By Sky Pinkett
Staff Writer
The season of great art continues as the College’s student art galleries recently held the opening reception on Nov. 12 for four more talented seniors as part two in the Senior Solo Series.
This line up of seniors included Anna Cook, Dylan Manfre, Sky Stewart and Doris Yan, each of whom brought their own styles, techniques, materials and themes to the unique showcase.
There was truly something for every type of viewer in the exhibits. For our Christmas lovers, Dylan Manfre’s “Christmas in October” brings the holiday cheer early on campus. As viewers step into his exhibition, strings of overhead lights and snowflakes, snow sprayed windows, a large inflatable snowman and so much more transport the viewer into the North Pole itself.
“Christmas has always been my favorite holiday,” Manfre explained to The Signal. “I’m not really crazy about Halloween anymore. I stopped going trick or treating, I never went to any more Halloween parties and I’m not a horror person. So all of that just made me totally gear into Christmas super early.”
Interspersed among the Christmas decorations were photos depicting the chaotic holiday aisles to be found in stores such as Walmart, Lowe’s and TJ Maxx. Explaining these photos, Manfre said, “The whole show is called Christmas in October because I’m viewing how every retail store does Christmas in October. I go into every store and just check it out, anticipating all the decorations and the gifts I want.”
After spending time in Manfre’s Christmas wonderland, the viewer is treated to exploring the delicious Chinese dishes that Yan depicts in her vertical painting series “A Lingering Taste.” Fruits and food platters such as mangosteen, longan and dim sum are painted on long swaths of canvas paper, making the foods feel as though they’ve been recorded on scrolls.
“In my Capstones, I’ve been focusing on my culture and what it means to me,” Yan said. “For this semester, I wanted to focus on the foods that I have a lot of nostalgia for, either because the food I had when I was in China can’t be found here, or because they're seasonal foods.”
Yan’s paintings go beyond depicting these foods as they look in real life. Using bright colors and animated layering, Yan captures her nostalgia for these foods by portraying them as fantastical and vibrant.
“I wanted to push myself, experiment and have fun with fruit… I wanted it to have this whimsical vibe because it is from how I felt eating them in my childhood.“ Yan continued. “I have a strong connection with my culture and wanted to represent it more because there’s not enough representation of Chinese culture due to the xenophobic views in the Western audience. I wanted to spin a positive light on it.”
Doris Yan’s “A Lingering Taste.” (Photo courtesy of Doris Yan)
While celebration and light emitted from the work of Manfre and Yan, a darker atmosphere awaits viewers as they walk to the other end of the AIMM building where Cook and Stewart show off their incredible individual techniques through two very different series of paintings.
Cook’s “Considering the Portrait” pushes the limits of conventional portraiture painting, mixing acrylic and oil mediums, and painting on a blend of traditional canvases and tempered hardboard. Cook’s paintings are at once hazy and striking, as she collaborated with photographer Knox Bogdan to interpret his photos in her own style.
Anna Cook’s “Considering the Portrait.” (Photo courtesy of Anna Cook)
“I did portrait work because it’s the biggest challenge in painting, or the hardest thing to paint,” Cook told The Signal when explaining her choice to focus on portraiture. “I like the challenge.”
The subjects in Cook’s portraits are painted realistically, but their surroundings place them in a world of color unlike what can be found in our natural world. Parts of the portrait’s faces can be seen glitching, dripping, smearing and out of focus.
“I’m not satisfied with photorealism,” Cook declared. “I want there to be an abstraction. But simple abstraction is also not enough. To abstract the figure, that’s what I’m really interested in. Riding that line between abstraction and realism is very interesting to me.”
Across from Cook sits Stewart’s “BREAKNECK,” a series of horizontal paintings that, as the title suggests, moves its subject matter at breakneck speed. Rich colors blend together to create a chaotic world that refuses to slow down, even to the detriment of the lone figures depicted in some of the paintings that seem to get swept up in the tornado of yellows, reds, greens and blues.
Sky Stewart’s “BREAKNECK” (Photo courtesy of Sky Stewart)
“I think that as a senior art student, it’s really scary to think about how I took four years of my life to go to art school and it’s one of the least secure majors you can have,” Stewart explained. “Everyone’s telling you you’re going to be a starving artist. I wanted to paint the feeling of being helpless to the change. Even though change can be a good thing, it feels like it can sweep you off a little bit.”
The viewer's eyes are swept from painting to painting, as Stewart’s horizontal brushstroke technique brings a movement that is impossible to keep up with, distorting the faces and bodies of the people, a house with trees, and a skull.
“It’s a lot of not knowing as an art student, and as people.” Stewart said. “I feel like it’s also just how all the change is just so quick. That’s mainly what I wanted to put across too because you could just fall into something on a whim. It can be good and also bad.”
Stewart’s artwork surely captures the uncertainty of the future, but what is certain is that the College has a boiling pot of fresh and original talent to offer the art scene and the world at large. This exhibit will be available for viewing from now till Dec. 5 in AIMM rooms 119 and 111.
