Out Of Place & Empathy Towards the Natural World Exhibition Interviews

By Naomi Hawkins

ETNW Exhibition photos by Pearl Wood

Many students come together to curate and share their wonderful work here on campus. It’s inspiring to see both strangers and friends from diverse art backgrounds display their work on the walls, united by a shared vision. These exhibitions also offer an incredible opportunity to meet fellow students from various programs such as painting, sculpture, writing, graphic design, illustration, and more. They help build a strong student community and inspire all of us, as artists, to continue creating.

Astrid Mcgraw (2D animation major, Junior)

“It is about the body, sea and drowning. Sort of how we can reconstruct our bodies, which are a part of nature/ animals, whether we acknowledge that or not how they become reconstructed after a traumatic event in our life.”

Erin (CommD, Graduate 1st Year)

“Imagining the future [where] humans and plants interact with each other. Plants will evolve to see humans as their pollinator. This is a moss ball that can procreate from scratches of humans or animals. This imagines how moss will evolve

which is the object I created.”

Kat Silk (Painting major, Junior)

Could you tell me about this painting?

A: I did this last semester. It’s about embarrassment and being

caught. I like using underwear a lot to show embarrassment. I sketched this over the summer. I originally was going to put in monkey bars, but I thought it would be weirder to have one line at the top [of the painting]. I’ve been very into plaid in the past year and also using transparency.mI like making certain parts of the body feel more solid and other parts feel more transparent depending on the action the figure is doing.

Lizz Snyder (Fashion Design, Sophomore)

Can you tell me about your work?

A: This work is based on a traditional hand craft- it’s a dying art in Transylvania. The

stitch is called írásos embroidery. The patterns you are looking at are an encoded language. Instead of drawing, this term would be called writing the írásos. In terms of symbolism, the tulips are a motif of masculinity, paired with the sunflowers which are also symbolic for femininity, along with symbols of corn which represents harvest and resilience in their culture. All the chicken eyes are to repel evil energy and bring prosperity to the work. I choose mendallas because they represent cycles and repeated forms of symbolism.

Sofia Paloma Rodriguez (Painting Major, Junior)

What inspired the "Out of Place" exhibition?

A: It was the work I was making in collaboration with Lucille, my co-creator. We were making a lot of work based on similar sources: Making work from dreams. She would do something, then I would do something in response in my own way. I think the collaborative work was so interesting to be exhibited in the same space and seen together. This was the start of the show and has been such a personal influence and also for others [in the show] to work in this collaborative way.

This piece is based off of a diorama I constructed. The subjects are based off of Carmen, the opera I saw during a summer study abroad program in Italy. . . When curating the show, I feel the coincidences, common symbols, and common language that everyone uses are not coincidences. They are very much about the connected web of everyone in the school. Specifically, a lot of peers, people in my year, and in my major, but also people I’ve met through people in CommD, [the] book minor or people Lucille knows from their other classes. I think it’s all connected in that way. We wanted one thing to go through the next, and have a thread through everything.

Lucille Lindberg (Painting major, Junior)

Can you tell me a little about your paintings?

A: I do a lot of painting about dreams, degraded memories and places I am forever trying to get back to, but can’t. So that’s a lot of what this show is about.

These blurry kind-of-paintings here [with] the fuzzy image. I’m

interested in the way shapes unconsciously marry each other. It’s a photo of this man standing in his workshop on a balcony overlooking this green neighborhood. I got really deep and wanted to explore it further than the photo allowed. I was wondering how to create a fantasy-based scape based on the workshop’s shape and make this super intricate landscape topographical map out of it while also mirroring the book form.

Olli Legum (Painting major, Junior)

What is this piece about?

A: This work is about body image and dreams. Titled light as a feather and is about a woman pushing herself up out of the world we are in and separating herself from reality. This is a monotype print using a plastic sheet and you ink with oil-based ink and wipe it away with a cloth or q-tip.

Beata Belogolovsky (Graphic Design, Senior)

What inspired you to start the "Empathy Towards the Natural World" Exhibition?

A: I really wanted to create a community of artists who all

coincided with this theme of creating a more eco-centric world and to enjoy nature and sustainability themes. I heard a few people from different majors saying how we don’t know people who necessarily make work around this topic, so I thought “let me bring these people together so that after we graduate we can have a community to look back on and contact each other if we ever made work”.

Is there a message you wanted to send?

A: To watch things grow, and to pay attention to living things because we are part of a whole. It’s not just us humans. This is what I wanted to get across

with these seeds; that people should consider taking their time to grow things and create a better understanding of the world that way. For me, when I started gardening, I started to pay attention to these organisms that live about and it put a completely different perspective on the world, and I think it will for everyone.

Stephanie (Muna) Alfadel (Painting Major, Senior)

Can you tell me about your art?

A: I’ve recently been exploring the architecture in Damascus,

Syria. The work is about wanting to be in a place and not being able to be there and that diaspora. These pieces are people viewing a place and feeling detached or the detachment itself in a space which is why in these two pieces I leave the wood there and the space isn’t completely filled.