This year’s Senior Show features the work of 21 artists who have spent the past two terms in Senior Studio – a class where no projects are assigned, which creates an environment for students that closely resembles a professional working artist’s environment. Students set up their own workspaces and develop their own artistic practice. They make art daily, research the work of professional artists, reflect about their work on a class blog, participate in critiques, read about the creative process, and discuss their work with each other.
The class is a department-wide effort, taught by David Ingenthron and Rebecca Roberts, with consultation from Sejal Patel. In addition, many of the students began their visual arts studies at Beaver under the guidance of Ms. Winston in the Middle School.
The Senior Show is in its 10th year, and for past the decade, it has primarily been held in the Nancy Lincoln Gallery. At first it was a few motivated students displaying their work, then we created a small spring term class called Senior Studio. Eventually the class grew to two terms, and this year, for the first time, the show will take place in the VPAC lobby. The scale and light in this space is perfect for experiencing art.
The artists in this year’s show are an intellectually diverse group of people. Many have thought of themselves as artists since they were young children and will be going to art school in the fall; several are planning to study engineering or design in college; there are quite a few passionate writers; and still more whose commitment to creating and thinking visually has played a large role in their academic life. If you were to wander through their studio spaces over the past several months you would have seen them drawing, painting, making collages, and building sculptures. You would also have seen them asking each other for advice, debating about politics, making mathematical calculations, assembling 3D-printed objects, hoarding markers, and inquiring as to the status of Amazon shipments. You would also have seen them asking each other for advice, writing about their ideas, grieving college rejections, celebrating college acceptances, consuming way too much Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and occasionally staring at the wall. These students have gotten a taste of what it’s like to be a working artist – and all the ups and downs that entails. They created their own workspaces, some were neat and organized, others were messy and – as has come to be more common in the 21st century – some were hardly used at all. Students had to figure out how to start, when to finish, when something was working, and when to scrap what they were doing and move on.
Watch the following video to see more of the Senior Studio process, and visit the VPAC between now and June 11 to see the final products and learn more about each individual artist.
ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS
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Keziah Hoyt Read Me Materials: Paper, pencil, yarn, wire mesh, found fabrics, ripped out book pages, found wood, other various found materials like post cards, greeting cards, etc.
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What inspired your art? The project started with the drawing of my hand that’s now the middle of my final piece. The point of it was for people to be able to read my palm. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the drawing, but I had been toying with the idea of a collage piece for a while so I was thinking of what else I could put up with it. I had a painting of lips on a mirror that I was thinking of putting in the show as well and my parents pointed out to me that you could read a palm and you could read lips. That’s when I decided to make my final collage a representation of myself.
What do you hope people get from your project when they see it? My project basically just encompasses who I am and what’s going on in my head. It’s supposed to look messy and a little all over the place, but there’s meaning in all the pieces. I want people to read into it a little bit. I don’t expect them to understand every little piece, but I want to make them think.
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Ian von Schroeter Tied Up Serenity Materials: String, Wood, Paint, Screws
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What inspired your art? It was never my intention to do this – it was a complete accident. I stumbled upon the idea after I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and saw the string pattern that stretched across the whole second floor. That piece of art was fascinating, and I immediately wanted to recreate it in my own way. Once I began the process, I fell in love with the idea.
What do you hope people get from your project when they see it? I honesty hope when people see my work they take a chance to notice the detail. Each piece I did was often one singular piece of string that was strung around the wood. I rarely made cuts to the string so I could give it a clean and precise look. I want people to see the texture and the cleanliness of my work and hope it brings peace to the mind.
ARTISTS FEATURED IN THE 2017 SENIOR SHOW
| Kris Aime | Olivia Dobkin | Irene McLaughlin-Alves |
| Jordan Alloway | Halle Dretler | Britney Parry |
| Sophia Brescia | Jennie Greenhalgh | Phoebe Petryk |
| Sydney Brown | Keziah Hoyt | Ian von Schroeter |
| Elise Brown | Shaianne Innocent | Aram Soultanian |
| Sophia Bruno | Skylar Katz-Flynn | Julia Szabo |
| Walker Danforth | Sofia Love | Bridge Tobin |