Katie Cameron
A&E Editor
On Sunday, May 8, the College of Wooster Art and Art History Departments will host a gallery show at Ebert Art Center featuring the work of the junior class art majors. The class of 2017 has six art majors: Foster Cheng, Emily Glickman, Cassidy Jester, Mariah Joyce, Abbey Partika and Theresa Spadola.
The exhibition will be held in the Mackenzie Gallery of the College of Wooster Art Museum (CWAM) from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. As always, admission into CWAM is free, and — just as extra incentive to attend —refreshments will be provided.
The six students specialize in a range of areas, including photography, embroidery, sculpture, painting and drawing. “There really is a wide variety of people and mediums this year,” Partika said. Each student created a different amount of work for the gallery show, on different scales.
Partika described her project, saying “my Junior I.S. is a large-scale installation piece… It’s meant to be interactive and experimental to study how humans make decisions about space.” Partika cited her interest in architecture as the inspiration for her work.
For her project, Spadola used black and white film photography to exhibit people with tattoos pursuing their passions. “I chose this topic to make an effort to destigmatize tattoos in professional environments, as well as social ones,” Spadola said.
Glickman used fiber art, specifically embroidery, to bring the Greek myth of the kidnapping of Persephone to life. “The myth represents not only transition from woman to girl, but also of virgin to lover. My goal was to look at love in its varied, ambiguous forms, such as unrequited, mutual and undecided,” said Glickman.
Cheng’s project focused more introspectively: “I’ve been creating books filled with self-portraits, meant to be journal or scrapbook style … They’re intimate reflections of who I am right now.”
Joyce made drawings using paper, ink, tea and embroidery thread, dyeing paper with the tea before stitching them together. Though some of her work is abstract, some borders on the grotesque. “I’m usually influenced by my surroundings, an emotion I’m feeling, something someone said to me … My most interesting art happens when I’m very tired, though,” said Joyce.
The exhibition is part of the students’ junior independent study class, and in addition to their artwork and the gallery show, the students write a paper explaining the themes and intentions of their art and how it connects to art’s larger history. The students were advised by professor of art Walter Zurko.
This is a smaller class of art majors than in years past — the class of 2016 has 17 art majors — but Partika emphasized that the size of the class has helped to make the students close as they worked on their projects throughout the semester.
“We really know each other’s work, and we’ve bonded because of it,” said Partika.
“I think it’s pretty cool, as an art major, that we have a class where our only job is to make a project we come up with and we feel good about,” said Joyce. “At the end of the day, we have a semester to just make something we’re proud of, and that’s a really great opportunity.”