Seattle Cenral Library, Madison Sankovitz
Endemic Forms, Benjamin Pharris
Senior Year - "It's high time you had a promising idea", David Waite
Senior Year - ... and miles to go before I sleep, David Waite
Let's Just Forget, K.C. Gillaspie
"Untitled" from the series Celestial Grounds, Maddie Camilli
Three Teacups, Jilian O. Burgwald
Jurisprudence, Miranda Viorst
Artist Statement:
My work is the necessary pouring out of my most vulnerable visions. I feel a great
fullness in the experience of this life vibrantly lived, and when I overflow, a mixed-
media piece will paint itself with the help of my hands. My work therefore becomes
an expression of the vivacious world I see and experience, through a lens of my
singular personhood. It is both social commentary and personal narrative, both
expansive and deeply intimate. My art is an evolving, organic process, an invitation
to abandon all plans as it often begins with one material and ends with several
others. The vulnerability of the nude human body is so beautiful and honest that it
evokes a connective response from the viewer. My depiction of the human figure in
my work is both my intimate personal narrative of experience, and an effort to
explore and expose the plights facing each of our human experiences.
Seattle Cenral Library, Madison Sankovitz
Artist Statement:
In setting out to capture striking man-made architecture, I found myself inside the
top floor of Seattle Central Library. This building is a work of extreme beauty, with
sharply contrasting planes and unexpected angles. Looking to the outside world
through the windowpanes, I felt as though I was peering through something
extremely complicated yet beautiful. I have found this to be a meaningful metaphor
for me, as I attempt to conceptualize my daily surroundings through the complicated
filters of my mind. I wanted to capture the architecture as a set of rigid yet fluid lines
giving way to the sky beyond.
Endemic Forms, Benjamin Pharris
Artist Statement:
"Endemic Forms" is a study on the accord of triangles. The goal of the piece is to use
simple shapes and colors to form a complex network in which the viewer can get
lost. Within its squares, triangles and hexagons all interplay to create a series of
stable and shifting shapes. Try focusing on the form created by any boundary and
many more will pop out at you. No single division or structure can define the shape
of the work. Rather "Endemic Forms" exists as the sum of its parts in spite of the
patterns that may appear to emerge.
Ambedo, Lana Tunnicliff
Artist Statement:
I loved the look in this person's eyes, so I wanted to try to capture that in a portrait.
Ambedo is defined as a "melancholic trance in which you become completely
absorbed in vivid sensory details,” which I thought was a great word to describe their
look.
République, Tyler Schad
Artist Statement:
Place de la République is a major square in Paris, known for being a focal point of
public mourning and remembrance after two terrorist attacks occurred in the city in
2015. I first stumbled upon the square by accident, while wandering around with my
camera in search of moments to capture past the popular tourist destinations. It was
grungy. The central statue was covered with graffiti, with candles, notes of love, and
flowers scattered around the base. A half pipe was constructed near the edge of the
square, which is where I spent the next hour capturing photos of teenagers skating,
carelessly ignoring the small crowd observing them. This photo represents, to me,
the free nature of Parisians. After all of the chaos they have recently experienced,
they continue to make clear that nothing will disrupt their sense of solidarity.
Kid Flux, Tyler Schad
Artist Statement:
Over the course of several weeks, I sat down with over a dozen of my friends and
classmates to ask them about their childhoods–who they used to be, who they
expected to become when they went to college, and who they see themselves as
now. Having only known many of my now-closest friends since arriving at college,
our pasts have become more vulnerable pieces of our identities. Everyone I spoke
with told me something that surprised me. Many opened up about struggles that
have left open wounds. Regardless of who we are now, our pasts will always follow
us. Wearing these projections can be difficult, but can also make us more
comfortable with who we are.
Untitled #2, Alexis Nyeki
Artist Statement:
Rorschach #3 is one of the three photos in my "Exploring Rorschach" series that
delves into the theory behind this psychology approach. The description of the work
is left open to individuals' interpretations.
Untitled, Gabi Rudin
Artist Statement:
Untitled #1 is one of the few images from my "Darkness" series. "Darkness" explores
the space that it itself consumes and how people within the photos interact with its
properties.
Senior Year - "It's high time you had a promising idea", David Waite
Artist Statement:
2016 was my fourth year of college and my friends made me well aware it was their last.
However, as I (not graduating) prepared for my fifth year, I listened to incessant complaints my
colleagues spewed over the nasty precipice that was college graduation heading their way. Since
I was in my fourth year just like them they assumed I was just as ridiculously lost as them. While
I initially wasn’t concerned, they converted me to think at age 22 I should know what I was to do
with my life. In the falling action of my college career this eventually hit hard. Instead of
working toward a solution, I did the same as my peers: I lethargically stared around blank-faced
in excessive contemplation. Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I left my studio
at lunch for a plate of terrible, $3/lb Chinese food just for the free fortune. As these fortunes
collected some serious topography on my desk, I bought in the ludicrousness of what I was
mentally doing; I then bought 1,435 fortune cookies. Before each day of school, I filled my
backpack with my laptop then crammed all negative space with about 70 cookies. If I had a
break in the day, I went home to reload. I toted a cookie or wrapper in my hand at all times as if
it were my cell phone or lover’s hand. To some extent, I used this to show my friends the
obnoxiousness that everything they said to me backboned on their persistent fear of not knowing
their direction whilst coming from a position of extreme privilege; they were white, middle-
class, college going Boulderites afraid they might not make tons of money in life or have to pay
their own health insurance in a couple years. Even more ludicrous is that this did nothing to
appease my own frivolous concerns as I became increasingly entertained by each fortune. The
emotional response in conjunction with my always full stomach and sore, scraped gums is a
cyclical response to physical-emotional reality I endured through long nights with a hunched
back and a worried mind. The final display is a large tile of all the fortunes which is only a
visual, cerebral display of the process. As I finished the final few nasty cookies, the last three
fortunes read in order: “aren’t you glad you just had a great meal?”; “all thing come to an end”;
and in final irony . . . “would you like a 2nd?”
Senior Year - ... and miles to go before I sleep, David Waite
Artist Statement:
This self-portrait stems from a series where I studied myself in my senior year. My pieces
leading up to this studied functions of myself unsuccessfully through different media. These
pieces were loaded with too much extraneous information. Thus, instead of studying my capacity
to make art using other media, I study here myself using myself as the image. I enlarged my face
to fit the large canvas frame for multiple reasons; primarily, I did not wish to depict my full
form. If I included my full figure (especially nude) I would accidentally connote discussions of
self-reflection on body shape, insecurity, gender staging, confidence, and vulnerability. The
enlarging of this surface of flesh allowed me to explore the nuances of the contours of my
expression. This expression here is the expression I make when painting in order to slightly
squint my eyes in studying light and color, but there is more underneath this. I find portraits most
interesting when the expression is, if not exactly ambiguous, unexplained, thus the viewer
hopefully has a wider opportunity to study my nature of expression. Since I used a mirror for
reference, I am expressionless to refrain from moving all too much. More importantly, I did not
try to drain all expression out. If I had an extreme expression—laughing, crying, contemplative,
etc.—then that’s the only content the viewer would receive. Whereas, if it was presented
neutrally flat-footed, the viewer can read whatever evidence is embedded in their visage, like
laugh lines and furrows, in the same way that one can make assumptions about people they meet
at a cocktail party. Regardless of this, I do all of my painting at night thus the final product will
be a fairly exhausted capture of me. While staring at my own magnified expression for 14 hours
was a terrible exercise in vanity, I view this process similar to the experience of standing
exposed against large game in the wild. There is a sincere moment of reckoning summed up in
deep, distant eyes, which go often unstudied–unseen. The experience was uncomfortable,
frightening, exciting, exploratory, and hopefully honest. In many ways, this gaze is far too
insistent, and that’s why I challenged myself to paint my expression at five times its natural
scale. Working at this scale forced me to stare into my pores and creases, my inherent nature, and
confront my hand and mind’s capability to capture this. In summation, I hoped to reach full
concentration and contemplation in this piece in order to meet intensity with intensity. I hoped to
discover as much as I can about this painting as this painting has discovered about me. In the
end, if I rendered this painting accurate or false and the painting tells me so, self-portraits still
serve as postulates of growth like a time lapse of character and craftsmanship in the larger
timeline of my career.
Taraxacum, Schuyler DeMarinis
Artist Statement:
This print is based on a common invasive weed that you see everywhere you walk whether it is
in your garden, lawn, or between the cracks in the sidewalk. The image is of Taraxacum, also
known as the dandelion, which came to North America with the settlers from Europe and quickly
invaded the continental West even before the West had become established. Many would find
this weed to be noxious, but others find other uses for this invasive plant. The dandelion roots, as
well as the leaves, have many medicinal purposes, and when one goes to eradicate their yard of
this species they should keep this in mind. Yes, the dandelion takes nutrients and water from the
surrounding florae and it is beneficial to remove it. It can also be valuable to eat and make teas
out of, so before dumping it into your compost do a little research and discover its benefits. Like
the process of printmaking, and especially monotype, it pays to make use of your discard. Some
of the best prints are created through ghost images on newsprint and mop-ups of ink on paper.
Strangely enough, the weeding of a dandelion does not stray far from the techniques of
printmaking. Keep in mind it pays to be adventurous.
Let's Just Forget, K.C. Gillaspie
Artist Statement:
My work is a physical depiction of how I escape from the real world. These two gauntlets are a
representation of the two forms of escapism I use. One is my art work, and the other is the
influence of media such as TV shows and movies. The genre of fantasy influences me the most
as I am drawn to the armor and period clothing that they wear. Another influence that connects
my work with the world is basing the design of the armor off of animals that have natural
protection abilities. The Leopard Tortoise’s shell influenced this work. I imagined someone
using these forgotten, larger than life gauntlets as a way to hold a clothing line. I wanted to create
something that felt left behind and desolate by making the ground take hold of these gauntlets,
showing that they have been buried here for a long time. I wanted them to seem forgotten but
still have that human interaction. These humans forget this place the same way I choose to forget
the world around me. For me, all those big events around the world don’t drive me to ignore the
world, but my own inability to deal with my own life struggles does. I wanted to express in my
art how easy it is to forget and to get lost in much simpler things like our own imagination.
Dilation, Thinh Dinh
Artist Statement:
This print depicts a male in various scenes which show him at different stages of jumping. The
first shows him standing on a rooftop peering over the edge, surveying the scene. The second and
third, respectively, reveal the male beginning his descent and then freefalling. He remains
roughly in the same position throughout all 3 panels; the different and varying perspectives
woven into individual panels are an indication of his plunge. The experienced speed of the
passage of time is not constant as time can seem to fly or slow down depending on the
circumstances we are in. "I saw my life flash before my eyes." This neurological condition,
called tachypsychia, alters the perception of time, usually induced by physical exertion, drug use,
or a traumatic event. Survivors of life-and- death situations often report that events occur at a
more dilated pace, objects fall more slowly, and they're capable of complex thoughts in what
would normally be the blink of an eye. I'm interested with the compression of time and space.
"Untitled" from the series Celestial Grounds, Maddie Camilli
Artist Statement:
I look up in awe of the space, the vast emptiness and abundance simultaneously filling every
molecule of the sky. I look down with the same awe. There is beauty on the surface and mystery
of what’s underneath; it is an entire galaxy of its own, solid, yet just as deep as the sky above. It
is never-ending, spotted, speckled and filled with aurora tones in the shadows of the craters,
mountain minis, and artifacts Mother Nature left behind. So often do we hear “Look up at the
clouds,” or “Look at all the stars out tonight.” How often do we say, “Look down. Look at the
galaxy beneath our feet?” A celestial being exists within reach, physically tangible, and, though
we will never know its whole story, it is willing to share. It is the ground.
Three Teacups, Jilian O. Burgwald
Artist Statement:
These three teacups are part of a tea set that started as a project for my wheel throwing
class. The parts of the tea set ultimately represented members of my family and traditions
that I grew up with. The teacups represent my siblings and me.
