2021 Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Exhibition
Foreword
Class of 2021
Perhaps it is worth stating- it has been a difficult year. I think that I can safely say that this is the first group of undergraduates to go through their senior year in masks and to have entered all rooms marked with maximum occupancy. We can, at very least, say that we have taught them to measure, even if only one dimension- six feet. And they have learned the new aesthetics of floor stickers, the unflinching grid of Zoom, and the transparency of plastics. If a new aesthetic emerges in the upcoming years then we may have some sense of where it began, but can take little credit for its evolution. Through all of that, this group continued to develop their personal practices, adapting to new forms of making, pushing to materially and conceptually realize their visions, and having the courage and tenacity to work, and to make work, that realizes the importance of creating and viewing art and design in the physical world; as physical experience. The group’s artworks are a testament to their resilience; overcoming the shutting down of their work-spaces last Spring; overcoming the challenges of distanced learning; of being acutely aware of the body, and bodies, in space; of the doubt and uncertainty that this time has brought coupled with the doubt and uncertainty that any artist feels when they are trying to make meaningful, impactful work. Ephemera is defined as “things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time.” This sense of temporality and fragility seems appropriate to the 1 moment, and it certainly does feel brittle and fleeting, but maybe the other side of the ephemeral is carpe diem, the recognition that one should “seize the day,” and this group should relish in their ability to continue to create from here on, and to recognize the delicate significance of lived experience and the aesthetic world. We have been impressed and encouraged by your journey through this complicated time. You have proven that you have the resiliency to invent in uncharted waters. Take what you have learned, and use the flexibility that you have discovered to go forward from here and to realize your visions.
-Lance Winn Professor Department of Art & Design University of Delaware May 2021
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Program Philosophy
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Colleen Anderson
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Esther Lee
The Fine Arts Program combines the best of creative research and hands-on experimentation. Students have the opportunity to experience animation, ceramics, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video.
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Gretchen Bidic
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Mathea Madsen
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Jeffrey Churchman
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Catherine McKnight
With faculty guidance, students choose their own pathway of study that enables them to develop into an active creative force. Students are empowered to impact culture in a meaningful way and positively change the world.
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Charlie Clery
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Julia Metzner
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Briana Henry
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Michaela O’Connor
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Nate Hissong
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Ronald Purnell
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Madison Horton
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Nate Robison
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Catherine Kolaski
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Shayna Saltzman
The goal is to educate students in the craft, culture, and theory of contemporary fine arts to prepare them for successful careers in the arts while learning how to live with a creative awareness.
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The BFA Fine Arts Class of 2021
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Colleen Anderson Colleen is a twenty-something maker of things, mainly digital artworks and physical paintings. Although her physical paintings are more personal expressions of growth, femininity, and spirituality, she documents her digital artistic explorations and shares them online with people who connect with the messages of mental wellness and love. She plans to continue her education in the humanities and looks forward to expanding her creative community + artistic skill set wherever she goes.
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Gretchen Bidic
Gretchen Bidic is an artist who has recently found inspiration in the unexpected nature of the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, isolation, anxiety, and confusion nip at ankles while each of us try to keep a step ahead to maintain sanity. In this exhibition of Gretchen’s work, she experimented with multiple materials, and bright colors to create an active play box that encourages the capture of pleasant and helpful spirits. While creating this work, Gretchen drew inspiration from the study of geology.
Sympathetic Response (2021) 36” x 11 x 40” Wood, Mixed Media
Fossil 01(2021) 6” x 6” Acrylic on canvas
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GEO 01 (2021) 30” x 24” Acrylic on canvas
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Jeffrey Churchman
Jeffrey is a sculptor and photographer who is deeply influenced by the study of light and movement, especially in his three dimensional work. He finds inspiration in simple machines and the combination of multiple mediums. He explores movement, action and reaction, space, and longevity in his kinetic sculpture work. Recently, he has expanded his practice into new mediums, including two dimensional animation. This in turn influenced his sculptural work as a way to display these animations in three dimensional ways. His work has been featured in multiple student shows at the University of Delaware, as well as in Saba IV shows at the Delaware Contemporary.
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Charlie Clery Charlie Clery is a digital media artist specializing in narrative storytelling and other independent work. Charlie is the author and illustrator of the sci-fi webcomic series Of Blood and Tephra as well as the indie horror role playing game TinkerQuarry. Charlie is also known for their illustrated memoir Becoming Known, a Queer retrospective on living as a transgender student during a turbulent age of human rights injustice. Becoming Known was created for the 2020 UD Undergraduate Summer Fellows program. In 2021 Charlie was a runner-up for the Lynn Herrick Sharp Award, with a participating installation at the Delaware Contemporary along with award winner Esther Lee and other undergraduate seniors.
Becoming Known: A Memoir (2020) 7” x 10.5” | Digital print booklets
OBAT: The Land Cover (2021) 7” x 10.5” | Digital print booklets (&) 11” x 17” | Digital Print
Riley Black: Paleontologist Spotlight (2021) 17” x 11” Digital print coated 100lbs 10
The Maledictions (2020) 11” x 17” | Digital print coated 100lbs
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Briana Henry
Briana Henry is an artist with an interest in community engagement. She is both an art mentor and an Imagining America: Joy of Giving Something Fellow alumnus. Briana has a passion for photography and video, which she explores with Henry Productions LLC attending events, weddings, graduations, and parties and capturing the moment. In 2018, Briana had her first exhibition of portraits titled The Women of Consequence, featuring University of Delaware dancers emulating historic African American women. Following in 2019, she traveled to Idaho to work on the project Arrivals: What’s Left Behind, What Lies Ahead, documenting the stories of refugees, immigrants, and Native Americans through an 8x10 large format camera and video interviews. In 2020, she created her own project Bring Us To Light which showed appreciation and brought awareness to the LGBTQ+ community at UD. This project consisted of virtual photoshoots and interviews to help shine light on them and share their stories so their voices can be heard as an underrepresented community. Briana continues to broaden her knowledge in the visual arts and seeks to be an art educator in the future. Hood Phases Photograph
The Magical Trial of Heartbreak Photograph
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Magical Trial of Heartbreak Photograph
Magical Trial of Heartbreak Photograph 2021 BACHELORS OF FINE ARTS
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Nate Hissong Nate Hissong is an illustrator, printmaker, animator, and a sarcastic critic of the shortcomings of modern day power structures. Nate uses fantastical imagery to create worlds that satirize our own, while simultaneously emphasizing the cruelties within it. He draws inspiration from the human condition’s inner turmoil, and seeks to create vessels for these experiences in order to gain a truer understanding of the self and humanity as a whole. While his work is usually dark in tone, his innate optimism aims to provide refuge for others. His work creates a sense of support in the darkness by using humor, creatures, and other oddities of intrigue.
GoBoBlin’s Guide to Goblins (Zine) 15” x 22” Screenprinting/Water Color
NuGod 3’ x 4’ Screenprint (in progress)
GoBoBlin’s Ware 20” x 15” Digital Illustration
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Purgatory 8’ x 11’ Digital collage
Madison Horton
Madison Horton is the human embodiment of the pile of water bottles piling up on your desk, half of which you’ve barely sipped from but still somehow can’t bear to throw out. She is equally as fascinated by the mundane as she is the bizarre, and explores her curiosities mainly through illustration and film. Her work is often dark in tone yet visually colorful. There are traces of humour throughout her pieces, and most of the time the artist herself is the butt of the joke in one form or another. Madison herself is elusive and if she’s to be found anywhere it’s probably at the nearest Wawa, gazing longingly at cheese cubes.
April (2021) Collage animation Video still
Channel 86 (2021) Collage animation Video still 16
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Catherine Ko l a s k i Catherine Kolaski is a senior graduating with her BFA in Fine Art from the University of Delaware. She specializes in sculpture especially wood as a material. She is based out of the mountains in Utah where she creates and makes art out of a local wood shop. She takes inspiration from the nature around her focusing lately on trees. Catherine works as a flight attendant, her passion is traveling the world. The Covid-19 shutdown was a blessing in disguise for Catherine; she took advantage of classes being offered online to finish her degree from a distance. When she is not traveling, she is a houseplant fanatic and enjoys do it yourself projects at home. Catherine’s work has been in University of Delaware’s Art in the Garden both the Spring of 2013 as well as 2014. Catherine is excited to share her favorite works from her time at the University of Delaware in the 2021 BFA Senior Exhibition.
Trampoline Tree 24’ L x 12’ W x 8’ H Recycled trampoline rounds, rope
Reflection Room 7’ L x 7’ W x 5’ H Wood, mirrored window film, recycled mattress foam,
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Foam Pit 9’ L x 11’ W x 6’ H Wood, mesh and recycled mattress
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Esther Lee Esther Lee is a Korean American undergrad Senior fine arts student currently attending the University of Delaware since 2016. She was born in Pennsylvania and had since moved seven times and currently resides in Dover, Delaware. After her second year at the University of Delaware she took a gap year and traveled to Nepal and experienced the culture, people, and the Himalayan mountains for six months–which greatly impacted her view on life and as an artist. Coming back to finish off her BFA, she found her creative outlet in sculpture and oil painting. Her work talks about her Korean heritage and traditions, Nepal, faith, personal experiences/memories, and nature. She tells stories in her sculptures and paintings through imagery, color, shapes and forms. She likes to go big for her sculpture installations and uses materials such as: fabric, paper, thread, ink, wood, etc. She is very process driven and rides the wave of uncertainty and excitement as she slowly develops a relationship with the materials and constantly finds herself immersed in a story. This year Esther was the recipient for the Lynn Herrick Sharp award for the show in the Delaware Contemporary along with two other undergrad seniors.
Hopeful, 40” x 3” x 31” wood, cement, fabric, yarn, acrylic paint
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Free, 40” x 3” x 31” wood, spray paint, cement
Beauty For Ashes Mirror frame, paper, tulle, thread, ashes
Transcending 10’ x 2’x 4’ fabric, steel, cement, yarn 2021 BACHELORS OF FINE ARTS
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Mathea Madsen Mathea Madsen is an artist (and curious). Through experimentation and process based work, she mixes the conceptual and tangible with a sense of ponderous, dark humor. She works mainly with printmaking, photography, video, and writing to create installation rooted pieces. In her work, there is a sense of speculation and vulnerability, with an acceptance of rough edges. Her work lies in the “inbetween”, where roadkill can connect to silver linings in life and a house can become a symbol of inner turmoil and thoughts on the future. She accepts the messy, strange happenings of the world, and confronts those uncomfortable realities headfirst. It is in those liminal spaces that her work takes hold, striving to answer the unanswerable in a fresh way.
I Remember Series II (2021) 1’10” x 7’3” Screen printed series of 3, plastic sheeting
Her work was recently featured in The Lynn Sharp Award show at the Delaware Contemporary Museum of Art and she hopes to continue her artistic vision in a creative agency post-graduation.
Lamentations of your Lonely Neighborhood Ghost (2021) TRT 00:02:07 Animated short Separation (2021) 9’6” x 3’9” x 55’ Screen print on newsprint and plastic
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Catherine McKnight Catherine is an experimental artist, she’s a risk-taker who likes to push her materials beyond known limits. She learned to accept the happy accidents and to roll with the mistakes without dwelling on perfection. “Taking risks allows me to get closer to being comfortable with the fact that it may not come out perfect” Catherine says. While taking risks, she’s loosened up her drawing techniques to make for more fluid compositions. Currently, Catherine is practicing abstract imagery to showcase the looser side of her drawings. Catherine describes her influences as coming from her surroundings rather than from specific artists. For instance, the environment from the woods to the beach or within her own friend group combined with social media inspire Catherine’s artistic drive. For this reason, Catherine finds herself gravitating towards hands-on projects, which is why she really enjoys sculpture and screen-printing. Catherine values the versatility of screen-printing such that it allows for any design or photograph to be printed on any surface for as many times as she wants. Catherine’s sculptures tend to have subject matter that plays on audience emotions. To help evoke feelings of fear and discomfort, she transforms the space where her projects are being displayed even going so far as to combine her printmaking with sculptures. Recently in her artistic practice, Catherine has been translating her personal struggles and things that cannot be physically seen into works of art. Ultimately, Catherine finds herself most motivated to make art when she’s invested in their conceptual meanings, and she aims to imbue her work with a strong voice. Although Catherine sometimes creates work “just because,” the key is to find balance in along the way. Slipping Away (2020) 4.5’ x 1.5’ x 1.5’ Particle board, wood, elmer’s glue, gorilla glue, wood glue, corn starch, food coloring, jar, hydrocal, nails, screws, black paint, and stain
Anxiety 2021 15 3/8” x 63 1/2” x 3 3/4” Wood, black paint, plexiglass, speedball ink, wood glue, nails, double sided tape, screws, and battery powered led strip lights 24
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Julia Metzner Julia uses her dreams and visions to fuel much of her artwork as she finds that she thinks best when she is unconscious. The resulting products showcase the wackiest of whims playing on theories of the multiverse and other astronomical notions. That being said, Julia milks surrealism for all that it’s worth. Typically dabbling in photography to encapsulate her visions, she has since branched out to translate her ideas through screen printing so as to take on eerie, dystopian themes. What once was driven largely by satire has transformed to adopt fear as Julia wakes up to reality. Predominantly using vivid colors and eccentric settings to make up a scene that could not occur organically in real life, this artist aims to render her works ungoogleable. Julia believes that her creations command attention, but that they can speak for themselves, so each viewer might take away something completely different than the next.
Manifestations (2021) Video Installation
LATELY I’VE BEEN FEELING HOPELESS AND NERVOUS. MY VIDEO, “MANIFESTATIONS” SHARES IMAGERY SYMBOLIC FOR MY FEELINGS AND INNER TURMOIL. I NARRATED THIS PIECE TO LET A PERSONAL MONOLOGUE SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS. IT’S NOTHING ANYONE WANTS TO HEAR, BUT IT HAS BECOME MY TRUTH. Electric Mermaid (2021) 25” x 36” Digital Print 26
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Michaela OConnor Michaela O’Conner is an artist who has learned much throughout college, but there is one last lesson that she seeks to teach herself. It is that you are the driving force of your own art practice and subsequently, you are the driving force in your own life. After she spent an exorbitant amount of time in a rut, she began to gain a new sense of perspective. She realized the lessons she learned during the process of creation are invaluable and evergreen. However, taking a step toward making for the sake of making meant she moved away from fearing her own success. Michaela’s old habits and thought patterns had to be shed as though they were layers of clothing that Spring wrought worthless. Currently, her primary interests are to follow her intuition and freely release concepts that do not work in favor of an alternate outcome. Michaela intends for her process of creation, as well as her process of learning, to be evident in her work. Through her own courage in entering the unknown and enjoying what she finds there, she hopes to bring similar feelings of inspiration to her viewers. It is not until looking back you find the highs are bigger than the lows.
I Can’t Trace Time (2021) 32” x 48” Oil and gouache on toned tan paper
Tunnel Vision (2021) 30” x 24” Watercolor on cold press paper
The Up Is Bigger Than The Down (2021) 16” x 18” Oil on cardboard 28
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Ro n a l d Purnell Ronald Purnell is a freelance illustrator and animator from Middletown, Delaware. Aside from illustration and animation, Ronald is interested in being a comic artist, author, music composer, and clothing designer. He was recently a member of an animation team for the trailer of a manga titled, Allure: The Evening Promise, through the Noir Caesar creative agency. His work can be seen through Instagram, where enjoys interacting with his audience. His favorite music genres include heavy metal, hybrid orchestral, rock, J-rock, and ONE country song he has heard because it had a good message.
Arisen Teaser Trailer (2021) 1920 x 1080px aspect ratio Animated Video
Arisen Poster (2021) 9” x 12” Digital Illustration 30
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Nate Ro b i n s o n Nate Robison is an artist whose practice revolves around experimentation. He fixates on systems of cause and effect, and finds ways to creatively disrupt those systems. He is drawn to any material that keeps his hands and body moving, with a current focus on ceramics. He loves learning the minutiae of clay’s properties, glazes’ unpredictable interactions, and the constant volatility of the whole process. Ceramics straddles the border between the predictable, the chemical, and the mystical, with deeply emotional properties. To Nate, clay feels like a natural extension of the human body. He finds meaning in how many creation myths begin with the human form being molded out of clay.
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Shayna Saltzman Shayna Saltzman uses her passion for illustration and psychology as a focus for her self-driven artwork and creative self-expression. She is currently an intern and researcher for Art Therapy Express in Wilmington, DE. She will soon be working towards a master’s degree at Caldwell University in Mental Health Counseling, with an art therapy specialization. Her interest in psychology informs her process based work, which includes portraits and narratives created through intricate mark-making. She perceives everything around her in microscopic detail, which is reflected in her drawings, paintings, and illustrations. Shayna’s interests inspire her work, including the study of empathy and gratitude, understanding molecular biological processes, advocating for deaf culture, and coaching the sport of volleyball. Jack of All Trades 9 x 12” Acrylic, micron, gel pen
Twins Day 11” x 17” Acrylic, colored pencil, micron 34
If You Pass Go.. 12” x 15” Acrylic, Marker, Micron, Monopoly Money
Now You See Me 3’ x 4’ Oil on canvas
Noodle Boy 11” x 11” Acrylic, Micron, Colored Pencil
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The Lynn Herrick Sharp Award
The artists wish to express their thanks to the following...
OUR FAMILIES AND FRIENDS
OUR AMAZING UNDERGRADUATE FACULTY David Brinley Martha Carothers Jia Rey Chang Jon Cox William Deering Abby Donovan Colette Gaiter Amy Hicks
René Marquez David Meyer Robyn Phillips-Pendleton Ashley Pigford Greg Shelnutt Priscilla Smith Aaron Terry Peter Williams Lance Winn
In September 2009, Lynn Herrick Sharp established an award in support of our Fine Arts program. University of Delaware alumna and collector of contemporary art, Lynn Sharp is actively involved in enriching the arts in Delaware. She was President of the Board of Trustees at the Delaware Art Museum and in 2002 received the Governor’s Award for the Arts. Sharp is also Member Emeritus, Board of Directors at The Delaware Contemporary. The award recognizes a student in the final stages of pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Delaware. This award is intended to assist the recipient in producing and documenting their work for the Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition.
& A SPECIAL THANKS TO
Esther Lee
Lynn Sharp Award 2021
Mathea Madsen
Honorable Mention
Charlie Clery
Honorable Mention
Amber Bonsall Cindy Delaney Peter Schwenk Nate Sherman
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Catalog Designed by: Charlie Clery, Madison Horton, Mathea Madsen, & Julia Metzner
Department of Art & Design - 104 Recitation Hall, University of Delaware, +1 302-831-2244, www.art.udel.edu, artdepartment@udel.edu
Department of Art & Design 104 Recitation Hall, University of Delaware +1 302-831-2244 www.art.udel.edu artdepartment@udel.edu