This month, the Lederer Gallery is hosting the Senior Art Exhibit, showcasing eight senior studio art majors whose hard work and talent is shown as they express their individual perspectives on what art is.
Senior Tim Park's collection, "Reflections," displays a series of architectural pictures of New York City buildings. Park's claim that his "obsession is for perfection" becomes apparent in the angularity and geometric shapes present in his art.
Senior Masaki Bannai collection is entitled "Ki Do Ai Raku." According to his statement, Bannai's artwork "contemplates the nature of human emotions." His pieces are large-scale oil paintings, which convey human faces contorted in emotion in the midst of abstract backgrounds.
In the corner of the exhibit lies one of the more conceptual collections, belonging to senior Carla Staples. In her collection "On Time," she examines how time governs our lives. There are three watercolor and gouache paintings that each toy with the idea of time.
Staples also included a piece titled "Slave to the Clock." This work includes an actual clock with brass chains attached. The ongoing ticking serves to show how the lives of people are "slaves" to time.
On a more traditional note, senior Stacy Barone's collection, "Landscapes of Italy," shows how she "enjoys creating scenes of beauty, tranquility and comfort." These influences are shown in her piece "Secret Garden," an oil painting of a garden gate.
Senior Angela Raczka is also influenced by Italy in her collection "Color in Italy." Raczka takes a different route, however, infusing her pieces with unconventional color and abstraction to represent the emotions she felt while abroad in Italy.
Perhaps the most interesting of all the exhibits is senior Joe Martin's "The Egg Project." Martin used cooked egg as his material of choice and molded them into fetal chickens. In his statement, Martin says that his "intention was to create an ironic dialogue between the material and the subject matter."
Aside from the four pieces that used cooked egg, Martin also used broken eggshells to create a sculpture of a chick. Even though it is made out of such brittle, hard material, he managed to make the piece look fluffy, like a real baby chicken.
The next collection is called "Transformation" by senior Ryoko Mishina, and features a series of pieces "concerned with the transformation of animals into objects." The main piece of the collection is "Vacumgator" and shows an alligator mixed with a vacuum cleaner.
The final and most abstract collection in the exhibit is senior Jonathan Gilroy's "Impulses." In his statement, he says he's most concerned with "conjuring up subconscious into something visible."
The Senior Art Exhibit will be on showing in the Lederer Gallery in Brodie Hall until May 8.