Brandon Santiago, Student Work

Finding My Way

Paper, Fabric, Charcoal, Paint, Rope, Wood

Installed on the wall

3' x 5.5' x 2"

In Process:

 

Kariel Rivera, Student Work

Resilience

Digital drawings, printed, stitched with thread

30" x 26"

 

Statement:

My work explores the interplay between memory, healing, and identity through the lens of fragmentation and repair. I aim to communicate the beauty and complexity of healing, showing how fragmented experiences can unite into something uniquely profound and cohesive. This work invites viewers to reflect on their own journeys of breaking and rebuilding, where chaos and resilience coexist.

The drawing, Resilience, is a compilation of drawings that reflect a loneliness and isolation. The scribble marks are suggestive of anxiety and the turmoil of an unsettled mind. Many copies are torn apart and put back together again through the act of sewing, a sense of mending. The chaotic arrangement of sewn pieces, placed randomly and sometimes overlapping, mirrors the disorder of an anxious mind while embodying the act of repair and reassembly. The result is a piece that feels torn from a larger, unseen whole, reinforcing themes of disruption and transformation.

  

In Process:

Screen Shot of the digital drawings. 

One of the many arrangements. 20" x 18"

Reflection/Notes:

I was inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. I am drawn to its symbolic resonance with the way painful memories can become integral to our growth and self-understanding. Kintsugi embodies the idea that the process of repair can create something more beautiful and meaningful than the original.

In the beginning, I planned to experiment with ceramic resin, painting, and physically breaking pieces to reassemble them. However, this approach felt detached from my personal experience. Shifting mediums allowed me to preserve the essence of fragmentation and reconstruction while expressing something more personal and emotional.

The project evolved further through an act of literal fragmentation. I printed multiple copies of these illustrations in varying sizes, tearing them apart and sewing them back together. Some reconstructed pieces combine fragments from different color schemes, creating new compositions. 

 

Cynthia Rountree, Student Work

Example of final drawing for Transformation Drawing Assignment. 

46" x 36"

Paint and tape on paper. 

Cynthia Rountree, Student Work

Christian Ard, Student Work

Assignment: Multiple Panel

Tri Tri

Dimensions: Blue 20" x 17". Pink 21.5" x 16.6". Green 27" x 17"

Materials: Wood, Paint, Nails, Yarn

This piece was inspired by a personal collection of stones (see image below). I am attracted to the individual qualities of each stone and how several stones form relationships to one another with regard to space, color and texture. The sculptural aspects of the piece interprets the three-dimensional qualities of layers and density. The work is reminiscent of mapping while alluding to elements of geography found in the natural world. 

(labradorite, pink quartz, labradorite)

Christian Ard, Student Work

1st Transformation is an original drawing on large sheet of white paper. 

2nd Transformation

3rd Transformation

Missing image for 4th Transformation

5th Transformation

Coupled Beings

Dimensions: Approx. 4" x 4" & 4" x 6.6"

Materials: Black Plasti Dip, Gouche, soft pastels, tape

The transformation drawing began with a tonal drawing on a large sheet of paper and ended with a sculptural piece. Coupled Beings explores duality. Compressed in a book press to get the final shape, all previous marks and materials are still within the inside of the folded pieces. I chose to focus on duality because of the process of this project. Being someone who pays a lot of attention to detail and seems to be fairly picky over smears and smudges, through the process of this project I was able to experiment and understand more of a loose/no expectation side of creating that has allowed me to express myself more clearly.

Olivia Clemons, Student Work

Each of these eraser drawings centers around the idea of time, incorporating erasing as a concept of time. The work "Time, Paper, Tree" plays with the irony of drawing a tree on paper as an earlier reflection of the paper itself. "Time in the Living Room", is my living room over time, drawing in my roommates erasing them, drawing in and erasing the movements of the dog and the coffee table. This work made me reconsider the idea of a drawing which previously seemed to capture a single moment. Yet, in reality most drawings from life are a reflection of the multiple hours in which they were created.While drawing "The End" I was thinking about death in the context of time, not being the end.For the piece "Under a Tree", I would draw the shadows of the branches once an hour over the course of several hours letting the shadows illustrate time.      

Olivia Clemons, Student Work

"Individuals in a Crowd", Oil Paint on Paper, Each portrait is approximately 8"x5".

 This drawing collection centers around the importance and value of every individual.  When observing groups and crowds of people, individuals are often dehumanized and perceived as the "other". The individual's humanity is often diminished by generalizations and cultural perceptions; they become unseen and unnoticed. Within this piece I worked to impress upon the viewer the importance of each person by highlighting the unnoticed people in the background of my own life. Each portrait in the collection is a person in the background of my own photographs, which is integral to the work because these are people I have seen yet not noticed. 

Olivia Clemons, Student Work

1st

Charcoal and Gesso

42" x 36"

2nd

Charcoal and Gesso

46" x 36"

3rd

Charcoal and Gesso

46" x 36"

4th

Charcoal and Gesso

23" x 72"

5th

Sculpture approx. 14" tall

Drawing on wall 36" x 18"

While creating the transformation drawings I was contemplating the transformation of the landscape. Each transformation attempts to create space and depth in the landscape through light. The materiality of the charcoal and gesso is expressed in the contrast of light and dark and it's expression in different landscapes.  

Jake Carlson, Student Work

November 22nd, 1960
TV's, laptop, screen prints, table, flag.
Approx. 6 feet tall, 2.5 feet wide

 I have always been obsessed with the JFK assasination, so I wanted to commemorate it while using aspects of life in 2015, like overboard media coverage on every device possible. I created a stack of media related objects. I printed Kennedy's face as a pattern. I used a mirror like surface on the screens, which has significance to the overall event. Whenever I talk to people who were alive during this time, they always say it was a time of reflection. To look at yourself in the mirror and actually question what is going on, rather than soaking the information up like a sponge. 

Jake Carlson, Student Work

"TRUMPED"

Regardless of who you are, your political values or moral beliefs, you have to admit that Donald Trump is using discrimination, power, and fear to make a run for this 2016 election. This project pokes fun at a political candidate to depict a broken America. Before the industrial revolution, silver spoons were signs of extreme wealth and elegance, thus spawning the saying, "Born with a silver spoon in his mouth".  This is the ideology I wanted to evoke with this piece. These are photo transfers on spoons, hung up on divided flag where the stripes are intentionally not matching up. We are at a time when the 1% owns the majority the money in this country. We are experiencing racial acts of terrorism between citizens. I don't believe it is beneficial for a big business mogul, who supports shutting certain races out of our country, should occupy the White House. 

Jake Carlson, Student Work

"Documenting Injustice"

I chose seven victims of Police Brutality and/or the United States Justice System. They range from being shot 16 times by a police officer, to the Supreme Court taking away their First Amendment right. My goal for this project was to get this information public as much as possible. So I made them into flyers and placed them around campus and throughout the city. These are all the outlines of the actual victim's faces, while the barcodes symbolize that they are not individuals, just another object off the shelf.

Jake Carlson, Student Work

"I Refuse The Right To Be Silent"

The newspaper symbolizes the media. I created black silhouettes/cut outs of police officers. The faces are left blank to suggest that anyone can make poor decisions when put in a position of power. This piece is intended to communicate emotions that are graphic, controversial and powerful.

5' x 3'

Multiple Panel Assignment

Jessie Reulbach, Student Work

Poor quality images do not show the success of this piece. 

Assignment: Multiple Panel

Materials are paper, clear plastic bags, drawings on paper. 

3' x 6'

Installed on the wall

Lea Scarangella, Student Work

Controlling the Uncontrollable

Photo paper, tracing paper, drawing paper, paint, natural dyes, flowers

3' x 5'

Artist Statement:

A lot of my work involves destruction so I decided to burn the edges of each piece in order to create interesting negative spaces between drawings. A theme in some of my work is the idea of controlling the uncontrollable. Most of the materials I used are natural and the processes are ones that happen and are difficult to control precisely. I feel as though this a commentary on my childhood as well, trying to control things around me even though they were spiraling out of control.