Graduating art students showcase work

Spring is a busy and inspiring time for fine arts students at the Warren M. Lee Center for the Fine Arts.

Each spring junior and senior visual arts students prepare for their annual student review. Graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) students prepare to install their graduating show and Master of Fine Arts (MFA) students install their thesis exhibitions.

This year’s student review was April 2 and the John A. Day Gallery was filled with sculptures, ceramics, prints, paintings, drawings, photography, graphic design presentations, art students and art faculty.

The upper level students and graduating students installed a selection of the artwork they had produced in the past year. The John A. Day Gallery hosts the annual student reviews — the large contemporary white space showcases the artwork and allows enough space to accommodate the art faculty and the student body.
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Student reviews are part of the art department’s tradition. The review provides student artists with an opportunity to present their artwork in a casual but formal setting, talk about their research and get feedback from their peers and faculty.

This opportunity fosters professional development and community, bringing the student body together to see, critique and support each other’s work.

Research is important to a contemporary artist’s work and process. University of South Dakota undergraduate art students are researching themes such as personal and cultural identities, changing landscapes of memory and space and the body as a metaphor.

Students have been researching various methods, processes and materials.

Chelsea Studenski, a senior graphic design student, presented her design work and research. In one of her projects, she used information graphics and short information videos to dispel some of the myths surrounding the process of organ donation.

Chelsea’s work is clean and contemporary, and I have enjoyed seeing her presentations and product design and learning about her research and the graphic design work she has created for the University Art Galleries.

Karlie Valer uses the alternative photography processes, cyanotype and photograms with her mixed media/photography based works. Photograms and cyanotype do not need a camera, but instead use a light sensitive medium that can be applied to any surface.

Photograms were initially used to create records of objects in the natural world that could be used in scientific research. Valer is using the pillow case as a substrate for her photograms, creating layered images of the sleeping body directly onto pillow cases and making references to the dream world.  She creates additional layers of reality by cutting parts of the fabric away and by sewing more back into the fabric.

Sophia Wermers, a senior ceramics major, presented a sample of the work she will be installing for her BFA graduating show that will open April 20, with a public reception April 24 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Wermers’s work incorporates pop culture, guerrilla art and ideas of ephemera and objects en masse. Her research incorporates traditional wheel thrown ceramic vessels, slip cast found objects, slip cast food and graffiti-like clay stencils.

Her work is personal, playful and well researched. I am looking forward to seeing all the creative surprises she has planned for her graduating show.

Students can stop by the John A. Day Gallery to see the artwork of graduating MFA and BFA Fine Arts students. The gallery is open 9 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, with public gallery receptions Friday April 10, 17, 24 and May 1 and 8. All receptions are from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

(Photo: Sophia Warners, a senior ceramics major, will present samples of her work at a public reception April 24.  Amy Fill / The Volante)