Senior Art + Design Galleries: Finding FORM.
Late each semester, the Beard Arts Center’s Williams Art Galleries become host to a variety of impressive and often eclectic art created by graduating Art + Design students. As part of their capstone, each student must hold a gallery exhibition. This serves the practical purpose of helping them gain experience with the gallery process, while also providing an opportunity to showcase the culmination of their work. For many, those end up being on campus in Beard Hall’s Williams Art Galleries.
Two students who worked with Gallery Curator Daniel Hall this semester are Makenzie Cooper and Bella St. John. Cooper is a photography major focused on wedding photography, while St. John is a fine art major working in painting. For both, this semester’s gallery show serves as a culmination of their academic and artistic journey at IWU.
Photography has been a passion for Cooper since the age of 12. By the time she graduated high school, she knew she wanted to be a freelance photographer. Through the encouragement of her mother, Cooper looked into schools outside of her home state of Ohio and struck upon IWU. After being accepted, she quickly felt supported by the people she was in contact with. While visiting campus, she felt the Lord calling her to IWU.
St. John, meanwhile, visited many schools before ultimately settling on IWU as the correct choice for her. For as long as she can remember, creating art has simply been a part of her life and the welcoming community she found in IWU’s art program helped foster her love of art further. The difficulty came in deciding which art major specifically she wanted to pursue, but by the start of her junior year she had firmly settled on Studio Arts. While switching majors created setbacks, she appreciates having gotten to explore different fields of art to truly find the best fit for her.
Both Cooper and St. John found their respective places in Art + Design’s community, with former professor Marcus Doyle being a trusted mentor to Cooper and Professor Bruce Campbell inspiring and encouraging St. John. Doyle was able to help Cooper overcome fears regarding her artistic gifts, improve as a photographer, and gave her personal advice and life lessons that have helped shape her into the artist she is today. Doyle’s eventual departure was a difficult time for Cooper, but through her resilience and the support of others she has continued on, thankful for the lessons Doyle and other professors have taught her. St. John, meanwhile, has overcome challenges of self-doubt, burnout, and the temptation to compare her artwork and abilities to those of others. Through prayer and hard work, St. John has been able to move past these challenges and be both at peace with and confident in her artistic abilities.
During the first four weeks of their capstone course, St. John and Cooper crafted their official proposals for what their exhibition would include and what it would look like. This process includes mocking up the exhibit in a three-dimensional model to get as accurate a sense of the potential layout of pieces as possible, as well as collaborating with their advisor to ensure that the finished product would be the best it could be. This process, overseen by Hall, is one which can be challenging for students sometimes, with some students changing direction part of the way through or needing to get specific pieces vetted. While these are not always the case, any small changes St. John and Cooper made in creating their galleries had to be described and approved by their advisors.
In addition to Cooper and St. John, three other students had their work featured in galleries. While all five began their capstone class with no knowledge of what it took to create an exhibition, all five were able to overcome their individual challenges, creating exhibitions that were collaboratively called FORM.
Art therapy major Grace Luidhardt’s exhibit was a series of paintings based on experiences she had this past summer. Locations included Acadia, Yellowstone, Tetons, and other national parks which served as the inspiration for work. These paintings ranged from small pieces done in a notebook, to much larger wall-hanging ones—some of which were directly based upon the notebook pieces.
Illustration major JC Charles, meanwhile, presented art and concepts from an illustrated narrative he’s in the earliest stages of creating, featuring key characters and moments from the story. This consisted of five large character posters, smaller pieces with art and descriptions of each character, and a faux newspaper page with further narrative information.
Art education major Keely Grangier’s gallery exhibition was centered around a set of clay jars with crochet tops she had made. Each jar’s crochet sections have different stiches at the top to emphasize the uniqueness of how God transforms everyone, with ends sticking out so more could be crocheted onto them, to highlight how God’s work on us continues throughout our entire life.
This semester’s gallery reception was held on Saturday, November 23. As part of the reception, each student presented their work and spoke about their creative process and intentions with the work. For Cooper and St. John, these presentations served as the culmination of journeys both fraught with challenges at times, but also supported by the encouragement and mentorship of faculty, family, and God.
Through pushing herself to learn her camera as well as possible with the help of former professor Doyle, Professor Andrew Kondrats, and former professor Chantal Sallade, Cooper was able to create the series of wedding photos she filled her gallery exhibition space with. Born out of a passion for the beauty of marriage and the reflection of the image of God in every person, Cooper will soon be departing IWU to begin the photography business she’s spent the past several years working towards.
St. John’s presentation, meanwhile, serves both as the culmination of four years spent refining her artistic style and emphasizes her love of experimentation, creation, and hard work. The specific series of paintings she chose to highlight in FORM. are centered around the concept of the inner child. Through these works, St. John attempted to capture a spirit of boundless, child-like creativity and joy, with one painting being a collaboration between herself and her young niece, and the rest deconstructing and reconstructing the style and elements employed. It is St. John’s hope that through both her art and the other pieces presented in FORM. the community might be impacted by the sentimental and introspective elements of each artist’s work as well as enjoying the various aesthetic styles.
As they and their peers prepare to enter their final semester at IWU, both Cooper and St. John reflect on their time at the university. “I was pushed to think deeper and trust God instead of leaning on my own understanding,” Makenzie Cooper said. “I was encouraged to try new things and think outside the box by Marcus Doyle and several others.” Bella St. John shared similar sentiments, saying, “Throughout my experience at IWU, the Art + Design community has helped and encouraged me tremendously in times of doubt or uncertainty. I’ve felt encouragement from faculty and peers both while facing self-doubt and while struggling to know what to do next with a piece of art. Their gracious words of encouragement along the way helped lead me to this point. I’m always grateful for their support.”
To learn more about IWU Art + Design, visit indwes.edu/academics/cas/school-of-arts-and-humanities/division-of-art-and-design
