Senior art majors show distinctive styles in final student show
The Connecticut College Department of Art presents “fragment & process,” an exhibition of works created by art majors in the Class of 2015, on display May 1-17 in the galleries of Cummings Arts Center.
The artworks vary in both medium and concept. In a community-based quilt project, delicate porcelain sculpture, photography, conceptual art, video installation and interactive art, the artists explore multifaceted ideas such as relationships, transformations and perceptions, past and present realities.
The senior art majors whose work is featured in the exhibition include AnnaLeah Cogan, Jefferson Deng, Colin Forsyth, Jennifer Jackson, Esther Mehesz, Eavey Newton, Caeli Smith, Avery Whitlock and Olivia Wilcox.
Jackson’s contributions to the exhibition include the collective mural she created with help from students at Clark Lane Middle School in Waterford. She distributed art supplies and fabric pieces in four workshops she conducted to guide the students, who decorated the fabric based on the directive to “imagine your future.” Jackson sewed the fabric pieces together to create the textile mural, which will be installed at Clark Lane after the exhibition at the College.
“The students were all excited to participate,” said Jackson. “Many of them had not been asked how they imagine their future beyond being asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Weaving together all of their ideas of the future felt symbolic and optimistic.”
“The work of these young artists does not fall into neat categories; it exhibits instead the kind of porous boundaries one sees when many and diverse ideas come together in a creative mind,” said Associate Professor of Art Ted Hendrickson of the Connecticut College art majors. “They are curious, unafraid to question and test boundaries. Not one has produced art like their teachers. They have not emulated a style; they have been influenced by the process of artistic inquiry to produce their own distinctive, engaging work, the product of logic, emotion, intuition, craftsmanship and creative leaps of faith."
The student artists will be available to discuss their work at the opening reception on Friday, May 1, from 5-7 p.m. The art major departmental awards will be presented at 6 p.m.
The exhibition is free and open to the public, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, contact the art department at 860-439-2740.
April 29, 2015