Senior art students showcase work for charity

Review

Traditionally with the Department of Visual Arts and New Media, there are two senior shows at the end of the spring semester. These shows are the culmination of four years of hard work for students graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree and a select few students with Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees.

Senior Drawing and Painting major Amy Barber set out to organize a third show, separate from the Fredonia campus to incorporate other BA students. The end result was "The BA Show." This show incorporated six artists in total who raised over $200 for the Adams Art Gallery through fundraising and giving them the moment in the spotlight they deserve. The show opened on April 23rd and will be up through next week at the Adams Art Gallery, located at 600 Central Avenue in Dunkirk.

Tara Catalina

Ms. Catalina's work is a unique blend of the personal, the humorous, the photographic and the documentary. In addition to having large format graphic design pieces, including Design Methodology Poster, wherein she visually illustrates the creative process, Ms Catalina also presents the lighter side of graphic design with the invented concept and visual construction for Sean Connery Cologne Series for Armani. Additionally, the artist has a series of small photographs present, some of which are documentary and black and white and others which evoke the artist's evidently playful nature with people making silly faces.

Rachael Walden

Ms. Walden's work presents a stricter and traditional showing of graphic design work which naturally complements the work of Ms. Catalina. The artist's work can be seen as whimsical, with swirling, intricate and abstracted details with pieces such as the Nature Writing SUNY Fredonia Promotional Flier as well as defined, bright and abstracted as seen in Earth Week Fredonia Promotional Flier. The work is clean and inviting and to one unfamiliar to design, betrays little to the viewer about who the artist actually is as opposed to other disciplines such as painting.

Ariana Skipp

On the reverse side of the wall that displays Ms. Catalina's work is a section of Ms. Skipp's paintings. There are two of her current painting series on display; "Torn Red" and "Open Arms", both of which deal with her experiences studying abroad in Turkey. "Torn Red" expresses cultural juxtapositions in Western fashion and Turkish attitudes towards women and what is deemed socially acceptable behavior. Each painting of an unidentified woman shows her lounging in different poses in western and non-western fashion and because of the unique cropping of each painting, makes the viewer feel as though they are viewing an intimate moment as well as an objectified body.

Amber Pasiak

Tucked away in the back of the gallery, is the work of photographer Amber Pasiak. The room which her photos occupy has been altered to resemble a living room, complete with baby dolls, a swing and an overstuffed sitting chair. Her work presents a study of the collective identity of the women in her family, they are also larger in format and depict intimate scenes with multiple, blurred exposures. The photographs were shot with a Holga camera, which adds to the distortion and fuzziness of the finished product. There was an additional audio component to the environment created by the artist which was older people speaking about their lives, which adds to the overarching context of the pieces.  

Casey Falco

Ms. Falco's work shares the space adjacent to that of Ms. Pasiak and similar to her work, Falco totally utilizes the space provided to her for her artwork. Immediately noticeable was a spray painted pattern which echoes the same pattern within her brightly hued paintings of cerulean and hot pink. Her paintings go back and forth between the brightly hued nautical theme, consisting mostly of jellyfish and a large format painting of elephants in the same jewel tones that serves to illustrate her mastery with brushwork. The most striking feature of Ms. Falco's room is a huge, hanging installation of hand-crafted jellyfish, made from cloth and various fabrics, which are suspended from the ceiling by transparent fishing line.

Amy Barber

Ms. Barber's work is back in the main section of the gallery. She has over a dozen paintings present, whose theme revolves around blurry, abstracted images taken from old home movies from her childhood. Most paintings were paired with an audio component, taken from the videos, as well as a secondary visual texture taken from her old home to give each painting a context. Her paintings create a captivating environment of nostalgia, not unlike the other artists present, and the audio component often involves parents speaking to children and evokes an undeniable sense of family, which can be easily translated to any viewer.