Finished with Fall

The semester has officially ended! As I type, I am curled up with my puppies and a yummy hot beverage in Chicago without any final responsibilities on my mind, which is a FANTASTIC feeling, especially considering the week I just had. Let’s start from the beginning.

Monday: My final critique for Figure Studio 2D was on Monday for 3-4 hours. Each of us put up all of our work to be critiqued by the class and our professor. It was great to see all of my work up from the semester, especially because I feel like I’ve come a long way since the beginning of my figure paintings. Also on Monday, I finished up getting ready for the big final critique on Tuesday!

Tuesday: The Big Day: Fine Art Seminar Review! Every fine arts major hung their pieces from throughout the semester (three projects, three pieces) in the fine arts exhibition hallway, and critiques took place all day. We had all of the fine arts students and 2 main professors as well as a few guest critics. The critique included our final pieces, which was the piece I was most excited about. I took photographs of some of my friends with very intense imagery: neutral/serious faces with (fake) blood splatter and drips. A lot of narrative can be pulled from these images, and while I could have definitely picked a direction for them to go, I thought that the images should speak for themselves since they are so intense, and the viewer should have full responsibility for the narrative. My critique was the last of the day, and probably the best and most intense one I’ve had. It went over time, and there was a lot of discussion on not only the aesthetics and hanging of the photographs, but the ambiguity and message that comes across. The discussion was lively and thought-provoking; exactly what I want to happen with my art! It was intense and emotional for me, but I’m so happy that my piece provoked such a response.

Midway through the day, we were treated to lunch on break from our critiques, but I couldn’t stay; I had to run across town to take my math final then run back for the rest of the critiques!

Wednesday: This day I got to play catch up and prepare for my last critique. I also finished up my science final, which was a take home multiple choice exam. At NESAD on Wednesday, I created my final piece for Contemporary Trends, and since it was the only thing I had left to do, I got to focus all my energy on it all day!

Thursday: This day was my last critique- Contemporary Trends. The critique, unlike Seminar, was not for all of our pieces from over the semester, but rather just for our final piece. The assignment was to take a previous prompt from the semester and reevaluate it; either create an entirely new piece or explore an idea that you didn’t have time for with a previous piece. I chose to revisit my Ephemeral Memory project, the first of which I wrote out “Remember” in sugar in the hallway, which disappeared throughout the day. I wanted to continue using food as a sculptural medium, since I’ve done a few things with it this semester and I like how temporary and relatable it is. I chose to create small sculptures representing my five senses from negative spaces on my body: the inside of my hand, my eye socket, my ear, my nose, and my lips. The sculptures were made of homemade “moon sand”- a mixture of flour and oil. The piece itself was its destruction; I made plexiglass boxes to hold the sculptures and filled these boxes with the same oil I used to make them, and they slowly disintegrated. With this piece, I wanted to show the relationship between senses and memory, and how both can fade but sometimes sensory memories remain.

This semester has been great and crazy and flew by. I feel like I’ve reached a turning point as an artist, and it’s very exciting. I’m looking forward to my classes next semester; there will be a lot of sculpture and a lot of art history! For now though, I’m going to do absolutely nothing for a while, and prepare myself for my trip to sunny South America in a week!!!