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  Professional Practices Portfolio

  Sarah Cox

  As human beings, we want to look away from something that makes us uncomfortable, but we can be enthralled by it. I am currently creating work about the idea of restriction and confinement, specifically addressing body image. There is an underlying theme of the attraction-repulsion concept. Confronting audiences with less than desirable imagery creates a tension between my work and viewers. Creating that relationship fuels my work and allows me to cross uncomfortable boundaries and discuss our bodies in a contemporary way.

  I use charcoal and graphite to create work, occasionally with a limited but vivid color palette with soft pastels to emphasize a specific aspect of the drawing. I also have experimented with fabrics and branched into three-dimensional work. The use of watercolors creates very intense images. Utilizing color generates an even more disconcerting effect than plain graphite or charcoal, depending on the subject matter. Value shifts also evoke various emotions, allowing for strong contrast, or chiaroscuro, that creates visually pleasing pieces. My work includes both figures and human-like forms, and I also incorporate animals and meat as a way to communicate the same concept with different subject matter. Compositions vary in scale, and the imagery is often close to life size or larger. Because the human figure is often depicted, very organic forms are used to create a more accurate representation of a figure.

  Figurative artists such as Jenny Saville, Lucian Freud, and collaborative artists Cara Thayer and Louie Van Patten are an inspiration to my work. I connect with contemporary artists but still admire those in the past, especially Greek artists that projected ideal, natural beauty into sculptures. Their work draws me in with the beauty and softness it possesses from a distance then finding intricate details that give the piece liveliness. I am very inspired by the human figure and the exploration of individual components of our anatomy; there is joy in exploring how to render flesh with two-dimensional medium. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder also lends a role in how I am process-driven by choosing to depict meticulous and detailed imagery that may include repetition, which comes from obsessiveness. This has also inspired an admiration for intimate details of works such as eyelashes or the shine on a fingernail. Using these small details allows viewers to get personal with my work as they delve into the piece. The obsessiveness also lends to consistent worries about health and our instinctual need to rid the body of our ailments.

  Establishing a tense connection between unsettling imagery and viewers is how I discuss my obsessions with health and the small things we do not typically ponder upon. Joining the obsessive nature with the human figure starts a conversation between not only viewers and the work but also within myself as I explore various aspects of the human figure and how to present it in a way that attracts yet repulses.

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  Cara Crowley Selected Works

  Cara Crowley

  When someone presents nothing about themselves to anyone other people rush in to fill the gaps in this person’s behavior. In my work I like to explore inevitable duplicity of living, such as the mind versus the body and saying versus thinking. When I create an image, I try to think about what I can hide and what I can reveal in the picture plane and how that impacts the meaning of the work. Layering imagery allows me to cover up and reveal different things in the composition, through this method, I can push certain things backwards and accentuate others by pulling them forward. I am drawn to high contrast and value because of its dual nature and as a reference to “black and white thinking”, which is prevalent in anxiety and stress.

  When I look at other peoples’ work, I am most drawn to expressive line work and color in terms of their process. Artists like Ernst Kirchner, Francis Picabia, and Danielle Klebes interest me because of their use of highly saturated pigment and compositions that make the viewer feel unsettled. For me their works show how uncomfortable certain social interactions or spaces can become.

  The subject matter of my work most often applies to my own life, but I use silhouetted figures and objects to create spaces, or situations that become universal. These spaces and figures become confusing and alarming with the addition of skewed perspective and unreadable details. The unavailability of the figure makes the viewer feel these people are unapproachable, or dangerous in some way. Unavailability in spaces without the figure is created by making the spaces flat with intrusive shapes, emptying picture frames, and making the space outside of windows and doors vague. All of this makes the audience feel trapped and alarmed by domestic spaces which are typically viewed as safe havens.

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  Talitha Cunningham

  Talitha Cunningham

  I have explored a number of ideas and media since starting my journey toward becoming an art educator. One that I seem to find myself returning to regularly is my interest in exploring mental illness. This derives from my experience with people in my life that have dealt with and continue to deal with mental illness, myself included. I want to raise awareness about mental health and the impact it has on the sufferer through my art.

  I have touched on this idea in some of my past works, including a photo diptych that depicts the highs and lows of someone who is dealing with bipolar disorder, represented through the use of black and white. For this work I drew inspiration from Christian Sampson, a 24 year old photographer who made photos that depict the “invisible” impact mental health has on the sufferers. It shows a visible representation of what different mental illnesses would look like if we could actually see them. I also made a necklace using different metals and patinas to create textures and contrasting colors that represent depression and anxiety in a way where each one is making the other more prominent.

  I plan to continue my exploration of mental illness in future works through the use of wood and the different techniques that I am learning. I also plan to make larger works that draw inspiration from Patrick Dougherty, who makes structures mainly made of twigs. These structures have entrances and exits in various different places along the vast expanses of the individual works. I plan to combine the large structures of Dougherty and representation of mental illness of Sampson’s photos to make a work that draws not only on the growing amount of people who are dealing with mental illness with the large sculptures but also how each mental illness affects the sufferer in different ways through multiple different structures. To this end I have decided to focus in woodworking for my BFA.

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  Student Group Exhibition

  Larry Eakels

  I have always liked to create things and make interesting pieces of artwork. Making work in the design field has been very delightful and engaging for me. Learning about how people react to imagery even when its digital or print has been one of the biggest things, I have learned from becoming an artist and focusing in graphic design. I chose to do graphic design because of my experiences with past classes and pieces that bring joy to me. As well as, the aesthetic you can achieve doing design work. Being able to create sleek, clean, and simple designs to fit the modern style is very pleasing and catches my attention and others. Seeing or knowing that my viewers of my work can understand it and also get a vibe of interest into the pieces gives me a satisfactory feeling which I enjoy.

  Most of the work is made digitally, but always starts from sketches with a pencil and paper. Easiest way to make many different ideas for a topic is starting from paper and pencil then you can scan your desired pieces to the computer and go from there. Being able to make multiple revisions digitally is one of my favorite things about design and also the use of technology is amazing of all the beautiful things you could create digitally. Along with digital design I can also do print design as well which is another reason why being a designer you can do many things that can do physically and digitally.

  Currently, my work has been inspired by advertisement and my poster design class. Experimenting with layers and colors to create diverse and complex posters that are also very clean and concise. Being able to continue this aesthetic in my current work brings me joy and hopefully viewers of my work can appreciate and see what I see with my work.

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  Exploration

  Jessica Free

  My art explores the realm of beauty using form, shape, line, and color. I am interested in using geometric and organic elements to visually balance the artwork in the eyes of the viewer. As an artist, I want my art to communicate balance to the people viewing it. I often apply asymmetry in my artwork. Asymmetry grabs the viewers’ attention and connects all of the elements in the pieces by drawing attention towards the subject of the art piece. I also like to emphasize texture in my art, as a subject matter. I love the visual texture and the diverse range of shades you get from darkroom photography as well as the experimentation process you go through. In addition to texture, I am also drawn to the use of warm colors and the natural movement of shape and form (when using 3-D materials). In other artists artwork, I am attracted to organic, shapes as well because it gives a fantastical and abstract feeling as well as comfort. Wassily Kandinsky is one of my artist influences. Kandinsky is an expressionist painter who used line, primary colors, and shapes in such a way that he created almost-patterns. I am attracted to the asymmetry and open-ended interpretation of his artwork. I am also attracted to the abstract and surreal landscapes of Marc Adamus. In his photographs, he uses nature as a tool to create beautiful and complex landscapes. The exquisite views used in his landscapes almost look too good to be real and include light and dark contrast. Similar to Kandinsky’s and Adamus’s artworks, I often use abstract elements to create art that is not of one specific meaning and create surreal experiences.

  In my photography, I combine the rustic and the new. In other artists’ artwork, as well as mine, I am drawn to the use of rustic objects to repurpose them creatively and to reflect them in a newer or more surreal perspective. The juxtaposition of rustic and new objects gives a fantastical, almost unrealistic, surreal setting for the viewers’ imagination. Ansel Adam’s photography also does just that. His artwork gives a fantastical setting by using nature, such as geysers and landscapes, to create a setting for a story unique to the viewers. I am influenced by Ansel Adam’s work because of his passion for embracing nature and using it as his subject matter to positively bring awareness of the its beauty to his viewers. I combine nature with rustic and new elements to create and communicate beauty in a familiar but new context, creating a surreal landscape. My subject matter is old barns, buildings, bodies of water, wood, and natural landscapes, amongst other things. Architectural forms inspire me as an artist, like buildings, frames, and structural lines. For example, one of my most recent pieces called double exposure is a piece created through double exposure in the darkroom which includes, as its subject matter, a boat dock on the bottom of the photograph with a multitude of horizontal and vertical structural lines. Connecting the dock to the top of the piece, which is a shore filled with leaves, are 2 parallel lines going diagonally from the bottom left of the page to the top right. Beauty to me is old, rustic things and places that are often forgotten or overlooked. I want to promote the appreciation of this rustic beauty.

  Although some of my work is structural, I do not plan out the subject matter of my artwork. My creative process is unplanned and impulsive in how I create art. I create artwork based on feeling and emotion. When I create my photographs, I walk or drive around, stopping to take pictures when I am inspired while using unique perspectives that beautify the subject. I have ideas of and visualize what I desire my photographs to look like, although sometimes uncertain on how they will be, and then make it happen by using a set and experimental process in the darkroom. The impulsive characteristic of my artwork excites me, and I often find myself in a timeless daze where I am not thinking but doing.

  Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor) 1910 Kandinsky

  Ansel Adams Emerald Peak in San Joaquin Sierra, 1939

  Marc Adamus Heart of the Tree, 2016

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  Professional Practices Portfolio

  Emily Glowicki

  My interest in multiplicity and repetition has influenced the investigation of movement and form in much of my work in sculpture. This idea of taking one simple form and growing it into a colony of many has interested me for many years, showing itself in much of my sculptural ceramic vessels and multimedia installation. This focus on multiplicity has inspired an investigation of light and shadow in relation to the various media I have worked in: paper, wood, found object, etc. and the environments these objects interact with.

  Along with sculptural installation and ceramics, I have developed an interest in functional ceramics and how the pot interacts with the hand of the artist, viewer, and user. My functional pottery addresses the differences between the artist’s experience with a vessel and the person who engages with the pot in everyday life. The relationship between my hand, the artist’s, and that of the person who uses my pot is inherently different. and I continue to explore this idea across the functional wares I am currently making, while also developing further skill in creating a variety of vessels.

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  Hall's Art

  Katlyn Hall

  Artist Statement

  Katlyn Hall

  January 20, 2019

  Communicating through illustration and graphic design sums up most of my work. Using drawing as my main medium to concept ideas ranging from a story that needs to be told to a client’s desire to make their message in a design applicable to their audience. Storytelling is universal. I don’t consider myself a fine artist in the terms of communicating in the traditional sense through oil painting, sculpting, etc. (some expertise in those) Art is becoming more digitized and commercialized through the digital area. Styles in animation, graphic arts, and conceptual are moving past the traditional way of expression. Because of this, my art is turning towards digital painting and graphic illustration with the use of Photoshop and Illustrator. Watercolor and drawing in are the traditional aspects I’m looking to blend in with the digital side of illustration.

  My traditional influences are John Constable, a realist artist with a romantic impulse towards landscape painting and Thomas Girtin, a gifted watercolorist that takes plein air painting to a different level. My modern influences are James Gurney, an oil painter that uses character for storytelling and Lois Baarle also known as Loisvb on Instagram is a recognized artist that takes full advantage of what the digital medium has to offer while her works look traditional.

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  Koryn Hatfield

  Koryn Hatfield

  Creating art allows me to delve into my mind and acknowledge specific memories and associations I have made with people, places, and events in my life. My works are created in a stream of conscious state and involve me recording my thoughts in a visual dialogue. The process itself then, becomes important because it is during this time, I uncover these parts of myself and my life.

  My goal is for the viewer to make connections within the work but still be left in a sense of wonder. One of the most recognizable aspects of my work is my use of continuous line. This, in addition to, layering and color create a dynamic piece. Layering is key because to me it is the direct reflection of my mind. It builds the piece and allows me to obscure certain recordings. Colors are often direct reflections of the subject matter or the colors I have associated with the subject. My line work is evident through each layer of the piece.

  In addition, at this point in my life I feel very compelled to talk about femininity. I want to convey what it is like to be a woman in this time period and culture. Also, how body objectification impacts women and society. Creating work dealing with femininity is important to me and in a historical context because it reveals the patterns and social norms woman have dealt with in the past and continue to deal with today.

  I have been greatly influenced by Cecliy Brown and Ghada Amer. I am drawn to these artists for the way they depict the female figure in their works. Both, portray the female body in a erotic sense. The use of line and layering also drew me to these artists. Lastly, I admire the bravery these women take for creating art about a vulnerable subject and am inspired to create work that makes me feel vulnerable.

  Koryn Hatfield

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  I love dick

  Gerik Kubik

  With my new set of work, I am exploring my experiences as a gay man through painting. What it means to truly be myself, and the way I viewed myself since coming out. Religious cues are hinted throughout my piece, much of it inspired by baroque art and it’s cotton candy like visuals that hold grotesque subject matter.

  As an artist, I’ve never been attracted to the idea of displaying my art as something extremely serious, and so I want to embrace my humor and sass in my paintings. The topics I choose are of course very intense, serious, and not always as humorous as my viewers would assume. I can confront serious matters such as society’s resistance to accepting the full spectrum of human sexuality and still find ways to laugh about it within my painting practice. This really pushes my thought process and motivates me to work and to love what I do, and is also an insidious way of influencing a change in the mindsets of my viewers. In some sense I guess I’m trying to de-escalate the intensity of my subject matter by making it over-the-top and humorous. Perhaps this will encourage my audience to lighten up and find ways to still laugh despite the hardships in life.

  Some of my influences for this body of work include Daniel Jaen, Kehinde Wiley, and Lisa McCleary. Daniel’s openness to explore and display male nudity in the gay community with graphic figures was an immediate attraction. WIley’s portrayal of the male gaze on the male body, references to religious imagery, and use of decorative floral patterns are inspiring for me. Lisa McCleary’s work contrasts the ridiculousness of sexting with pieces hyper-realistic images of the body to talk about the disconnects in contemporary sexuality and exchanges of intimacy. Both of these artists encourage me to pursue these formal methods and this content without restraint as I develop my BFA work.

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  Pro-Prac Digital Commons Assignment

  Simon McNeil

  As a person, I thrive inside confinement; I have to know I was in a box in order to think outside it, so the formidable task of constructing my own box required a certain amount of self reflection. Sure, I would always produce, but what really pushed me to make Art? During a wistful trip down the six-pack aisle, I had an epiphany; in a sea of Millers and Bud Lights, I always ended up picking drinks with interesting packaging/design, be it heavy illustration, bold color, or at the very least a logo with that ‘handmade’ quality. As a designer, that was how I wanted my work to be consumed, and it was the knowledge that people enjoyed what I made that drives me to not only make, but improve.

  For my BFA show, I want to share that interest. I have conjured a fictional brewing company, Hops Noir, and my show will feature Packages, such as 12oz bottles, a 4-pack cardboard carrier, Advertising, such as beer posters and magazine ads, and a Branding guide and collateral for the Brewery. My work has moved toward keeping the hand-qualities and imperfections that come from designing and sketching manually as the work transitions to a digital space. My recent work in screen printing have enforced my desire to blend the best of both worlds in my work. There is something incredibly human about this quality that I want to bring to the lives of the people who see and consume my work, as our capitalist future stretches nightmarishly onward.

  Since having done a research project about Keith Haring, I’ve found a new interest in Pop Art. Haring’s illustration style has given me inspiration, especially in working with a more loose, messier style, and simpler forms, which still communicate without being busy. The crowded compositions of his work speak to my own tight, puzzle-esque sense of design, and in my work I have become fond of balancing this illustration style with layers, either of gradients and patterns, or with other illustrations of varying opacity. This contrasts to bolder, often darker, typography, ensuring that vital information is still easy to find and read, but the bottle, sat alongside it’s competition, still catches the eye of a consumer. Vintage advertising has also played a role, in conjunction with my new screen printing work, in inspiring my show work. Playing off my earlier interest in historical type, the way vintage advertisement, especially posters, utilise their economy of space is fascinating; type is large but not too intricate, and illustrations are just visually stimulating enough to get their point across. This clear and effective communication is something I want to translate to my own work.

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  19_Nalley, Michael_Portfolio

  michael nalley

  Michael Nalley

  Through thought we can explore the meanings in life and the My prints focus on the suffering and escapism through the absurd hero’s journey, taking the thoughts and feelings of existential introspection and giving it physical form though screen print. They focus on snapshots of a life lived without pre-derived meaning in search of purpose through a narrative set that paints a life of filled with opulence and escapism from a dark and uncaring world. I look at the flawed nature of faith and how one deals with a world once witnessed to the absurde, how we as humans escape those feelings, and the feelings of outsiderism and loneliness felt in such a world.

  Formally, my pieces use a balancing act of bright and pastel colours in contrast with harsh and intense reds, browns, and blacks to push a scene from something grounded and real, into something more surreal and fantastic. I use appropriated images from Victorian etchings and Renaissance iconography intermingled with hand drawn imagery to show the journey of a man's life surrounded by reminders of his meaningless and insignificance in the nihilist’s reality. All the while, my absurde hero marches on filling his life with anything that can fill the void. I use the breakdown of religious imagery in direct contrast to the horrors of war or broken landscapes as the breakdown of faith and the derived meaning in life that accompanies it. I place such images in the background as a reminder of how such feelings, even when covered and subverted, are always in the back of the mind, always dragging at the soul with a reminder of one’s place in the eyes of an uncaring universe filled with pain and death under the guise of a moral cause.

  I pull formal inspiration from artists like Matt Hopson-Walker, balancing heavy subject matter with bright and popping colours. Carrie Lingscheit has also influences my work formally with how she plays with heavily stylized and naturalized forms juxtaposed together. Conceptually my pieces pull mostly from philosophical literature in the form of writers like Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche, as I explore the same vein of thought but instead use images rather than words to convey such introspection.

  With a life without meaning, we are left to find and make such meaning ourselves. I use the arts to explore that existential journey and to give physical form to such introspective moments through a nihilistic lense. I use art to tell a story of another trying desperately to find purpose, all the while dealing with the anger that comes with the question of evil, the substances that give momentary reprieve from unending feelings of dread and loneliness, and an escape into the social world in hopes of drowning out the voice of pain through endless social contact.

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  No Real Memories

  Emily Netherton

  Memory is a complicated thing. We often long to hold unto the past, but struggle to actually remember it accurately. We place such importance on memories that we continually collect artifacts to remember things by. We take pictures to remember moments. We hold onto personal items to remember people. We often display these artifacts and spend so much time with them that we place more importance on the objects than the memories associated with them. Hang photos and display momentos, and constantly live in the past. In my work, I focus on reconnecting those objects to the memories, and addressing the attachment we have to them. I break down the process of memory, and depict the lack of clarity we have around memory. I tend to use simplified shapes and connected patterns to obscure memories, in the same way our memories are distorted over time. I often use more muted and desaturated colors to further the narrative of our memories being different from our reality. I paint on frames and other storage items in order to communicate our tendency to store and sort our memories in a safe place to be accessed later.

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  APitt_ProPrac

  Allison Pitt

  I have always been an “outside-the-box” kind of person. I feel like I don’t fit into the mold of an “artist”. However, I’ve used this aspect about myself to use it to create my art. Unlike the others in my classes, I haven’t found myself fascinated by one idea or material. As a future art educator, I feel like this change is something I can use to my benefit to adapt and relate to each student and their unique backgrounds that come through with their art. I hope to inspire my students to be their true self, and let their art reflect that, instead of trying to fulfill an assignment or compete with their peers.

  My medium is choice is paint. This is part of why I am drawn to painting; because the material is pure color, and I can impose my ideas on it without feeling like I’m fighting the material, like in other medius. I use primarily oil point to convey my ever-changing concepts and really appreciate the way that the color allows me to communicate on a canvas. I use color very intentionally. This varies from using bright and happy colors to choosing more neutral tones to convey specific things.

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  Professional Blend VII

  Drey Reed

  Often times it appears as though people forget that art does not have to have some deep, internal meaning. While the amount of traditional media art I make is greatly slowing down, those that I do make tend to have either an obvious meaning or none at all. I’ve always been more into making and viewing art that is more aesthetically pleasing than those you have to find the meaning of. Now, however, my time is primarily spent on graphic design. While there isn’t anything that necessarily ties my graphic design work together, I feel this is a better fit for me since, while you have the chance to make a design with a deeper meaning behind it, graphic design is often focused primarily on how it looks visually.

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  Natural Aspects

  Kaylie Riley

  Kaylie Riley

  I can never seem to get away from the natural world. Almost everything I do whether intentional or not I always seem to make my art about nature in some way, shape, or form. I have always felt a connection with nature and it is where I am the happiest and I am afraid of losing it.

  In my body of work from past to present the formal elements are earthy and organic and even in my graphics work I incorporate rounded shapes and corners. My color palette is usually neutral colors or softer colors more like pastels and I rarely use vibrant colors. My work is also more detailed in its mark making and usually has a message to go along with it. Since being afraid of losing the gorgeous environment we live in; I Make my work about the harsh truths of what is happening in our world.

  Every time I go to make a piece of art, I cannot help but to think about the earth and how beautiful it is so my art reflects my feelings about. It captures my excitement and my sadness moving on in this world.

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  Cameron Savage Fall 2019

  Cameron Savage

  Cameron Savage

  BFA: Printmaker

  Scientists can trace the modern human’s beginnings to western Africa and map out migrations that moved hominids into the rest of the world. Mankind traversed a vast and unknown wilderness for the pursuit of food and resources. We have always been explorers, desperately searching for anything new. I’m interested in mankind’s thirst for knowledge of the unknown, and the possibilities that exist outside our little blue rock. Will Earth’s resources eventually be exhausted? Are other planets suitable for the continuation of humanity? Can civilization exist outside our solar system?

  Contemplating these questions and being influenced by science fiction pop-culture, I explore color and imagined landscapes. Fictional landscapes and geometric forms contrast and engage one another in my work. The work displays a constant tension between “man-made” structures and their impact on naturally formed structures. Since my forms are fictional, they are untethered from reality, allowing a nearly endless amount of freedom. I’m heavily inspired by album cover art and poster designs by artists like Dan Mumford, Luke Preece, and Rickey Beckett.

  My medium of choice is screen printing, which allows me to access vivid colors and stylized mark-making, resembling the graphic nature of posters. Like Cecily Brown, I too use a vibrant color palette and an extensive amount of forms to engage a composition. The prints present exotic contrasting colors and deep landscapes that allow the viewer to travel to strange, alien lands.

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  Cameron Savage Fall 2019

  Cameron Savage

  Cameron Savage

  BFA: Printmaker

  Scientists can trace the modern human’s beginnings to western Africa and map out migrations that moved hominids into the rest of the world. Mankind traversed a vast and unknown wilderness for the pursuit of food and resources. We have always been explorers, desperately searching for anything new. I’m interested in mankind’s thirst for knowledge of the unknown, and the possibilities that exist outside our little blue rock. Will Earth’s resources eventually be exhausted? Are other planets suitable for the continuation of humanity? Can civilization exist outside our solar system?

  Contemplating these questions and being influenced by science fiction pop-culture, I explore color and imagined landscapes. Fictional landscapes and geometric forms contrast and engage one another in my work. The work displays a constant tension between “man-made” structures and their impact on naturally formed structures. Since my forms are fictional, they are untethered from reality, allowing a nearly endless amount of freedom. I’m heavily inspired by album cover art and poster designs by artists like Dan Mumford, Luke Preece, and Rickey Beckett.

  My medium of choice is screen printing, which allows me to access vivid colors and stylized mark-making, resembling the graphic nature of posters. Like Cecily Brown, I too use a vibrant color palette and an extensive amount of forms to engage a composition. The prints present exotic contrasting colors and deep landscapes that allow the viewer to travel to strange, alien lands.

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  Professional Practices Final Portfolio

  Ashley Schell

  There is a bittersweet beauty in the nature of average everyday life and simply existing with those around you. I use this mindset to explore my own past and present growing experiences in a tight knit, conservative southern region of the United States, I create artworks that help me better understand my relationship with myself and the individuals that surround me. By forming connections between my personal life and my relationships, my artwork has allowed me to explore where I physically exist in the world and who I am as an individual. My artwork embodies the specific experiences and external influences that have gotten me into the position I am in today.

  In my artwork I tend to use subject matter that pertains to my personal life and experiences. By using symbolic objects and environments that are directly connected to, or sometimes suggestive of southern culture, I hope to convey the sense of confusion, containment, and bitter-sweetness that a person can experience whilst living in such a place. When using these themes of confusion I create drawings that are fragmented with reality. I will place figures into an environment and merge them into abstracted environments that exist upon contrasting linear planes and don’t necessarily make sense. A rule that I like to follow as a human being is that not everything needs to make complete and total sense.

  In terms of medium, my go to is graphite and watercolor. As I’ve mentioned before, there is beauty in simplicity and I feel that graphite speaks eloquently for my work. My main goal with my artwork is to maintain an introspective artistic lifestyle, as I feel in order to mentally develop, one must unlock the next level of understanding themselves.

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  Jay Schroeder pro-practice

  jennifer schroeder

  My Art is mainly reality based, focusing on social commentary or narrative. Often covering themes of depression, disorders, disability, dilapidation, inequality, and struggles. I provide art that people can connect to on a personal and emotional level. Experience with bigotry and struggles with disorders and learning disabilities has influenced me to explore art that is unapologetically honest. With the goal of reaching out to people so they can see the good and the bad in the world, creating something they can relate to and connect with, so we can all stand together in solidarity.

  I have experience with 2D and 3D media, focusing on photography because it helps me capture the level of honesty I like in my work. However, more recently I have been experimenting with Print, video, and sound. Exploring the same themes and addressing new ones, introducing theology more recently in some of my current work. As a practicing pagan who was raised catholic, I can find where things overlap and separate. I’m able to hold an open mind about faith, question, be curious, and look at theological stories from different angles.

  My current project, “Dependency” is a print, etching on zinc, printed on Cream Stonehenge using blue-black mixed with white ink. Cream paper and blue-black ink have a medical feel, like the writing of a doctor’s pen on a prescription slip.

  “Dependency” addresses behavioral disorders and the need for, or dependency on medication for these individuals to function. This specific work focusing mainly on ADHD, Learning disorders, and anxiety disorders. Referencing pills commonly prescribed for these conditions (Vyvanse for ADHD and Lexapro for Generalized anxiety disorders). Using these pills, I etched in the Words, “Pills Think” and hid them amongst a scatter of the same pills. Driving in the dependency on medication to function, that to some taking medication is the equivalent of being able to think.

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  Professional Blend VII

  jade simpson

  I create graphic design pieces with the goal of inciting a feeling in the viewers. I have found through the years that creating a well developed color pallet is a major part of my process as an artist. This is because color can help enhance the specific emotion or idea that I am pushing for. I enjoy designing a variety of posters over subjects from music to commentary on social issues. The reason I choose the topics of mental health awareness, suicide awareness, gender roles, domestic violence, drug abuse, and other similar topics is because I want people to stop avoiding them. I want to inspire a change in the world and get people to start talking about them on a larger scale. I want to put the very real problems of society in their face and make them want to change their behaviors and attitudes. If not I hope to at least compel them to bring awareness to others. The less heavy pieces that I creat I want to awaken the fun that is sparked in Children. A feeling where the stresses of life are the farthest thing from the veiwers mind. Just breathe and have have. Be happy. This work is generally inspired by graphic artists that use vibrant and wild color theories, funky patterns, and interesting methods of creation. Artists such as Jessica Walsh, Stefan Sagmeister, and Milton Glaser.

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  Professional Practices: Cumulation of Work

  Sara Talwalkar

  I juxtapose sharp and organic shapes, which are inspired by ideas of plants, landscape and architectural design because of the clean lines and minimalistic forms. Line quality is used to show space, and enhance a minimalistic aesthetic, while the use of line and value in architectural drawings changes perspective and manipulates the viewer’s eye. As well as plants, landscape, architectural design, my work is about containers, containing space, and the manipulation of a man-made space. The geometric motif running through the body of work is primarily boxes and can be seen as a reduced form mimicking shapes one interacts with on a day-to-day basis. I am interested in the relationship between the viewer, the form, and the space in between them. The combination of these formal qualities determine the composition of the work and whether or not it is set in an atmosphere.

  Loneliness, space, and minimalism inform my work. As a printmaker who works in etching primarily, I am influenced by Ann Kavanagh and her use of line and composition in her photo-etchings, photographs, and Japanese woodcuts. Loneliness is the lack of something, and I use minimalism to show that through sharp, uncluttered lines, rich values, and unconventional spacing of the plates. By composing the space of the page with line and value, loneliness is depicted through an altered perspective, whether that be from the outside looking in or a dramatically skewed angle. I am interested in the evolution of a space within the confinement of a man-made space, mostly the size of the plate or page.

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  Terra Incognita

  Savannah Jane Walton

  To seduce one’s mind is about the thrill of the desire itself. Through the strange marks, there is desire to invent something out of the unknown. The thrill of the sensation of energy. You can’t articulate what is happening... but you feel it. Consumed by reading this euphoric language, you desire to depict the code of the rhythm to challenge your mind’s environment. This is the language that is translating as sound moves through space, daring you to disturb the silence.

  I am the architect of my own wonderland, allowing me to compose my acoustic map with expressive mark making to enhance the experience of movement. Using music theory to create controlled nonsense, I develop an overwhelming environment. I want to pull from society’s vulnerabilities of the confusion that this space is ‘off the grid.’ Expanding outside the realm of reality into a space of uncontrolled time where the sound becomes your enlightenment—state of no mindness. The act of visualizing this sound through space is shown through altering organic forms within industrial structures to really play out the rhythm for the people. The line work creates its own lyrical language stemming from design elements and algorithms. Communicating vibrations through the repetition of busy shapes combined with the act of reduction and addition to create depth through the negative space. Using layers of transparencies, geometric shapes and line is how I deconstruct the perception of my large scale composition. I manipulate the intuitive flow of lines to illuminate my abstraction.

  Contemporary German artist, Jorinde Voigt, creates large scale drawings incorporating text and collaged elements with energetic yet cryptically ordered compositions. “My work is like music,” Voigt says. “You can enjoy it without being able to read the score.” And honestly, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Graphic designer David Carson, advises artists “Don’t mistake legibility for communication.” These words pushed me to explore how to communicate the visualization of sound. After all, you can’t read my pieces—but they do tell a story. These stories with no location, enticing you to get lost.

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  Professional Blend VII

  Emma Wilson

  I have always been an artist ever since I was a child. My mom was one of my influences to become an artist because she always made arts and crafts with me. My aunt, Janet Wilson, is a very skilled self-taught painter and was also a large influence on my artistic life. I thoroughly enjoy the art of photography.

  Tara Chisholm once quoted, “Photography is the beauty of life captured.” My photography is very sentimental because it’s mostly about family. Family is so important in life and so is being able to snap shoot memorable times. I explore the concept of the happiness that family brings. With photography, a moment can be captured that you might not ever get back again in your lifetime.

  I often use high contrast in my black and white photos in digital and film. An American photographer who also enjoys photographing people in black and white is Richard Avedon. I believe that contrast creates a dramatic feeling while viewing a photo, which I find interesting. I often focus on the composition of a photograph.

  Although I shoot black and white photography, I also love color. My artwork outside of photography focuses on the use of color, which is what attracts me to a piece of art. I find joy in making art with color because of a dark part of my childhood. Now that my life is much happier, I often create happy art. To me, color represents happiness. I want my viewer to feel happy when looking at my happy work, unless I intended to give the viewer a different feeling. Art is very important in my life. I love being an artist.

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  HoneySeekers

  Aurora Zwyghuizen

  As a graphic designer I get into a different mind set. As a designer, project parameters and visual satisfaction are paramount. I choose more appropriate colors for what is assigned. I try to get out of my head and into the real world. I attempt to create viewer interest by organizing typography with hierarchy and arranging images in a compositionally pleasing manner.

  Some of this will be seen in my most recent project, Honey Seekers. This is a nonprofit organization to help save the bees. Bees are very important to me because they are the ones that give us life. I am choosing a variety of bright colors to attract the viewer in the logo and in the posters that I am creating. I have chosen colors that are realistic to flowers and nature. I am trying to use these colors in every poster to keep a consistency, but make sure that they are also different at the same time to keep them visually appealing. For the posters I use different fonts to describe importance and to give the layout a more pleasing look. The posters will also be on an average to large scale. I will also use these colors and fonts for the website that I will design, so that the viewer can know more information and see more visually appealing criteria.

  With this project I am trying to get out of the box and make an area that will “wow” people by walking through it. I hope that the colors will attract people and make them want to make a difference. I will also be making a website to have donations and more information about bees for people to read. I am also making an informational book and keeping on the color scheme of the posters that I have created.

  Stefan Sagmeister is one graphic designer that I look to. He is very modern and I love how he will put himself into a piece of his work, as if it were a performance piece. His use of typography is always eye catching, which is what I would like to accomplish. Every piece of his art is different, so you don’t know what to expect, but you know that it is his. Two other artists that I look to are Matthew Willey and Ladislav Hanka. Other than being artists they are also bee activists. Matthew Willey travels the world and makes bee murals to raise awareness about what is happening. Every mural is different and it shows how he can make every mural match by being different. Ladislav Hanka makes etchings out of decomposed hives. He won art prize this year in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he talked about the circle of life with bees but knows how important they are to us.

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  Professional Practices

  Shelby Adams

  Currently, I am focusing on the aesthetic nature of my artwork and how its appearance aids the use of it. My work tends to lean towards the more organic/imperfect side of crafting: whether it be in my ceramic work or metalsmithing, I enjoy the small variations in form that create a true sense of the handmade. I further this sense of hand-craftedness by exposing the materials themselves, such as leaving metal to patina over time or leaving the clay exposed while glazing. The strong sense of materiality within my work, along with their organic sense of form, creates very naturalistic objects that emphasizes the materials themselves. I’m interested in the minimalism that these choices can evoke and how these aesthetic leanings affect the functionality of each piece.