The exhibition features the work of ten senior art majors: Jamie Baik, Teal Baskerville, Tim Cannon, Ilana Ellis, Isabel Greer, Julie Le, Jacqueline Lusardi, Kelsey McDermott, Phillip Sull, and Denise Waite. The senior studio exhibition celebrates the culmination of each artist’s senior project.
The student work draws inspiration from a wide range of sources, delving into naturalistic and abstract portraiture, Holocaust survivors, medieval iconography, mixed-race relationships, color fields, video essays, surrealistic still-lifes, and mental health issues. The Class of 2014 has engaged with these topics in a variety of media, including oil and acrylic paint, charcoal, wood, digital imaging programs, video, found objects, and more.
A heliotrope is a small purple flower named for the way it changes direction so as to face the sun. As the title of this exhibition, heliotropes alludes to possible thematic continuities between the student work and the works from the WCMA collection. It also suggests a mindful repositioning of the students’ work as it grows and expands.
heliotropes is the first exhibition in which the Senior Seminar class has partnered with the Art History Graduate Program to pair students’ art with works from the WCMA collection. The student artists each collaborated with a graduate art historian who helped make selections from the collection and produced the interpretive wall texts you read throughout the show. (suggest “displayed” instead of “you read”)
