By Tiffany Rutkowski
Staff Writer
Senior visual arts majors excitedly debuted their thesis projects in an exhibit that explored the concept of domains at the College’s Art Gallery on April 11.
The word “domain” is defined abstractly as a sphere of knowledge, or materially as an area of territory.
Each artist interpreted the concept of domains from their own experiences and associations, and tailored their work to their own perceptions. These sub-concepts included digital, physical or psychological domains, according to the artists.
Brigid Barber, one of the seven emerging artists, created a 12 minute video called “Mind Your Monitors” that explores her thoughts on the internet. The video took most of her spring semester to conceptualize and construct, but she, like the other artists, has spent her entire college career planning for her senior exhibition.
The video simulates a stream of consciousness that represents the way information constantly flows online, according to Barber.
“For most of my work, I’ve been talking a lot about digital culture and how we think. (The video) is kind of an exploration of that,” Barber said.
Deanna Arzola interpreted domains intimately with her seven-layer, 3-D weaving of herself.
Her project, called “Body,” is an ode to promoting body positivity, according to Arzola.
“I never include myself in my art. This time, I wanted to explore creating myself,” Arzola said.
Arzola used a stencil of herself to create her life-sized weaving. After the stencil was traced, the weaving itself took four weeks to create, according to Arzola.
Jonathan Dix’s project to showcase how our evolving infrastructure embraces artificiality. His untitled work represented the sky, and was built from sheetrock covered in ink.
“We’re losing a sense of organic in our world,” Dix said.
Although the sheet rock was made from natural materials, it was dyed with ink to criticize the world’s fixation with artificiality.
Dix’s work also includes wooden planks covered in spray paint. His installation as a whole relates directly to themes of architecture, geometry and nature, according to Dix.
Dix’s inspiration for his senior project was his daily commute to the College. As a commuter, he spent a lot of time noticing the space around him and recognizing humanity’s need to synthesize the world, according to Dix.
“I have this relationship to artificiality, “ Dix said.
Other artists featured in the exhibit included Kelly King, Owen Lynskey, Molly Revie and Danielle Deering. Their projects involved oil paint on glass and a pegboard, acrylic and oil stick on board, glass frit lace and photo prints, respectively.
Together, the seven artists showcased an array of projects that wrapped up their time and skills learned as art students at the College.
“I’m just really happy with the way it turned out,” Arzola said.
On top of completing their projects, setting up the exhibit itself was a very labor intensive and daunting endeavor for the artists, according to Dix.
Angela Rossi, a senior art education major and a gallery assistant, worked with the seven artists to help set up the installations, patch up the walls and clean up the showroom.
“What’s special about the senior show is that they do it all themselves. With this show, it’s all student run — the deciding and the installing. It’s a more intense process,” Rossi said.
