A Language of Their Own: A Preview of the Art Major Show

The maze known as Cummings is a space that very few of the student body attempt to understand, however many have made this building their surrogate home and studio for the past 4 years. The senior art major show titled “Fragment + Process,” opening on May 1 at 5 p.m. in the galleries on the second and third floors, contains selections from the intensive year long exploration that all senior majors are required to undergo to complete their undergraduate experience. I was lucky enough to be present during the beginning stages of set up to talk with a few of the art majors about their year-long endeavors.

Cascading ceramics greet the viewer upon entry into the Joanne Toor Cummings Art Gallery on the second floor of Cummings. Esther Mehesz ’15 uses this medium to explore her familial and cultural history in Hungary. The repeated forms she utilizes throughout her work “are antique teacups from a particular tea set… [that] hold sentimental meaning to the past for my parents.” Her work is intensely concerned with connecting her experiences in embodying her cultural heritage in both the United States and Hungary. Utilizing arches, Mehesz notes that it is meant to symbolically “bridge the gap between the two homes that I have.” The rest of her work is also on display in the Manwaring Gallery.

On the left of the gallery, AnnaLeah Cogan ’15 displays a few pieces from her final collection of work. Interested in visualizing animals and using photography as her primary medium, Cogan explores the intrinsic and longstanding relationship between humans and horses. Her primary interest lies in “trying to express the fragmented, dreamlike, memory of a horse,” harkening back to her childhood when she would imagine “wild horses running across the hills” in fits of sleeplessness. Some of the first animals to be represented in art, horses have a longstanding history captivating the imaginations of artists, and Cogan’s own personal history and intrigue with equines is no different. Intimate portraits of these creatures document her “minute interactions between human and horse” that visually embody her connection to these majestic creatures.

Moving forward into the second floor gallery, Avery Whitlock ’15 covers the middle of the gallery with her detailed drawings of birds. Similarly interested in nature, Whitlock is deeply invested in understanding the relationship between humans and animals through her artistic production. Her focus is what she calls the “gray morality of conservation science.” Her work focuses on the seemingly paradoxical nature of education and conservation. Interested in animation, her repetitive visuals bring to mind the toll that the human need for education has taken on wildlife and elicits the viewer to ask ethical questions about their interactions with wildlife. The back walls of the gallery also display her work.

Toward the back left-hand corner of the gallery, Eavey Newton ’15 displays one of her pieces. Newton explains that this piece is about “transformation through the process of fitness,” featuring casts of her own body parts as “shed skin,” a video installation that mimics “the trance of being in the gym,” and finally the “transformed product” – the same body parts as on the other side, but based on the form of a body builder. Her work is also on display in the white box on the third floor and explores the relationship between the town of New London and Connecticut College. This project is tied in with her CISLA senior project, which is about “connecting cities through new media art.”

Upon turning to the left and venturing into the the Manwaring Gallery, one happens upon the work of Jennifer Jackson ’15. Focusing in an innovative field known as “social design,” she situates herself as an intermediary whose “role is to interpret and respond to the data and information I gather, giving space for a population’s voice.” Her work explores “the process of human development,” drawing parallels between the process of design and the process of maturation. Her work encompasses a collaborative effort between her participants and herself as an artist and thus is representative of three constituencies: childhood, college student and post-collegiate adult. In the gallery one will see a cloth mural, a sound piece and a floor sculpture that represents each of these respective groups.

Jeff Deng’s ’15 work is located on the third floor. He notes, “My thesis is about investigating my role in sneakerhead culture.” Interrogating his personal history and his former hobby of collecting sneakers, he finds it ironic that sneakerheads “never wear” the objects that they spend so much money on. His interest in this project also comes from his ethnic background, stating that he is also interested in thinking about how sneakers are made in China and “his relationship with his identity.” His work underscores the inherent tension in consuming these objects that are manufactured in these terrible environments, and also how these objects are items that conspicuously mark one’s status and elicit knock-offs.

On the second floor at the far end of the gallery is where Olivia Wilcox ‘15 situates herself in the space of the senior art show. Citing references such as Joseph Cornell, Mark Dion, On Kawara and Andy Warhol, she examines the very idea of the “thing.” Wilcox notes that her body of work came out of her interest in “literary theory as it applies to ideas of commodity and more specifically Bill Brown’s thing theory,” wherein Brown observes that objects exist in a liminal space between “animate and inanimate.” Her work toys with the philosophical idea of the “thing” and explores the lifespan of objects.

These are just a few of the artists who will be participating in the senior art show. After a whole year of working in such close proximity to each other, what is striking is just how vastly different and individualistic each of these students’ theses are. Each one has created a unique visual language all their own, and that is no small feat. •