Senior illustrations find success in “The Search”
In spite of the rain, some students were out celebrating the reception of the senior’s illustration exhibit, “The Search” at the Oglethorpe Gallery. Professors and students alike crowded the area and several of them even mingled outside the gallery braving the rain.
“The Search” is an exhibition put together by seven fourth-year students: Jessie Wei-Hsuen Chen, Sarah O’ Connell, Chieh Lee, Julia Lavigne, Melissa Fenik, Rhiannon Estwick and Pamela Kosin, who came up with the idea of showcasing their work as a group. Next to each of the artists’ works were written statements describing their inspiration, work and their plans for the future.
O’Connell’s work focused on her love for science and details, writing “as long as nature exists, I will never be at a lack of things to draw.” Estwick’s on the other hand geared toward her tongue-in-cheek humor and used her love for visual communications and details to create her work. Fenik drew inspiration from “traveling, sight-seeing and exploring nature.”
Chen’s pieces focused on botanical illustration while Lavigne used her experience as a babysitter and her love for Warhol and Matisse to show the more playful side of her work. Kosin combined art and social issues to come up with her editorial illustrations while Lee created caricatures of modern day issues, even drawing one of her professors, who gleefully pointed it out.
At the end of the gallery, the artists hung individual notebooks for guests to write down their thoughts. Most of the entries congratulated them on their success; some guests even wrote how proud they were to see the students grow as artists.
Even though the seven seniors all came from different backgrounds and had different styles, they still managed to successfully combine their differences to form “The Search,” a perfect title to describe their process of searching “for who they were, are and will be as artists, illustrators, and visual communicators.”
