Arts and Culture 6

Senior Art Exhibit: Inside Natalie Hall’s “While You Were”

INTERVIEW AND ART COMPILED BY KATHERINE MARSHALL ‘26 (SHE/HER) ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR

Senior Natalie Hall ‘23 displayed her art in the Van Every Smith Galleries during the last week of March, and she was the second of three art majors to have their work displayed this spring. Hall’s exhibit, titled “While You Were” consists of several paintings that combine images from magazines or archives with text from other sources. What follows is a brief interview with Hall about her work on display.

How long was this exhibit in the works? What all goes into this component of the art major experience at Davidson?

In the fall of senior year, art majors all take their 401 capstone class. Essentially the sole purpose of the class is to make the body of work you plan to show in the spring, and this is when most of my paintings were started. I completed or started the majority of my paintings during the fall semester and spent most of the spring fine-tuning them and then creating a couple smaller works. I work really slowly, so I found myself going back into most of my pieces throughout both semesters.

How have you seen your art change in your time at Davidson, and how did this change culminate in your exhibition?

My art changes a lot depending on what medium I use, but in painting, it’s always had a handful of consistencies. One of the works in my exhibition, “While You Were,” is actually from my sophomore year painting class. I chose to include it because despite it being an outlier in terms of when I made it, I thought it had a lot of similarities to the body of work I made this year.

I think my work has become more complex as I’ve learned and grown as an artist and student, but there are definitely consistencies that I think will always appear in my work.

In your artist statement, you mentioned the challenge of navigating copyright while creating your works, navigating ownership. How do you consider ownership when it comes think the concept of working with an image or reference until it becomes something unique is something a lot of artists do. Plus, I think after wrestling with copyright and ownership for a year, it would feel ironic to turn around and say that no one else could ever own “my” work or idea. With such intense media saturation resulting from social and digital media, I think it is going to be an increasingly common roadblock that artists must navigate around, and I’m curious to see how others will do it. to your own art? Do you feel like you own these works and/ or the idea behind them? How does that feel different from the ownership you mentioned that is solely in regard to the media usage of the original images?

How do you see your art, and even your senior exhibit in particular, playing a role in your life postgrad?

Ownership was something I spent a lot of time navigating this year, and I wouldn’t say I fully have it figured out yet. I feel like I own my works in the sense that I physically brought them to fruition, but I by no means feel like I own the idea behind them. I

As of right now, I don’t have any concrete plans that my art will play into. I’ll likely go back to school in a year or two to pursue a masters or PhD in clinical psychology, which doesn’t seem overtly tied to my career as an artist. However, I had no intention of studying art in college, and found myself a double major. I think it’s more of my identity than I tend to give it credit for, so I’m equally curious how it’ll end up coming into play. I think the practice of working and creating with the goal of a show was unlike anything I’ve been asked to do as a student, and it’s an experience I’ll take with me wherever I go. Having people see your art and engage in their own personal dialogue with it was something I’d never experienced, and that feeling of facilitating such a personal moment between strangers felt special. So although I don’t know where I’m going next, I don’t doubt that everything I’ve learned will find its place in my life.

2023 Frolics Artist Lineup

Rico Nasty

Known for her self described “sugar trap”, Rico Nasty rose to prominance in 2018 with her singles “Smack a Bitch” and “Poppin”. Nasty’s sophomore studio album Las Ruinas was released last summer. She’s an ambassador for Rihanna’s lingerie brand Savage X Fenty and has performed with Playboi Carti and Gucci Mane among others.

Tone Stith

Tone Stith is a contemporary R&B artist, his debut alum Can We Talk came out in 2017 and his second, FWM, was released in 2021. Stith’s music has featured artists such as H.E.R, Swae Lee and Quavo.