repetition and the complex interactions and networks of extremely small spaces. After having interned as an artist at the Shannon Point Marine Center, her work deals with formations of barnacles, anemones, pollen, lichen, bubbles.
Howard’s “Skin” is an examination of the imperfections of body through close up paintings that obscure specificity. The piece, which is comprised of sixteen different mini canvasses that fit together as a square, abstracts the skin of the human body to boil it down to its most necessary and unique components. Belly buttons, birthmarks, stretch marks and veins appear in otherwise nondescript fields of skin.
“I want the viewer to realize their relationship with their own imperfections upon seeing my work,” reads Howard’s artist statement, speaking to ideas about what perceived body imperfections are and trying to invert them. The uniqueness of human body plays the central role in Howard’s work, and her vignettes of close up skin allow the viewer to hold up a mirror to their own image and physical attributes. Howard says that she intends to explore body interactions throughout the rest of her BFA.
Abigail Kuchar
Fresh off of her own exhibit at the B Gallery on campus, Kuchar explores ideas about organic repetition and the complex interactions and networks of extremely small spaces. After having interned as an artist at the Shannon Point Marine Center, her work deals with formations of barnacles, anemones, pollen, lichen, bubbles.
“Rather than painting a vast open landscape, I’d much rather highlight the beauty of the dark dampness under a leaf, or the negative space between the alien-like forms of lichen,” reads her artist statement within the gallery. Her piece in the exhibit, “Horror Vacui”, comes from the Latin word that means “fear of empty spaces”, and this shows in her intricate painting of clustered barnacles, bubbles maybe. The formations of the lifeforms she prefers painting ultimately create similar patterns, giving o a sense of vague familiarity—spaces that don’t leave any negative space. Kuchar intends this to symbolize broader issues of ecological change and fear of abandoned ecosystems. This microcosm for a fear of emptiness extends to humans, specifically those in danger of leaving their homes and communities due to climate change.