A Season in the School of Visual Arts’ Gallery 5

September 5 – October 13

The first October show featured three projects with BU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

The CFA AR 535 Drawing Trees course was created by Assistant Professor of Painting Breehan James “to highlight how drawing can be used as a vehicle to slow down and study, in this case reconsidering our relationship to trees.” Also that “through this process of drawing and the result (the drawing) both are seen as research.” Students also take on an independent research project in this course & UROP. This takes on many forms across the sciences, arts & humanities including the medicinal properties of trees, economic & ecological benefits, poetry, and a collection of visual culture.

Senior Painter Jayna Mikolitis (CFA’22) was inspired by a weaving workshop with Assistant Professor-Art Education Felice Amato, to create “Weaving as Metaphor: An arts investigation of female labor, memory retention, and storytelling through the fiber arts.” Goals of this project include the study the practice of weaving, and to reevaluate how we think about the female body, female labor, and how weavings can function as artifacts that engage in storytelling. These weavings are on display at BU’s Center for Teaching & Learning, and received support from BU Arts Initiative.

Assistant Professor-Graphic Design Mary Yang co-founded with Zhongkai Li, Founder & Director of IS A GALLERY, “Radical Characters,” which a study group & curatorial project that explores the relationship between design & culture in the Chinese & Chinese American community.  Junior Graphic Designer Danielle Chang (CFA’23) helped research, develop, and design the project. “Typography is the arrangement and presentation of a text of words. Using Chinese typography as a tool allows designers to understand the ideogrammatic language expressing Chinese culture. By creating an open space that features Chinese and Chinese American designers’ work, we hope to form a dialogue and community around design & culture through educational experiences.” Its first exhibition, “Radical Return,” was on view at IS A GALLERY in Shanghai and BU Art Galleries’ Stone Gallery in November and December.

October 14 – 23

The pieces included in this exhibition are from 12-15 hours on a sustained, complex still life painting in CFA AR 241 Painting II. Senior Lecturer Jill Grimes says, “every semester these paintings exceed my expectations. Students really get engaged with the formal aspects of building a painting, and also have the chance to develop a little world of their own making. The paintings are always more interesting that the set ups they are working from.”

October 24 – November 6

“The worst night of your life” by Junior Painting major Alessandro Lopresti (CFA’23) represents, according to the artist, “things I like, and things I don’t like, and things that have happened.”

November 7 – 13

Senior Graphic Designers under the instruction of James Grady, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, answered a series of questions for this show. “Design involves questions. They are given as part of a brief and constitute what professional designers call a ‘problem.’” A designer is trained to re-frame such questions in their own terms before trying to answer them. Sometimes the questions are given to you, but other times you have to create the questions. There are big questions like, ‘what is Graphic Design?’ ‘What does the future of Graphic Design look like?’ ‘How do we use Graphic Design to create impact?’ Other times there seem like small questions like, ‘what typeface, color, or format should my project take?’ This project is all about asking questions.

Each student developed a series of questions and worked in groups to translate their questions into this exhibition, and the final output had the production restraints that prints must be made on the RISO printer, or cut on the vinyl cutter.

Student Groups
Uncriticized: Mei Asada, Fiona Wada-Gill, Cindy Chan, Tammie Kim
Reflection: Kara Chen, Ashlie Dawkins, Geo Ferrari, Katie So, Jonathan Vogel
Direct Shot: Clay Allen, Davide Bianchi, Kylie Carroll, Jonathan Pinchera
Out of Bounds: Chloe Carson, Joyce Hu, Antonella Jones, Jayna Mikolaitis, Ken Rudolph
Fluid Design: Aidan Ishii, Sherry Ma, Sissi Wu, Miranda Xu

November 14 – 20

Two collaborative student exhibitions were on display from SVA’s Contemporary Issues I course, taught by Associate Professor of Art Lucy Kim.

 I Think About My Mermaid Being Beautiful

The kitchen is the first place that a child encounters the artistic act of making, and the artist spends the remainder of their days trying to replicate that first experience of creation, to make something out of nothing, to make something beautiful, and flavorful.

Artists: Evelyn Bi, Julia Diaz, Madison Flaherty, Felix Huang, Alessandro Lopresti, Ligaia Meyer, Shamayam Sullivan

Couch

It is a place to sit after several hours of work. It is the witness to conversations and dinner parties. It is the color orange folded into a form, the centerpiece of an everyday ritual. It is where we wait for a moment until the ding of the elevator prompts us back into living. It is a totally invisible piece of furniture, the center of attention, the overlooked background. It is an Ikea product bought in bulk. It is singular and completely common. It is nothing until we choose to make it mean something.

Artists: Lily Fine, Liran Hu, Yaming Jiang, Dilyara Kuanysheva, Asjha Malcolm, Jenna Riedl, Rachel Schneider, Kathryn Schuldenberg

Taught by Lecturer Jeffrey Nowlin, this installation features two projects from the Foundation Sculpture semester. The first project is “a study of scale and materials,” where students selected a vegetable to work with in clay. “The focus was to observe with a clay model, and then practice building an armature for a larger plaster version. Students were encouraged to examine form and visual weight in addition to texture and finally, color.”

The second project, “thought about object inspiration and material possibilities with cardboard.” Discussing and investigating “the potential of using a simple, readily available product like cardboard as a sculptural material.” Students found an object and “considered how to interpret that object, either addressing scale or how to reinvent the object into a similar but alternate form.”

With both projects, students learned how to construct armatures and think about building from the inside out, both utilizing planning and improvisation. The projects “brought out each person’s unique planning approach and problem solving abilities. I’ve witnessed a tremendous amount of creativity and problem solving, developing aesthetic and patience!”

December 5, 2021 – January 22, 2022

Daily Small Deaths features work by Junior Painting major Emma Schmidt (CFA’23) and Junior Painting & Graphic Design major Asjha Malcolm (CFA’23).

Daily Small Deaths is a group show focusing on “how we as individuals fill the space around us, and how that space is reflected back in how we carry ourselves. We additionally explore how our intrinsic bodily fatigue both feeds on and is repelled by the spaces we construct and swaddle ourselves in.”